Creation of New Threads Restricted to 1/person/day in OT Part II

[Ming]

Normally I don't do this in forums that I don't moderate. But it looks like MarkG hasn't posted in a while...

And since this is a hot topic...
Carry on.
The first thread can be found at: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum20/H...tml?date=09:46

------------------
Ming
CivII & Off-Topic Forum Moderator
Ming@Apolyton.net

[Ari Rahikkala]

... And what will Apolyton be like after three weeks?

Everybody posts as before. MarkG hasn't deleted the hack because he doesn't remember which part of the code is hack and which not(Of course he doesn't tell it). This thread is pretty much died, but the posters who really have a problem with this system still complain. And nothing happens. What MarkG has done, seems to remain.

[Giant Squid]

To sum up the previous thread

For
MarkG
Narck
Franklin
Lazarus & Gimp
Bird

Against
Stefu
MWHC
Saras
Murgatroyd
Provost H
SnowFire
Ming
Huey
DarthVeda
LightEning
Hugo Rune
Gary
Frodo83
CyberAmazon
Graag
MtG
Sparrowhawk
Paul Hanson
Atahualpa
Naj
CapTVK
Colon
Starchild
DanS
Imran Siddiqui
Black Dragon
Mleonard
GP
WarVoid
AH
Benedetti
Bill3000
Gsquid
Connorkimbro
Urban Ranger
MasterBob
Sergeant Sheets
Adam Smith
Berzerker
Werefox
Lancer
Tnapoleon
VictorG
UEC
Gary
Makeo
JETW
MOBIUS
Hydey
OldWarrior42
Graag
Reismark
Roland
Pikachu


Can't Tell
Rah
Cthol

For:5
Against: 54
Can't Tell:2

There are 10x as many people against as there are for, including BOTH OT
moderators, most people who work for you in the Apolyton site, and primarily
On-Topic posters.

I STRONGLY urge you to reconsider.

[MikeH]

If you are getting complaints from people saying their topics are falling to page 2 well tough! That happens, post a more interesting topic! That way people will look for it again, if they haven't posted in it it's probably a boring thread anyway.

I always check the first 2/3 pages if I haven't been aroung for a while.

[Locutus]

GS,
If you look at it like that, put me on the against list. I don't post much on OT but I don't like this at all.

[MarkG]

squid, you're not counting correctly
there should be one category for "totally against it" and one for "for but not that strict"
unless you're doing this just to oppose the decision based on the difference of opinions of others

and since you're counting, let me count as well
incidents of people being affected by the decision: after 30 hours, 2 known incidents(UEC,GS), but they just used their thread for the wrong reason(thread on the issue already existed). Also, UEC made a DL to disrupt the first thread of this discussion instead of giving arguments(is he one of the good posters who is leaving to escape the restrictions of this forum?)

My mailbox is waiting for more mails of affected people when such incidents occur. If there are enough problems, the setting will change. It wont change because 50 or 1000 people believe such a setting is restrictive and prefer to have two people doing the same job on a 24 hour basis

Beyond that, I wont continue the theoritical debate on what might happen in the future. I think I have explained my position.
Sorry, I have a newsletter to post...

<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited June 15, 2000).]</font>

[Jesus Egg that Wept]

I am very sure that, if this restriction was in operation in the past, there would have been numerous occasions when I would have been affected.

I would also have been affected when people had not posted a second interesting thread of interest because they were not able. There are those sort of external costs that need to be considered on BOTH sides.

To say that your mailbox is not full of responses from people that are immediately affected is highly simplistic if not downright misleading.

If those two people are being prevented from starting an interesting thread which we might then have contributed to, enjoyed, spammed, or whatever then it affects all of us.

As far as I can see, this restriction is here to stay and attempting to argue logically will not change your mind. I suppose we'll just have to live with it or go elsewhere.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Jesus Egg that Wept (edited June 15, 2000).]</font>

[Ming]

The solution seems so simple...

Whenever you get the message saying you can't start a thread, send an E-Mail to MarkG explaining the circumstances and tell him it affected you. Sure it is easier to just post to this thread to discuss the issue... But MarkG is asking to be convinced that this is really too much. That's all he is asking for. DL's... spamming... talk of revolution.. selling your thread for the day (I just have to love the capitalistic nature of some of our posters) isn't the answer.

So it's really pretty simple... just e-mail him with the specifics he is asking for

[Jesus Egg that Wept]

But Ming,

With respect, that is just my point.

It may not affect me today but it might have affected me in the past. Clearly, on any day when I started more than one thread then it would have affected me. On any day in the past that anyone started more than one thread, it affected them.

To just use the present as a test is plainly biasing the test. And, I argue that the effects of seeing or not-seeing a given thread are felt more widely than the small number of people who say they are directly affected and the even smaller number who see any point in e-mailing MarkG in the vain hope that he will change his mind.

[Jesus Egg that Wept]

If we wanted to do a more honest measure of how many people were affected, try the following (but it's a big job and needs to be automated).

Take the last month or so and write a script to add up the number of times posters started multiple threads in a day (counting each individual thread of course).

This would still be restrictive. However, if you then added the number of posts that were added to the additional threads (sorting to exclude multiple posts by the same poster) then you would have an indication of the amount of posters it would affect.

Complicated? Yes.
Impossible? I don't know.
A fair measure? Certainly.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Jesus Egg that Wept (edited June 15, 2000).]</font>

[Narck]

Squid,

let me just say that I am for this idea, yes, but I don't necessarily see the logic of 1 thread every 24 hours. Perhaps it needs to be less than that (12 hours? 8 hours?)...

Then again, I don't care since I hardly post new topics on OT anyway

Carry on

[Ming]

JETW... Obviously, logic dictates that if you were to look in the past, you would find tons of examples of what you are saying.
But that really proves nothing.

Last night some people spent a bunch of time spamming the OTF with their messages of revolution... If they had just sent a e-mail instead, it would have been more effective.
In looking at it from MarkG's perspective, only two people have complained... granted, many people here have voiced their opinions, but he is looking for specific examples, and everybody here is talking in generalities, or just in principle.

So when the new rule affects you... just email him. Then he will know!

[Tsk]

Ignored
Tsk

My earlier post was definitely a post against, Squid.

[Zaib]

Here is my donation of 2 cents.

MarkG, I think you might have overlooked one thing, which is, that by responding with a rule on complaints you sort of obliged yourself to do so again in the future, unless you want people complaining about discrimination or you don't mind additional work.

(to those who wish to put me in a side, count me as 'against', life's complicated enough without all those rules )

[Atahualpa]

If this rule will stay intact, I will send an email to Mark about creating a second thread all the time, cause I have so much time
But I will do this!

MarkG, cant you think, today is perhaps not one such day where I wanted to create two threads. But maybe if I think, I always carry around with me some ideas.

Or well, I create some multiple topic threads, but thats not that fun!
ATa