Missing In Action

the trouble with the WUM cleansing approach is where do you draw the line. ive been labelled a wum before for suggesting that thudd and modric were overrated. if you arent allowed to submit an opinion which doesnt represent the populist point of view, what's the point in having a discussion board at all ? you might as well have someone writing down the latest popular theory, and seeing how many people you can get to say they like it. hang on a minute, that's facebook isnt it ?

and to be honest, if you just want to post the same thing that everyone else is posting, the best place to do it is somewhere like facebook, with people who tend to have the same views as yourself. if you are not prepared to countenance opinions other than your own, or even to accept that such opinions exist, then what is the point in taking part in a public messaging service designed for the purpose of an exchange and discussion of views and opinions ?

by the way, i understand that some 606 users who thought they agreed on everything (including the need to cleanse the world of WUMs), so made a facebook group. within a few days they had all fallen out with each other because they each decided that all the others were WUMs after all.

If you user the Firefox extension Firebug, right-click on the elements you wish to restyle it will show you the CSS. You can then save these off onto an external Stylesheet styled to your desire.

Your idea, is very similar to what we are working on, but you are more than welcome to give it a go. We will be doing most of our WUM filtering server side.

I think it isn't necessarily the wholesale cleansing of WUMs, but the experience of each user that is important.

The problem you face there RDBD is that it would set up a kind of "Kangeroo Court" style of judgement, giving people the opportunity to label others that they either don't like or feel aren't worthy of contribution the name "WUM". For instance, I was an occasional poster on the old 606, and very sporadic on here, so just because people don't recognise my name they could easily call me a wum if people don't like what I say. It's a dodgy line, no one likes to see the likes of michigan, but I for one found people like little dinosaur and rogerbold as just funny lunatics!!!

I think the issue is that some people would prefer not to see the known WUMs that cause get them particularly irate or who pollute their well written articles with rubbish. The old 606 lost control of it a bit, and we carried on from where they left off, by not having much control of it either. Tomorrow the site will be one month old, so we are still new and there are a lot of things will are still working on, but the site will continue to improve.

All :

My concern is that the filtering should be user discretionary (or in Admin speak : client-side not server side) . One mans' music is another mans' noise.

LDL is a classic.
Sometimes he is a valued contributor. But his end days on BBC 606 was just increasingly worse by the day.


THudd :

Consensus is not a "kangeroo" court.
I think you know what the consensus is/was on Michigan on BBC 606, and still is after that.

The usual WUM takes a couple of weeks to emit a "body of work" on which they can be judged (the pattern emerges - frequency, content etc) . Then a consensus can be made as to whether to label them so.

Similarly those that jump on people after a couple of postings should be jumped on as hissy little prats etc.

With systems of all kinds, an equilibrium is eventually reached, where "false positives/negatives" become few and far between.


So, given a consensus view on who are deemed to be WUMs, and the tools to act on that as you see fit, will see this board become a better place IMHO.

WUMs starved of attention. Newbies forewarned before getting sucked in. Site owners able to concentrate on the real task of making the site a go, rather than being pestered moderators of sad OCDs, ESOL school-kids on half-term etc.

Control of articles by their authors would avoid a lot of the wum problem. Just delete them.

On their own wum articles ignore them (not easy sometimes I admit).

These 2 things would starve them of what they seek and crave.

"My concern is that the filtering should be user discretionary (or in Admin speak : client-side not server side) . One mans' music is another mans' noise."

The filtering will be user specific discretionary, but server side, we just wont pull back the WUM garbage from the database, as per settings in your preferences.

Control of articles by their authors would avoid a lot of the wum problem. Just delete them.

On their own wum articles ignore them
=================================

it really is as simple as that.

Fair enough RDBD, it doesn't sound quite as cliquey as I first thought. I like reasonable, rational debate, with a dash of lunacy and idiocy thrown in. I can't be bothered with wums or wumming in general (save for the North London/Woolwich derby lol) but my biggest concern is where people draw the line between light hearted banter (90% of people), through mercilessly, sadistically torturing themselves (LDL, Rogerbold), through to the downright pains in the a**e (michigan/joker whatever!!). I'm looking forward to seeing the changes, seeing where it takes the site, presumably if they don't work other things will be tried?

Incidentally Admin, whats the ruling on swearing?? It's not as draconian as 606 is it, or is there still a bit of a cosh on the rudies?!?!