A child board for qualifying threads in Beginners & Help board

[tranthidung]

The idea is the Beginners & Help (abbreviated as B&H) board is the place for newbies (of course everyone can join) and they can ask for help or help others in that board. There are senior members ready to help newbies in B&H too.

In that board, new threads are created daily and it is a mix between good threads and bad threads. I consider bad threads from my own criteria are:

• For spam purpose: Create a thread for others to join and spam.
• For self-advertisement purpose: Some companies make fake threads only to promote their services.
• Guides with low quality: sort of merit begging with low efforts and incorrect or low-quality contents.
• Providing news from some sites, with very limited additional information (kind of merit begging) with limited efforts.
• etc.

In order to differentiate between good and bad threads, I propose to have a child board in B&H board. That child board will be used only for threads that have total received merits equal or above a setup threshold, for example 20 merits.

Proposal criteria

• No rank restriction: but of course brandnew user can not have a thread in that child board.
• Total received merits: 20+ (the threshold can be considered, 10+ or 30+ but I think 20+ is enough).
• Name: Quality-verified threads

Supplementary criterion for the second criterion:
We can choose to use total received merits within thread or only total received merits of OP. If I have to choose, I would go with the second option. There are always good replies inside threads but OP quality is important. In fact, I bad expressed my idea so some users think the requirement is 20+ received merits within thread. It is not what I want to suggest that is the second option.


I mean in B & H boards:

• Posters must make their threads in the main board first.
• Over time, when total received merits of threads reach 20+, they can decide to move it to the child board or keep it in the main board of B&H.
• It's a sort of personal choice.

Our forum has already had some boards with some special pre-requisites:

• Two new no-signature boards
• Rules for Serious Discussion and Ivory Tower

[BIT-BENDER]

There are still spammers with more than ten merits, and you would still get spam post even if your proposed child board is made, further more not only beginners and help has spam activities, even Bitcoin discussion board has them, the forum can't start creating childboard to differentiate post quality.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Surely a much easier and less complicated solution is to just report the low quality threads to be locked or trashed? Why allow the board to continue to be cluttered by poor quality, spammy, advertising, etc., threads?

It is also next to impossible to get even senior members who start threads in any board to go back and lock the thread once the discussion has run its course and the thread has turned in to a spamfest. I suspect you will have very limited success encouraging users who are predominantly newbies to go back and move their thread to a new board, particularly a new child board which will get less traffic and less views than the main board.

[Coyster]

Many good threads and guides in B&H do not even receive up to the "twenty qualifying merits". I don't think this child board is needed tbh, what's the purpose of moving a thread to a child board if for example it takes about a week to get twenty merits, it would already have been seen by almost everyone on the main board, and moving it will serve no purpose imo.

Just as o_e_l_e_o has said, reporting low quality posts to the moderators is still the best, it will be deleted and the good/average threads/guides remain in the main section.

[tranthidung]

There are still spammers with more than ten merits

No. You did not read OP carefully. I meant total received merits for threads, not posters.

Surely a much easier and less complicated solution is to just report the low quality threads to be locked or trashed? Why allow the board to continue to be cluttered by poor quality, spammy, advertising, etc., threads?

Report bad posts and have a child board for higher quality threads are different.

It is also next to impossible to get even senior members who start threads in any board to go back and lock the thread once the discussion has run its course and the thread has turned in to a spamfest. I suspect you will have very limited success encouraging users who are predominantly newbies to go back and move their thread to a new board, particularly a new child board which will get less traffic and less views than the main board.

Whenever you have good attitude, you will do this. Not all of users do this but some will do. Especially if you think it can help newbies better. In my opinion, it help not only for newbies but also for the whole community, including staffs. Good threads have higher odds to be moderate by good OPs, not all but the odds is higher.

Many good threads and guides in B&H do not even receive up to the "twenty qualifying merits". I don't think this child board is needed tbh, what's the purpose of moving a thread to a child board if for example it takes about a week to get twenty merits, it would already have been seen by almost everyone on the main board, and moving it will serve no purpose imo.

The main idea is has a child board for up-class quality threads and it does not matter to move your threads after 2-4 weeks. Do you pay attention on your threads to see it satisfies needs of newbies in that main board, and receive merits. I think you do care about that. Even I don't beg for merits, I always feel happy if my posts or threads receive merits because it is kinda recognition for my works.

Just as o_e_l_e_o has said, reporting low quality posts to the moderators is still the best, it will be deleted and the good/average threads/guides remain in the main section.

As of writing, the Beginners & Help has 54828 Topics, in total. It's the point. The forum has operated more than ten years, and it might keep operate for many years, then total topics in Beginners & Help will expand more. I don't have stats on this but have you ever imagine how many threads in Beginners & Help have received 20+ merits? I guess the percent is not too high.

The threshold at 20+ merits is chosen arbitrarily so if someone can give stats on this issue, it will be cool.

• Total received merits: 20+ (the threshold can be considered, 10+ or 30+ but I think 20+ is enough)

Edited: DdmrDdmr gave us Statistic that discloses only 0.42% of threads in Beginners & Help have received 20+ merits.
Generally, I know theymos does not want to add more boards or child boards.  

[DdmrDdmr]

There are currently 232 threads on B&H that aggregate 20 or more merits within the thread (see https://public.tableau.com/shared/5F4Q52ZRQ?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link , top merited threads). Since the main criteria reflected in the OP is the number of merits, perhaps it would be easier, and more all-purpose, to simply add a sort by merits feature (and probably a merit counter to the thread and/or index).

[o_e_l_e_o]

Report bad posts and have a child board for higher quality threads are different.

But surely we should be striving to make every thread higher quality? Surely we want all boards to be free of low quality spam, and not just move the best threads to their own special board, leaving the low quality stuff behind and turning the Beginner's and Help board in to even more of a spam fest in the process? The best option is to have more reporting and more moderation of low quality spam, rather than just ignoring it and moving all the better threads out. It's also entirely possible (and frequently happens) that one or two good replies in an otherwise awful thread will attract a lot of merits. You will then be moving a thread which is >95% spam to the "Quality threads" board based on sometimes a single good comment.

[Harlot]

And what do your propose to be the name of that Beginners and Help Child Board? Because we cannot necessarily make a duplicate copy of a board that has the same function only this time it is restricted to real newbies who have real questions in that board, you are just ruining the purpose of that board if you restricts members who have 19 and below merits. After all if you look at the condition of the B&H board now you will see that a lot of threads are also made up of Sr. Members and above and that is without any kind of restrictions to anyone. Only putting a restriction to a childboard with the same purpose will only make newbies be uninterested with that child board. Beginners and Help section isn't that bad also as compared to spammy boards such as Bitcoin Discussion and Economics section.

[tranthidung]

And what do your propose to be the name of that Beginners and Help Child Board? Because we cannot necessarily make a duplicate copy of a board that has the same function only this time it is restricted to real newbies who have real questions in that board, you are just ruining the purpose of that board if you restricts members who have 19 and below merits. After all if you look at the condition of the B&H board now you will see that a lot of threads are also made up of Sr. Members and above and that is without any kind of restrictions to anyone. Only putting a restriction to a childboard with the same purpose will only make newbies be uninterested with that child board. Beginners and Help section isn't that bad also as compared to spammy boards such as Bitcoin Discussion and Economics section.

Please read what I suggested in OP.