Posted by Tabitha on September 27, 2016, at 12:35:08
In reply to Re: Letter-writing campaign to Dr. Bob - Moderation., posted by SLS on September 27, 2016, at 5:51:53
> > With the current situation, it's not so much the incivility that bothers me, it's the off-topic, spammy nature of posts. No matter what the topic, someone starts in on their pet topics and won't stop. I'd be fine if someone wanted to post endlessly about the evil of psychiatry or perceived anti-Semitism at this site, as long as it wasn't introduced inappropriately into so many threads.
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> How would you go about preventing this?
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> - ScottOne approach would be with re-directs. Religious content goes on Faith, debates about whether the board tolerates anti-kittenism go on Admin, and perhaps debates about the possible general dangers of meds could go to some new board. As I recall, the Faith and Admin boards were originally created to keep those types of discussions off of the main board, with some success.
As far as thread hijacking, we have the 3-post rule, which I think helped somewhat. Maybe we need a new rule about taking threads egregiously off-topic from the original post. However, many threads naturally drift, so there would be a judgement call about what's "off-topic". I do think it's clear that when someone starts a topic about a particular medication or particular symptoms or side-effects, it's off-topic to talk about how medication in general is deadly, and how the board is a hotbed of anti-kittenism. But, such a rule might already overlap with re-directs to Faith, Admin, and "Danger" board.
It's an open question whether such rules would be followed, or we'd just end up having to use blocks anyway. I'd personally prefer it if we could accommodate unusual posters rather than ban them outright, but I also don't want moderators to end up spending 90% of their effort on one poster.
What do you think?
poster:Tabitha
thread:1092407
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20151112/msgs/1092420.html