Getting rid of the water cooler.

Imagine if your office had a water cooler where people talked to each other like they do in this section of the forum. I’d bet your company would get rid of the water cooler in a heartbeat since it creates no value, just problems in the office and lots of lost productivity. Can we please clean it up before this water cooler goes away for good?

Saw this coming. We’ve been through this already. Nothing will change and you’ll just have people spamming and saying inappropriate things in the forums that exist to actually help people. You don’t want to get rid of the WC, you want us to stay here.

If you would like to raise the level of discourse here, perhaps you should participate. Get to know your members, shoot the shit, and have some fun. We’ve been battling spammers and trolls for nearly a year and this is the first time you pop up. Thanks?

Edit: And, since you’re here now, how about any of those site improvements that I and other members have mentioned ad nauseam? Right now you have three mods trying to cover this entire site. How about letting the community help them out?

To his credit, STL, he’s stopped in to ask excel questions…

Yes we have. And I’m OK with getting rid of a forum section with a very disproportionate work/value ratio. It would make moderating the other sections a bit more difficult but I’m guessing the net result is a big improvement in the pain-in-the-ass ratio.

AF is not a full-time job for me or the incredible moderators who do ths on a volunteer basis. I spend most of my time on the sections that create value for both the members and the advertisers who support this site. I’ve always preferred a hands off approach to this section because I’ve figured grown ups would work it out. As this week proves this is not the case.

I’m not saying everyone is out of control because a lot of people have remained civil in this section, but more civility is needed around here.

Probably not a good idea.

Then posters would start posting all this crap right now contained in the WC all over the entire forum. I don’t think you want that?

^^ Respect (Chad).

delete

This belongs in the Feedback Forum.

the site doesn’t comply with CFAI social media rules, if you start there, then probably the quality of posts would improve.

Chad, as an admin, you are failing to address the root of the problem, which is that people are frustrated and unhappy with the site. When things were running smoothly, there were much fewer negative posts and complaints. People were also nicer and more polite in their responses.

AF’s failure to address the rahul problem was a major failure. Instead, CvM and Gabe have been banned for behavior that they were provoked into displaying. Even if this was ultimately necessary, the overall series of events is viewed as a betrayal to the AF community.

Furthermore, it is clear that some site functionality has fallen into neglect. I still cannot Copy/Paste articles in the forum - if I could, I would have started more productive threads, rather than write criticisms here.

If AF cannot provide a healthy environment for commenters, then perhaps WC should be shut down. However, it would be regrettable if the site’s management continues to ignore it’s failures and instead blames its problems on internet people. Many communities on other websites are run well with what I see as worse populations of members.

ohai should definitely be an admin. AF could use more to clean up WC and also reduce the increasing and unnecessary workload on current admins

And that’s all I’ve ever advocated for, but we need some tools to help us out. Right now the only option we have available to us is to ignore the spammers/trolls.

So I ask again, can we get some help? If not, then do what you will…nothing is going to change.

I vote we get rid of WC and moderate the other forums against overflow. I’ve been saying that for some time as well. Grownups will not work it out and nothing that has occured in WC since its inception reflects that. This place is a cesspool.

add upvotes/downvotes, initiation period, temporary banning, additional mods, etc

we’ve come up with a lot of great ideas in the last few days. please just pick one to implement and it will work itself out

Ohai, are you saying that CvM and Gabe are not adults that are in control of their facilities?

What exactly is the problem with RR. RR did post one thing where he worded stuff badly and came off looking like he thought women deserved to be raped if they dressed a certain way (or something like that, I forget the details). But he saw his mistake and retracted it. The numerous “I’m sorrys” grew tiresome after a while but thankfully stopped eventually.

Other than that, he hasn’t really done anything objectionable, though his posts have not been fantastically illuminating in any way. But - to be honest - there are few posts that are from anyone. Does RR have that much mind control over BSDs in investment community???

Will banning him make Ohai and Palantir suddenly start posting interesting stuff again? Will it bring JDV back?

Instead, we have a problem that the smart people don’t have much to say anymore in WC (but can say good stuff in other sections), and people project that stuff onto RR or others.

At the end of the day, so what if WC doesn’t have much good stuff in it. AF <> WC. Yes, it’ was interesting when subprime mortgages were being securitized by the thousandfold every day and everyone in WC was making bank and talking about the best strip clubs to go to and Nuppal was posting photos of the women he pumped-and-dumped the night before, but was that really higher quality?

^RR should be banned tho. if not for objectional posts than for incessant spamming. you don’t have to cross the line always, sometimes it just takes bordering the boundaries for too long before you’ve overstayed your welcome

it’s impossible to deny that getting rid of him would clean up the childish acts around here

Chad when you were moderating the site or maybe it was JDV, you immediately axed any trollish, spam like posts and threads. That was the best policy and protected the content of the site. Ever since we have got this executive board of moderators it has become the wild wild west with trolls/spam inundating the site and moderators too nice to get rid of crappy posts/threads.

Chad is the owner

Rahul was just weird. Doesnt deserve to be banned.

CvM sometimes went too far, yet I believe he deserves another chance, he might be on crack or something.

Gabe was asking for it. He started alot of his posts by “you can ban me”. again, am for givin the dude another chance.

Doing away with the WC is a reasonable idea, or if not that, then far stricter moderation, like what has recently been employed would work well.

Also since I quit because everyone cried everytime I axed childish posts. I said this would happen, here we are. A bunch of nice guys presiding over a cess pool.