More focus on off-topic or repeated topics?

[Vague Rant]

This might seem fairly obvious to anyone who's used the DS section of the site, but it's kind of a mess. To demonstrate:

On the front page of the NDS - Homebrew Games & Applications board, there is one redundant "tell me the best homebrew" topic, one nesDS topic, one WiiScrubber topic (WTF?), two "what's going on with MSN on DS?" topics, two svSIP topics, two "which browser is the best?" topics,one "how do I change the skin on my R4?" topic, one "tell me the history of all touchscreen devices" topic, and two Genesis emulation topics (redundant and on the wrong board).

The NDS - Emulation board's first page has one "Age of Empires doesn't work on my R4" topic, one "Animal Crossing doesn't work on my DSTT" topic, one "Retro Game Challenge corrupted my microSD" topic, one "Will hacking Pokémon Diamond mess up my game?" topic, one "Final Fantasy won't save on my CycloDS" topic, and a massive six page topic about the nuked version of Time Hollow.

Sure, I get it, volunteers, busy site, etc. But I'm not just saying "mods should be doing more", I'm saying "mods should be focussing on getting the board out of its state of complete disorder instead of running around deleting individual posts for trivial reasons like not directly responding to the subject as it was set out in the topic post. For conversation to drift is natural and expected, and if the mods are so bothered by off-topic posts, why aren't completely irrelevant topics being moved to their rightful locations?

 

[Joey Ravn]

This is bound to happen in every big forum, sadly. When there are just a few users, everything can be kept under control. But when the userbase reaches the several thousands, it's only natural that mods feel overwhelmed. Yes, they can lock more topics. Heck, they can even start giving warnings and banning those who break the rules. But there is no way they can actually PREVENT those users from breaking the rules. In fact, when someone creates a new account he has to actually write "GBATemp does not offer ROMs" or something like that, and yet... how many users constantly ask for ROMs?

 

[dice]

We have a report system for members to alert staff of any problems they've encountered in the forums, be it someone spamming, creating duplicate accounts, posting links to roms or using images as signatures that surpass our maximum allowance. The list goes on.

So in THIS case, had yourself or anyone else had used the report button, a member of staff would have dealt with these threads much earlier. As proven, the fact that you've brought my attention to these issues has lead to me dealing with them (as many as I could do in one sitting anyway).

We can't all view every single thread and post that has been made which is why this system had been implemented to begin with. Sure we've tried many ideas including the most obvious one of increasing the number of staff (which currently stands at around 20 - I tend to agree with the saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth", so an increase at this time isn't necessary).

But it's still very possible and easy for a few threads to slip under our "radar" especially with the number of members we have (and that the last activity of most mentioned was within a day and not a week for example which would indeed be very bad).


With that said if you were able to come up with another idea that would help stop this feel free to post it.

 

[Toni Plutonij]

To be honest, I don't think this place is mess at all, sure, there are always some things you can do, but for now, it seems pretty good to me..

I'll admit, till recently, I was the one who maintained NDS section (in a way that I didn't only checked reported threads, but searched trough forums, and look for troubled threads/posts myself and handled it)..
But last week/s I'm having some major internet problems, I'm getting disconnected every several minutes, and it's really hard to do anything like that..So as soon as I get that fixed, I'll be back on track..

Still, there are many other staff members and mods that will do the job, any member can be very helpful, and report the problematic thread when they find one, check the post above mine, dice explained it nicely..

 

[playallday]

Sure we've tried many ideas including the most obvious one of increasing the number of staff (which currently stands at around 20 - I tend to agree with the saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth", so an increase at this time isn't necessary).

Maybe a idea would to have "staff" (10-20 more) that all they'd do is move topics and posts. No bans or anything else. So they'd be like "plus" members or something. Might work.

 

[Toni Plutonij]

Sure we've tried many ideas including the most obvious one of increasing the number of staff (which currently stands at around 20 - I tend to agree with the saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth", so an increase at this time isn't necessary).

Maybe a idea would to have "staff" (10-20 more) that all they'd do is move topics and posts. No bans or anything else. So they'd be like "plus" members or something. Might work.

Really, there is no need for that..

I think we have enough people as is, it's just, we can't notice everything, so that's the reason why we have report button..
Most of the time there are at least few staff members online..It's rarely a case that no staff members are here, and if that happens, it's for a very short time, few minutes usually!