MK has been campaigning to get guest posting reinstated. No luck so far. The pros: provocative posts; the cons: moderators get overworked. But here is a possible solution.
Have a separate ID, called, say, Anonymous, with a publically available password. That way, if anyone wants to post anonymously, they can. If anything destructive is posted, anyone can go in and alter it. Community moderating… Obviously relying on a certain amount of spirit of cooperation
The major weaknesses, of course, is that anyone could alter any post under the 'anonymous" name. Not sure how to get around this. Can we build on this idea? Worth a shot? Miltownkid?
I like the anonymous thing, without the editing ordeal. Then we’d need a choosen few that would like nothing better then keeping segue clean. That’s why I brought out that public mass debating thread, I thought it was a good example of that.
Guests also wouldn’t be able to start topics. There could also be another thread that guests couldn’t see at all, where segues users could still have “civilized” discussions.
MORTAL KOMBAT!!!
Sorry about being off topic, I couldn’t help myself.
To balance the off topicness I’ll give a little thought. This board is about sharing information. There is going to be people that have “better” info then others. Those people with the “good” info need a reason to keep coming back to the site other than answering newbie questions (from people like myself). I think allowing guest posting will keep things more lively and have those bright people coming around more checking the boards and every now-and-then dropping a tasty tid bit of knowledge for us other users.
And now with all this new stuff (blue buttons and all) there must be a way to do it. We could probably even block guest posting if we wanted to.
I’ve just noticed something, now that I don’t surf at work anymore the boards seem a lot more active. Go figure :?
I still think guest posting would be fun, and if not guest posting a bit more leniency with bannings.
You could allow registered users to post “anonymously” but their identity could still be seen by the moderators. That way the moderators can bring any wayward “anonymous” posters back into line.
[quote=“miltownkid”]I like the anonymous thing, without the editing ordeal.[/quote] The point about allowing anyone who knows the password to edit is that it relieves the mods of much of the work. Editing would be done on a voluntary basis. The problems: the most sensitive users among us might edit out any old remark and so the rest of us would have to put up with such censorship. Theother problem of course, is that it would be hostage to *%#$#heads deleting/changing all anonymous posts.
[quote=“wix99”]You could allow registered users to post “anonymously” but their identity could still be seen by the moderators. That way the moderators can bring any wayward “anonymous” posters back into line.[/quote] True, but the argument against anonyomous posting, as I understand it, is not the fact that you get annoying posts, but because of the workload that it creates for moderators. Only if we tackle the WORKLOAD issue, will we see any progress.
Guests could be limited to simply replying to threads (it would mean setting each forum to “REG” members for new posts – as is already the case for the Discussion forums)
You really thinks so? I used to think this way, because as someone noted in another thread recently, when we switched off guest posting in ORIENTEDdotORG, posting activity dropped.
But today, I don’t feel the same way. We turned off guest posting back in November – yet activity here seems to continue to increase (OK, I haven’t checked the logs to back me up, but click of the last 24 hour link shows me a healthy volume of daily posting). If we succeed in spreading the word about Segue next year – thru initiatives like the Print Classifieds project and exchange banners – I expect posting volumes will rise.
I am not annoyed by frivolous and offensive posts as much as I am annoyed by people who ask questions which have already been answered. Either they are lazy, or they can’t find the answers easily. Whether the solution is to improve the archives, or to tidy up the forums (merging, pruning) it means more work for moderators. I think the extra policing which may be necessitated by rogue guest posters would not add a great deal to what we have to do already.
first, i think that having these discussions is really important to the web community process. as a newbie to this board and as a pre-newbie to taiwan (will be there in a month), i’ve found perusing the postings on this board has been incredibly helpful, and i’ve felt a degree of candidness and community on this board that i’d say is rare on message boards.
however, call me green, but i feel that having guest postings on this webboard might be counterproductive, creating an air of untrustworthiness rather than increased candidness and openness…
me personally: if an individual wants to say something provocative or perhaps offensive but doesn’t want to take credit for it, then i think he/she should consider what lies at the heart of that feeling. to me, if i felt unsure of how something i’d write may come across, it’d mean that i felt that the web community here isn’t safe enough for me to share what i’d like to share and still be respected/accepted in the community. but to me, if everyone could go swimming in anonymity any time they were going to rock the boat, i might not be bothered to hop in the ocean, so to speak. at least now i frequently wade in the pool.
i appreciate this web community because i (perhaps blindly) trust in the fact that when people post they’re speaking their mind truthfully. when i peruse other web boards where one can post as a “guest,” i find myself less trustful of the sentiment and spending more mental energy trying to figure out who’s post i can trust rather than trying to learn more about the community in taiwan.
to me, honesty and candidness are the foundations of the community. i think that perhaps miltownkid would like more of the candidness; i agree wholeheartedly. i just don’t think that the “guest” option would increase that.
all that being said, if guesting or anonymity is still seen as a good option to have, i suggest an option where a poster’s alias could be made private for individual postings. therefore, if they wanted he/she name out there, he/she could do that; if he/she wanted to stay private, it’d show as “anonymous” on the boards…the mod’s would still be able to trace back to the actual poster, yet others in the community wouldn’t know who it was…just my thoughts
