Just wondering if there are any good article or review writers on the forum
..are there?
It seems that on online forums these days, the key issue affecting user satisfaction and retention is a term that is canonically labeled "signal-to-noise ratio". When a forum has unchecked spam, unmoderated trolls, and uninformative follow-up posts, the user experience is quickly degraded, and results in user frustration and abandonment. The unwanted posts are the "noise" component of signal-to-noise, preventing users from obtaining information relevant to their interests, and skewing the available reading material content away from that which is pertinent to to the forum's overall focus.
This is particularly frustrating when a narcissistic user makes purposeless
new conversation threads, with unclear intention, asking a question that is easily answered or has an open-ended answer, or especially if such a new conversation thread post is re-asking a question that has already been answered multiple times. The subtext of this kind of question is that the poster thinks himself too important to search for a previous answer himself, and he or she deserves a customized and personal response crafted by other forum members who should be subject to his whims.
Today we will embark on a review of a post by username
b!z, made October 17, 2013 on the bitcointalk.org forum. In the off-topic area, a post was made by this forum member "wondering" if there are any good article or review writers present on the forum (with a winky emoticon). The question is then repeated, "..are there?".
To analyze this two fragment-sentence post, and why this kind of post is frustrating to other forum members, the first point to make is that there appears to be no clear statement of why the question is being asked. Possible scenarios one could conjure:
- The poster is an article writer and is looking to share company and anecdotes with other writers,
- the poster is seeking to employ a writer for a particular project,
- the poster is complaining about the lack of good quality articles or reviews,
- the poster wants to follow the postings of good article writers,
- the poster wants to bilk and scam content authors, obtaining free work for no pay.
If that isn't frustrating enough, the second point to make is that the poster could certainly investigate this question for himself. There are many posts where technical writers are offering there services, many press links where original authors are posting their content and blogs, and other related posts. The poster can discover "good article or review writers" himself, especially since he hasn't defined what constitutes "good" in his mind.
Also missing from the article post is any information pertaining to the position or standing of the forum member that may allow a reader to independently unveil the intent of the poster. The only clue is a garish signature advertising a casino; perhaps one that the poster is involved with, but more likely a paid product placement. If so, the intrusive advertising with every post says to the reader, "this poster is a whore, and doesn't care that they are littering your screen with annoying advertisements".
Finally, the mischievous winking emoticon - a "smiley-face" type picture that is meant to communicate
something with the reader. This emoticon is typically used to signal that the proceeding sentence is an in-joke, a funny retort, or an acknowledgement in some way of the cleverness of a previous quoted post. However here, the meaning is equally confusing as the rest of the content - why the wink? One can equally assume a gamut of intentions from this out-of-context use, from the prospects that the review writer being sought will be asked to do something underhanded all the way to the conclusion that the poster is flirting with any review writers on the forum.
Answer: there is no joke.In conclusion, this author remains baffled. This post reeks of one that is simply meant to fulfill some obligation to post every day to obtain rewards for a signature advertisement - there is no content to the message other than that. While not quite affronting enough that one feels the need to leap for the
report to moderator button, it still is objectionable enough that there should be no surprise if this post is the final one which earns the poster a few forum
ignores, a forum feature that allows other users to protest the repeated demonstration of a wealth of ignorance by a forum member, and completely block any past or future posts by that member. This reviewer gives the forum user b!z and his stupid user name a thumbs-down for this post, and the ignore feature of the forum a thumbs-up.
