I have been a member here for some time, though I do lurk far more than I actually post. During my tenure on the forums, I've noticed two problems which could be fairly easily addressed. Actually, I'm not sure how easy or hard they would be; I know about as much about web design as I do about pleasing a women.
*ahem*
Anyway, the first thing I want to bring up is the issue of accidentally reporting posts. There have been several occasions where I reported posts that I had no intention of reporting due to errant clicks. Other times, I have felt that I needed to give more elaboration on why I was reporting that post in particular.
I think that having a small box to give a reason why you're reporting that particular post would be a good solution to both of these problems.
First of all, any accidental reportings would be mostly eliminated due to having to explain why you wanted to report it. Secondly, it would allow the user to give a reason for requesting moderator attention. This would also have the additional benefit of cutting down on abuse of the report feature, because someone who wants to troll the forums or moderators probably wouldn't spend that much time typing out a reason for each post they report.
Have you ever seen a thread where you're supposed to give a witty response to a certain question? I'm sure that there were times when you had nothing to add, but found a particularly funny post. I know that I have wanted to express my approval of certain posts in threads, but didn't have anything useful to add to the conversation.
There have also been times where I had the opposite problem. I?ve come across posts that weren?t in any violation of the rules, but were poorly constructed, asinine, or simply wrong. Any feedback that I would give would be purely material for a flame war and not be constructive in the slightest, but I do think the poster needed a sense of the community?s reaction.
A rudimentary thumbs-up/thumbs-down system would allow for users to express their approval of participants' posts without clogging up the thread or leading to a fight.
Now, this system obviously has its pitfalls. It?s possible that members will use the system simply to show that they disagree with a certain post, and others might start trolling by creating accounts to lower the ranking of somebody?s posts. My solution to this is only having a certain number of these thumbs-up/thumbs-down posts per day. I think that this will not only discourage trolling, but also encourage forum members to really think about whether or not the post in question is deserving of their praise/ire.
These suggestions might have been tested or brought up among members of the forum team before, but I do think that they could be used to improve the overall forum community. Again, these might be difficult or impossible to implement for all I know about designing web pages, so please take this with a grain of salt.
*ahem*
Anyway, the first thing I want to bring up is the issue of accidentally reporting posts. There have been several occasions where I reported posts that I had no intention of reporting due to errant clicks. Other times, I have felt that I needed to give more elaboration on why I was reporting that post in particular.
I think that having a small box to give a reason why you're reporting that particular post would be a good solution to both of these problems.
First of all, any accidental reportings would be mostly eliminated due to having to explain why you wanted to report it. Secondly, it would allow the user to give a reason for requesting moderator attention. This would also have the additional benefit of cutting down on abuse of the report feature, because someone who wants to troll the forums or moderators probably wouldn't spend that much time typing out a reason for each post they report.
Have you ever seen a thread where you're supposed to give a witty response to a certain question? I'm sure that there were times when you had nothing to add, but found a particularly funny post. I know that I have wanted to express my approval of certain posts in threads, but didn't have anything useful to add to the conversation.
There have also been times where I had the opposite problem. I?ve come across posts that weren?t in any violation of the rules, but were poorly constructed, asinine, or simply wrong. Any feedback that I would give would be purely material for a flame war and not be constructive in the slightest, but I do think the poster needed a sense of the community?s reaction.
A rudimentary thumbs-up/thumbs-down system would allow for users to express their approval of participants' posts without clogging up the thread or leading to a fight.
Now, this system obviously has its pitfalls. It?s possible that members will use the system simply to show that they disagree with a certain post, and others might start trolling by creating accounts to lower the ranking of somebody?s posts. My solution to this is only having a certain number of these thumbs-up/thumbs-down posts per day. I think that this will not only discourage trolling, but also encourage forum members to really think about whether or not the post in question is deserving of their praise/ire.
These suggestions might have been tested or brought up among members of the forum team before, but I do think that they could be used to improve the overall forum community. Again, these might be difficult or impossible to implement for all I know about designing web pages, so please take this with a grain of salt.
