I just hope my lines aren't outside of the outlines.
Seriously Thor is like Fineas, and he has shown that change can occur, and that banned people can come back all they want.

Movement Supported.

I don't think it's necessary.


look at facepunch, the mods are incredibly abusive and passively stupidly judgmental .

it's all because of the harsh rules, there are so many bans the administration doesn't bother reviewing all of them.


especially when it's easier to just ignore it.

every community has its idiots, but it's better to have a few of those than be one known for being a bunch of ♥♥♥holes.

long version:
Being as stubborn as a mule gets nowhere. If someone makes a bad post inform them, dont throw a hissy fit and try to get everyone else to shun the person because of a bad post. This is not high school, we aren't in cliques making fun of the nerd who typed in l33t speak, we are part of an online community. This community is, hopefully, meant to be helpful, not as a place to let out your daily frustration(that is what CC is for).

Dont be a jerk, an ass, or any variation of the such, be a helpful bunch of people.
in fact, How to behave on an internet forum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onCPJH6swoY

If you feel a post should be boycotted, then boycott it but don't throw your opinion onto the rest of a forum, people are intelligent, mostly, and can make the decision by themselves, if you have the time to indicate which threads should be boycotted by a community then maybe you need a real job.

Helping someone who posts poorly is in no way supporting the way they posted, but outright boycotting what they asked is simply rude and scares people away.
Work harder and make things better. Things will get done faster and overall we will be stronger. Dont be lazy and punish people for something you have surely done yourself at one time.

Short Version:
With this approach everyone is in the wrong. They are in the wrong for not taking the time to clearly think through the post and by leaving critical information out. But you are in the even more wrong because of the way you handled the problem, learning can not take place when teaching is not present.

here is a handy dandy scale:

HAHAHAHA LordTim you card.

First off, he isn't making new rules. He is simply stating, looking at the thread title, a proposition.

Going on about old members and admins is funny because iirc they got you kicked out of the mod circle.

This idea doesn't alienate people that matter. If a person is not coherent enough to take a moment to ask for help in a legible understandable manner, they aren't worth it. You can call it elitist until you turn blue in the face, but it's the best way to deal with these people. Notice how the mods say they are dealing with it perfectly, and yet people still do it!

Reaction moderating is not enough, we need preventative moderating.

Preventative modding it is.
You know, a simple way of dealing with all of this is still to report it. The reports we get right now are either "This person is flaming me." or total spam.
I do get some PMs asking to clean stuff like this up, as I said before, but if you just report it, we can deal with it.
Remember that this is also not an exclusive community. Its purpose is to give somewhere for people to discuss the game and get help or ideas for it. Banning somebody or warning somebody as many have suggested right off the bat is NOT a good way of convincing them to stay, or buy the game.

I dont know about a ban or warn off the bat.

See, I think Thors idea works best if we boycott the thread, report it as illegible, and a moderator gets in contact with them and explains what happened and what they need to do. If they keep doing it though, warn. Calling for blood bans aren't very effective, as they get angry that we kicked them for "no reason lol". There should be ban worthy consequences if they ignore advice though.

I thought it over. It fits. I'm out.

these people aren't hurting anyone or our image.


sure there are a few dumb threads, anyone would understand coming in that there's always a few idiots in every community.


the only legitamate reason why we'd do this is for our image, truth is it really doesn't affect a community this big.

the real reason why you want it done is because it annoys you, and that's really the only reason, it's a selfish one, if you haven't noticed.

It actually annoys everyone. You're just taking the high road like you are better then us.

When people want our help, and they give us:


You really dont think thats annoying?

why should i even pay attention to it in the first place.


i should be asking you why the ♥♥♥♥ you let text get to you so much when it's apparently so unneeded.


it isn't a high road, it's simple will and self control which is easy to use.


if it bothers you that much just get rid of the smilies, even i can agree most of them are pretty stupid and unnecessary, though i can ignore them too.

I think this method would be a little unnecessary. When someone posts something retarded, or annoying you might say we should reply with their answer but also with a nice nudge or bat-to-face telling them that they should post "properly." If the post is plain illegible, then state this. As a second point, if English is their second language then they have some merit to their poor grammar and spelling, thus we should comment on it and ask for them to try a bit better but take notice that it can be hard and not be so in return.

What got me demodded was trying to kick Daman out of the IRC for insulting me. Apparently people like him have kick immunity.

what an odd reason.

in any case, there are degrees of illegibility, to which you can respond appropriately (or not).
i have no idea how to define them, so i wont attempt to, but in some cases ignoring/reporting the thread is a good option. in other cases (for example, where english is obviously not the poster's first language but an honest attempt at communicating as best they can (from grenade level posting up)) posting back is fine, as long as you can understand enough to post effectively.

"nooby" posting is avoidable though, but there i dont know if boycotting is the answer there either, though reporting is possibly a good idea.

blah i dont know, something does need to be done i suppose, the question is what.

Darn, this topic is ripping me in half. I'm gonna try to go straight down the middle with this thing.
So the posts get annoying. A good percentage of us can agree on that. The rest of us believe that we should "be the bigger man" and ignore it. I'm guessing from this debate at this point that the ultimate goal is to lessen the amount of crummy posts and still have a lot of members. One of the first things that should be done is that a rules topic (if there isn't one already) be put as a sticky in the support forum, outlining that their topics need to be descriptive enough or they won't get help. If it really bothers people about the smileys, just go to your darn UCP and shut them off. If the people don't give us any info on what their problem is, they should probably ignored. If they make general statements that suggest that they do actually have a plan, we help them as much as they can, but, of course, alert them to the fact that we could have helped them better if they were more descriptive. Obviously, if it's an error report, you can't get more descriptive than just giving us the error. If the poster has poor grammar or just chooses to write in "shorttype", they may and still get help if it is understandable. But if it can be helped, help it. If it can't, don't.

To any of the people asking for help or anything like that, please try to do a little guesswork yourself. When it gives you an error like ".RTE Abort", please read what it says and try to diagnose it first. It tells you to check the little bmp that it automatically generates because it tells you where it messed up.

P.S. You can use a part of my post in Feedback if you want in the rules. Probably might help.

The thing is, though, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away. If you read THOR's post, what he is proposing is that by us ignoring these people, they will obviously come to the realization that their post had unacceptable grammar and punctuation. This will never happen. If they were going to realize that on their own, they would not have posted like that in the first place.

What we need to do is accept new members and help them improve, instead of gaining a reputation of being total jackasses like some of the older members would apparently prefer. That's not what I want, and that's definitely not what Data wants.

Either way, really new members aren't going to be stopped from posting like they do because no one said anything to the other people.