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Underground > Policy & Help >

Ideas to raise the standard of debate

  
 
Seth
09:40 / 16.02.05
With the current flavour of conversation being generally around the subject of improving the standard of debate, how would people feel about slight amendments to thread titles to show when they’re of a particular high standard of discussion and ideas? By drawing attention to what is already excellent we can focus people’s attention both for reading and contributing. This can be done now, with the current board functionality. A change could be proposed to a moderator by members via PM, and voted on as part of the usual moderation process. Or moderators could take responsibility for their forums and choose which threads merit highlighting. It’d need to be a standardised text format, with the thread’s proper title copied in immediately before or after.

Any thoughts on that or other ideas?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:43 / 16.02.05
That's quite a nice idea, actually. I could see it leading to arguments, but I'd say give it a try. We can always stop doing it if it doesn't work.
 
 
Seth
09:51 / 16.02.05
Additional rule that maybe you can't nominate your own thread, and that it's a serious breach in etiquette to start a thread with the standardised text already copied in...
 
 
Loomis
09:56 / 16.02.05
Deciding which threads are worthy of a gold star? I think that's a bad idea.

For all the hot air spouted on Barbelith about not being elitist, all I hear these days are complaints about posters not living up to some imaginary standard of quality. Scoring each thread is only going to create divisions.

Surely the idea is to read a variety of threads rather than providing a narrow list of what is worthwhile, therefore marginalising everything else. Not to mention possible disagreements on what is worthy.
 
 
Tom Coates
10:22 / 16.02.05
Seriously dude - you really think that there's no way of people assessing relative quality of posting between someone who posts "that sux" and someone who writes a five paragraph, highly annotated and careful post which includes references to other reading elsewhere? You might not agree with the idea that we're looking for people to join the site who will contribute at a certain level, but to argue even that some posts and posters might talk more sense or write more intelligently than others is surely plainly ridiculous.

In these circumstances, I'm always more keen on people going back through the archives and finding topics that they think didn't get enough attention or were really interesting questions that we never really properly interrogated rather than making things into a competition. Maybe some of the mods can go back and check out some really old threads that could do with being re-examined?
 
 
Axolotl
10:24 / 16.02.05
I'm going to have to agree with Loomis and say that rating threads seems like a sure way to promote division and in-fighting.
I mentioned in the "State of the Board" thread that perhaps we could try running some seminar threads in Head Shop, Laboratory and so on (the section of the board referred to as "The Revolution" in the FAQ) complete with a reading list to ensure people up on the issues when discussing a topic. These could work like the Book Club threads in the Books forum though there are obviously issues to sort out.
 
 
Smoothly
10:27 / 16.02.05
I reckon it's worth thinking about this sort of thing, but agree with Loomis is this instance. One man's whatsit is another man's thingy, and all that. Any kind of official Barbelith Seal Of Approval just feels a little un-Barbelith to me.
Wasn't there a thread in which people linked to their all-time favourite topics? I think May Tricks started it during the last influx of new members. (I would link to it, but I can't find it.) I don't see anything wrong with keeping that updated, with forum regulars perhaps making a concerted effort to dig up the long-buried gold. (It might also be retitled to make it a little easier to find. 'Best Of Barbelith' or something). Or, as Tom suggests, just get rekindling.
 
 
Spaniel
10:27 / 16.02.05
Seminars would be a fascinating way to go. I'd love to join in.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:07 / 16.02.05
Smoothly has a point- a "best of" thread is good. It's be better if it was a sticky (is that the right word? You know, a thread that doesn't sink even when nobody posts to it for a while), but I'm guessing that would require new coding (I know nothing of your Earth technology). I still mis the "hot topics" being visible, but that's probably just nostalgia, and anyway the streamlined look is much prettier.

I still like Seth's idea, but I'm starting to think (especially after reading everyone else's posts) that arguments would be almost inevitable. (I can imagine myself being one of the people doing the arguing, so I'm taking that as a warning sign in itself).
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:23 / 16.02.05
For all the hot air spouted on Barbelith about not being elitist, all I hear these days are complaints about posters not living up to some imaginary standard of quality.

What a crazy idea!
 
 
illmatic
11:33 / 16.02.05
Look at the date man, it was actually started back in Barbelith's glorious days of yore, withy Deva reviving it recently in quite an intelligent way - since then though, strangely, young Rob Frost has lowered, not raised, the tone.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:38 / 16.02.05
Yes, it was vaguely interesting for a brief while there. Now it's just sad, tawdry and makes me feel dirty (but not in a good way). Still, each to their own, eh?
 
 
Loomis
11:53 / 16.02.05
Well Flyboy, let ze who has never started a stupid thread cast the first stone. I think some people round here have an overrated view of the consistency of their own merit. We've all contributed reams of shite over the years so I wouldn't be too quick to judge. It seems that some people only remember the good stuff from the past and forget the countless bullshit threads. And you can't have the former without the latter.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
11:59 / 16.02.05
How about this? Some time back, we had a system of member feedback ratings, where every username had five stars underneath it, a number of which were lit up depending on the amoung of positive/negative feeback that person had received. It was sort of useless, given that almost everybody decided to opt out of it and hide their own feeback ratings, and also not very Barbelith, but could a similar system for thread feedback be any use? It'd be along the same sort of lines as Seth's suggestion, but allow everybody to decide which threads are deserving of attention, rather than just leaving that decision to moderators.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
12:03 / 16.02.05
Didn't one of the earliest iterations of the board have the five stars feature? And didn't we dump that because we thought it was elitist? Or am I thinking of another board...

The problems I see with this approach:

1) How do we decide what is good? Are the criteria for a good comic thread different to a good headshop thread?

2) Are we going to have the situation where a moderator would have to amend the summary to say [GOOD, except for page 4 where people get sidetracked onto an argument about whether Megatron or Galvatron was more evil]? Very few threads maintain whatever it is we feel is 'Barbelith excellence' all the way through.

3) What is this 'excellence' anyway? Who judges excellence? What if you think thread x is special and I don't? And if we put it to the vote, who gets to vote and why? Why only the mods for that department? If we were all neuro-linked so the board could all vote then fine, but I suspect that any system on the board would have to be one person, or a small group, deciding for everyone what constitutes excellence. Apparently the moderators are too busy to check people's email addresses and whatnot, but not too busy to give marks to threads for intellectual clarity.

How does someone who's not a moderator get to argue for or against a thread being given a gold star without cluttering the Policy up with what could be a very partisan argument? It gets heated when we're discussing whether a troll should get kicked off the board, this has the possibility of generating low-level hostility all the time. Do we really want the kind of arguments the Oscars or the Man Booker cause, with the Barbelith Good Thread Awards?

4) Why couldn't we nominate our own threads? I started the photo thread but my input after the first post is minimal and I loved the way people took it and turned it into a 'this is us!' thread. So why couldn't I nominate that? Not that I want to...



A compromise would be as on a fiction board I saw a number of regular/long-time posters link to story threads with a brief explanation of why they liked them. This would emphasize the subjective nature of the choices and not suggest to newbies that there is some structure they must follow. This could be done by board reprogramming, to create a seperate section (The Museum/The Gallery?), but in the meantime could start with a thread in the Policy ('Readers Choices') or a new subsection in the new wiki.
 
 
Spaniel
12:03 / 16.02.05
Not a bad idea, but will it happen any time soon?

No it won't.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
12:05 / 16.02.05
Posted before I saw Spatula's last point. So I didn't dream it. And we dumped it because it gave a false consensus and everything got 4 1/2 - 5 stars as I recall.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
12:09 / 16.02.05
Apparently the moderators are too busy to check people's email addresses and whatnot, but not too busy to give marks to threads for intellectual clarity.

Eh? What? Nina decides that she's not prepared to check email and suddenly it's *all* moderators? Am I missing something here?

And Flowers, that was an entirely different system, as I've explained, as it was feedback for individual members and not threads.

Boboss> Yeah, I know it's not anything that can be put into effect in the near future - it's a "further on down the line" suggestion.
 
 
rising and revolving
12:57 / 16.02.05
I think the idea has merit, but not for merely saying one thread is "good".

Occultforums (so sue me) has a system whereby a thread can be turned from a normal thread into a 'talking point' - and 'talking point' threads have much stricter rules (basically only practicing occultists talking about actual experiences are allowed - no theory, no waffle). Something like this whereby a thread could be assigned a higher set of standards wouldn't be a bad thing.

To be honest, it wouldn't be a bad thing just to assign certain topics as "on topic" - which is to say they're subject to harsher moderation, and anything offtopic just gets instantly killed.

However, the initial suggestion of "gold stars" for some topics doesn't add much, I fear.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:01 / 16.02.05
Again - gold stars requires a change to another type of software or work done on this one. Neither of those is an option at the moment.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:20 / 16.02.05
Apparently the moderators are too busy to check people's email addresses and whatnot, but not too busy to give marks to threads for intellectual clarity.

Eh? What? Nina decides that she's not prepared to check email and suddenly it's *all* moderators? Am I missing something here?

Excuse me but I said I wasn't prepared to chat to people via email to find out if their information was accurate- that's not checking, that's far more time consuming if you're actually trying to find out who they are and I work 9 hours a day not including lunch. I've been online today because work has been far, far slower than usual so please don't talk like I don't care. I would hardly dedicate so much time to talking about this in policy if I didn't. If you have the time to talk to complete strangers on email to find out that kind of information than you're lucky.

As for judging a thread... we all do it, it's not necessarily about intellectual clarity but about making the same point over again and I read the board for my personal pleasure thus I understand what's going on. I do not email strangers for pleasure. I am a janitor (moderator) of this board because I care about it and on average I spend about 10 minutes a week moderating, that can stretch to an hour or so pretty easily.
 
 
A fall of geckos
15:22 / 16.02.05
Could a page on the wiki be used for something like this - not exactly a hot topics - more of a wiki area used by board members to highlight active discussions.

This could create a links area that functioned like the gold star but is member nominated.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
15:35 / 16.02.05
Didn't we have a favourite threads area?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
15:38 / 16.02.05
Oops, I misread Spatula, my apologies. My general feeling still remains, if we mark threads it's as elitist as marking members was.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:23 / 16.02.05
As far as the gold star thing goes, were I a troll and seeing that, I'd be beside myself with delight. I suppose one of the things you're attempting to do as an 'underbridge dweller' is carry out your own personal attack on anything that might be considered 'pretentious' and in those circumstances a five star labelling for intellectual x would be like a red rag to a bull, to be honest. It would be worth waiting round for a couple of months just to say 'Bollocks LOL' at exactly the right moment, as far as I can see.

And wasn't the Favourite Thread section mainly to do with Leap ?
 
 
Cherielabombe
17:55 / 16.02.05
Hmm. Yeah. What Loomis said. I guess it's an interesting idea, and kudos to Seth for trying to think of SOMETHING but yes, I think it would only further the complaints about elitism.

Possibly if we allowed/asked everyone to rate a thread when they finished reading it it might work, but this being Barbelith I just have my doubts about it. I could see it going the way of the 5-star system, or degenerating into mayhem.
 
 
Papess
18:18 / 16.02.05
Smoothly:

Barbe-classics: The Conversation
 
 
Smoothly
19:29 / 16.02.05
That's the one Strix. It's good, isn't it? Glad my memory hadn't completely failed me.

One of those for each forum and linked to the relevant section of the Wiki would give everyone a chance make recommendations and talk about the things that have interested them. Quite possibly the act of recommending would reinvigorate the interest of those contemplating their desert island threads, as well as giving others a chance to see discussions they might not know had already been kicked off. Good discussions die for any number of reasons, but never because they're complete.
 
  
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