ColdFusion Meltdown
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So, I come back today for the new WTF. Yesterday's is still there, and it's... 5 pages of flamewar?!
WTF?
From a mention of ColdFusion in about the 6th or 7th reply, we have 5 pages of "old school" framework/language wars. Has such a small WTF ever caused such a big thread that really wasn't about the original WTF anyway?
I see the moderators deleted a few posts, but they really couldn't be too strict - the thread would have been cut down to about 10 posts. Wow.
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LOL -- you see, this is why I have tried to become more "strict" with the comments. It was at 220 when Michael mentioned it to me, and at that point it was just too late. Poor Poor Mr. O'Hare -- an otherwise fun article, burned up by a flame war.
Kinda interesting though -- I think the whole thing coulda been nipped in the bud by the one guy who trolled "shoulda used a real lang like CF". Ah well, expect some changes soon -- I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1 and adding in a Custom Moderation feature.
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
...I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1...
Ooooh! I wonder what fun bugs we'll find this time...
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
LOL -- you see, this is why I have tried to become more "strict" with the comments. It was at 220 when Michael mentioned it to me, and at that point it was just too late. Poor Poor Mr. O'Hare -- an otherwise fun article, burned up by a flame war.
Kinda interesting though -- I think the whole thing coulda been nipped in the bud by the one guy who trolled "shoulda used a real lang like CF". Ah well, expect some changes soon -- I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1 and adding in a Custom Moderation feature.
Just curious Alex: how would that help? Does it have something like a smoke alarm to detect, ahem, flames?
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@TehFreek said:
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
...I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1...
Ooooh! I wonder what fun bugs we'll find this time...Tell ya what, this time I'll put up a test site so you can find them before going live ... note that a lot of the bugs were a result of my hacks to the platform.
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@snoofle said:
@Alex Papadimoulis said:
LOL -- you see, this is why I have tried to become more "strict" with the comments. It was at 220 when Michael mentioned it to me, and at that point it was just too late. Poor Poor Mr. O'Hare -- an otherwise fun article, burned up by a flame war.
Kinda interesting though -- I think the whole thing coulda been nipped in the bud by the one guy who trolled "shoulda used a real lang like CF". Ah well, expect some changes soon -- I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1 and adding in a Custom Moderation feature.
Just curious Alex: how would that help? Does it have something like a smoke alarm to detect, ahem, flames?
It might help if explained what I meant by that. This will only apply to the "main feed":
- All Replies (registered and anonymous users) must be approved before being visible
- Some Registered Users' replies will be auto-approved
- Privileged Users, when viewing the Main Post, will see ALL replies, both approved and unapproved
- Privileged Users will have a button on Unapproved replies that, with one click and no page redirection, will approve the post
Right now I'm "researching" the best way to add this customization.
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
It might help if explained what I meant by that. This will only apply to the "main feed":
- All Replies (registered and anonymous users) must be approved before being visible
- Some Registered Users' replies will be auto-approved
- Privileged Users, when viewing the Main Post, will see ALL replies, both approved and unapproved
- Privileged Users will have a button on Unapproved replies that, with one click and no page redirection, will approve the post
Actually, that does sound kinda cool.
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The last post on the 'deleted' page is a real gem:
Re: Symbolic Installation
by Anna
When I was little, we found a man. He looked like - like, butchered.
The old woman in the village crossed themselves... and whispered crazy
things, strange things. "El Diablo cazador de hombres." Only in the
hottest years this happens. And this year, it grows hot. We begin
finding our men. We found them sometimes without their skins... and
sometimes much, much worse. "El cazador trofeo de los hombres" means
the demon who makes trophies of men.Deleted 8/16/2006 2:21:58 PM by Alex Papadimoulis
uhh, wtf?
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@merreborn said:
The last post on the 'deleted' page is a real gem:
Re: Symbolic Installation
by Anna
When I was little, we found a man. He looked like - like, butchered.
The old woman in the village crossed themselves... and whispered crazy
things, strange things. "El Diablo cazador de hombres." Only in the
hottest years this happens. And this year, it grows hot. We begin
finding our men. We found them sometimes without their skins... and
sometimes much, much worse. "El cazador trofeo de los hombres" means
the demon who makes trophies of men.Deleted 8/16/2006 2:21:58 PM by Alex Papadimoulis
uhh, wtf?
Predator (1987) - Quotes - IMDb
Predator: Directed by John McTiernan. With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke. A team of commandos on a mission in a Central American jungle find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
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Why not just split off flamewars into their own threads? Simply give a notice in the original thread saying what happened, and everybody's happy.
Besides disrupting the original topic, flamewars usually aren't harmful, so if they can be split off I don't see why they should be stopped. They aren't productive, but nothing here is actually that productive. It's all just for fun, and if some people find a flamewar fun then why not let it happen?
It would be a lot easier to add a "Report flamewar" button and checkup when it gets many hits than to check every post before it shows up. I've found waiting for posts to be checked before showing up is very irritating.
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@HeroreV said:
Why not just split off flamewars into their own threads? Simply give a notice in the original thread saying what happened, and everybody's happy.
Besides disrupting the original topic, flamewars usually aren't harmful, so if they can be split off I don't see why they should be stopped. They aren't productive, but nothing here is actually that productive. It's all just for fun, and if some people find a flamewar fun then why not let it happen?
It would be a lot easier to add a "Report flamewar" button and checkup when it gets many hits than to check every post before it shows up. I've found waiting for posts to be checked before showing up is very irritating.
I totally agree on both points. Having to wait for each post to get checked will totaly kill any discussion and conversation and if it is only a measure against flamewars, it is overkill.
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@HeroreV wrote the following post at 08-24-2006 12:26 AM said:
It would be a lot easier to add a "Report flamewar" button and checkup when it gets many hits than to check every post before it shows up.
Yes! That sounds like the way to go. Of course, we could even agree to (ab)use the "Report abuse" link to report a flame war in the making, without any need to change the forum software.
Only question is, when flame wars happen as rarely as they used to on this site, will everyone have already forgotten what to do about a flame war when the next one happens? After all, flame wars being largely absent used to be one of the most fun things about The Daily WTF...
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@HeroreV said:
Why not just split off flamewars into their own threads? Simply give a notice in the original thread saying what happened, and everybody's happy.
Besides disrupting the original topic, flamewars usually aren't harmful, so if they can be split off I don't see why they should be stopped. They aren't productive, but nothing here is actually that productive. It's all just for fun, and if some people find a flamewar fun then why not let it happen?
It would be a lot easier to add a "Report flamewar" button and checkup when it gets many hits than to check every post before it shows up. I've found waiting for posts to be checked before showing up is very irritating.Splitting won't work because not everyone replies to the appropriate reply. It isn't just a measure to kill the flamewars; there's a lot of low-quality comments ("OMGWTFBBQ! MY goggles! THey Eyez!") that turn off the majority of the readers and are tedious to monitor and delete. I'm thinking that this would only apply to like the first page of comments, too.
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Of course flamewars aren't "harmful" in the conventional sense, but I think they can be destructive to an online community. The Straight Dope message board actually devotes and entire sub-forum, The BBQ Pit, to flames, rants, and other not-very-nice ravings. (There are some things that they don't allow, like racist hate stuff, personal threats, and so on.) Another thing to note is the SDMB charges - about $15.00 per year. (You can get guest access for about a month.) Not sure that would work out here.
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Maybe that could work -- a separate forum called The Language Wars, or something? A thing to note, too, most readers don't realize that TDWTF is powered by message board software, let alone know that we have other forums.
(no plans on charging at all -- ad revenue coveres expenses)
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
LOL -- you see, this is why I have tried to become more "strict" with the comments. It was at 220 when Michael mentioned it to me, and at that point it was just too late. Poor Poor Mr. O'Hare -- an otherwise fun article, burned up by a flame war.
Kinda interesting though -- I think the whole thing coulda been nipped in the bud by the one guy who trolled "shoulda used a real lang like CF". Ah well, expect some changes soon -- I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1 and adding in a Custom Moderation feature.
As one of the original participants in this "flame war", I want to set the record straight. My intent wasn't to start a religious war, but to ridicule the comment of a troll. As you say above, it was that specific comment that I was attacking. I guess I shouldn't have fallen for an obvious troll like that, oh well.
I, like most of you, stopped scanning the forum after I noticed it degenerated into a "my language is better than yours, 'cuz I say so!" discussion.
-dZ.
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ColdFusion On Fire
@DZ-Jay wrote the following post at 08-24-2006 4:24 PM said:
I, like most of you, stopped scanning the forum after I noticed it degenerated into a "my language is better than yours, 'cuz I say so!" discussion.
I actually read the thread to the very end. Flame wars can be fun every once in a while. If that kind of thing were to happen every day on The Daily WTF, though...
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@GeekMessage said:
@__DZ-Jay wrote the following post at 08-24-2006 4:24 PM__ said:
I, like most of you, stopped scanning the forum after I noticed it degenerated into a "my language is better than yours, 'cuz I say so!" discussion.
I actually read the thread to the very end. Flame wars can be fun every once in a while. If that kind of thing were to happen every day on The Daily WTF, though...
...This forum would become very dull imho
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
It might help if explained what I meant by that. This will only apply to the "main feed":
- All Replies (registered and anonymous users) must be approved before being visible
- Some Registered Users' replies will be auto-approved
- Privileged Users, when viewing the Main Post, will see ALL replies, both approved and unapproved
- Privileged Users will have a button on Unapproved replies that, with one click and no page redirection, will approve the post
Right now I'm "researching" the best way to add this customization.
Hi Alex
in my experience the more aggressively you moderate, the deeper the hole you dig for yourself. Overlooking the fact that many geeks' inner baby will do all to spite any rules they come across, making the regular users second guess what kind of comment will be accepted kinda defeats the purpose of letting them comment. Taken to it's most extreme you'll risk the same handfull of people making the same generic comments over and over. While generel public will feel discouraged to enter the discussion due to a feeling of the discussion only being for the "elitest". Much like dividing the users into categories.
The piece that really eludes my understanding is that the thread starts of with, yes!, a flamebait. You or another pointing the finger at someone or something from the industri!! So people are now in that "flow" or "state of mind" and you somehow get surprised that the comment fall into the same category and then gets moderated for "flamebait", "low quality" etc.. WTF?! I say.. Is this a politically correct forum about knitting patches, or a forum about making fun of the idiots in the industri?
Well, which is it?
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
It might help if explained what I meant by that. This will only apply to the "main feed":
- All Replies (registered and anonymous users) must be approved before being visible
- Some Registered Users' replies will be auto-approved
- Privileged Users, when viewing the Main Post, will see ALL replies, both approved and unapproved
- Privileged Users will have a button on Unapproved replies that, with one click and no page redirection, will approve the post
Right now I'm "researching" the best way to add this customization.
Fist!!
That's the first time I've done that. Thought I'd try it out in a topic that touches on bad habits and poor quality posts in TDWTF. Kinda overrated.
In all seriousnessly, and for what it's worth, I'm also against the replies being moderated before they are displayed. We already get problems where someone posts a reply before reading another similar.
I can see situations where reply 1 contains points A and B and is awaiting moderation when reply 2 containing points A and C is posted. Both may be entertaining, but there is a chance reply 2 will be edited or deleted due to redundancy. Even if it isn't, people reading the site may get annoyed at all the duplication.
If posts appear immediately, however, there is less chance redundant replies.
The addition of a flamewar/troll button as mentioned above would be nice to see if possible. Even better would be the ability for moderators to assign some moderation catagories, including "BBQ", to individual replies in a thread, allowing users to filter in/out replies of certain categories, almost like a /. type thing.
That would be sweet...... Probly dreamin tho.
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I fully agree with, and [i]stress[/i] even, that auto-moderating a post before it gets to the site has MAJOR drawbacks.
First, there's the hard timing issue that some idiot described;
Second, this forum draws a LOT of crowd. It will take too much time to read those post requests and interpret them for their value. It will be like choosing to receive spam and having to read and understand it.
It's not worth it, and it does nothing but annoy posters. There are other ways of keeping flame wars in check, such as closing a thread: that's like giving everyone the boot, shouting "THAT'S IT. EVERYBODY OUT."
That is, of course, only if you plan on keeping the main feed "open", like comments on a weblog. Like 99% of boards out there, you can opt to limit posting to actual users, and let passers-by only read the site.
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
Splitting won't work because not everyone replies to the appropriate reply. It isn't just a measure to kill the flamewars; there's a lot of low-quality comments ("OMGWTFBBQ! MY goggles! THey Eyez!") that turn off the majority of the readers and are tedious to monitor and delete.
But the approvement system causes even more work, unless the majority of comments will not be approved.
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@dhromed said:
It's not worth it, and it does nothing but annoy posters. There are other ways of keeping flame wars in check, such as closing a thread: that's like giving everyone the boot, shouting "THAT'S IT. EVERYBODY OUT."
Closing the thread in the main feed is IMO not an option. I'll try something else:
http://thedailywtf.com/forums/7/88093/ShowThread.aspx#88093
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@Some Idiot said:
...a /. type thing...
hmm?
(yes, I know, Alex, you don't want to change forum engine... jus' sayin', reinventing the wheel'd be the Real WTF. =P )
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I like ammoQ's idea the best.
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@ammoQ said:
@dhromed said:
It's not worth it, and it does nothing but annoy posters. There are other ways of keeping flame wars in check, such as closing a thread: that's like giving everyone the boot, shouting "THAT'S IT. EVERYBODY OUT."
Closing the thread in the main feed is IMO not an option. I'll try something else:
http://thedailywtf.com/forums/7/88093/ShowThread.aspx#88093
EVERYBODY O-W-T OUT!
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@tster said:
I like ammoQ's idea the best.
Same...that sounds like a very good <font style="font-family: Arial;" color="#ffffff" size="1">(& funny)</font> way to end a flamewar
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@R.Flowers wrote the following post at 08-23-2006 8:35 PM said:
So, I come back today for the new WTF. Yesterday's is still there, and it's... 5 pages of flamewar?!
Good Lord, you've got to see this one. So when geeks can't have a flamewar about languages because they more or less agree on their favorite language, they'll have a flamewar about exactly where to put the curly braces. (Instead of thanking the Lord for languages that have curly braces in the first place.)
Granted, it's just 32 posts so far and much more civilized in tone, but how can you devote so much effort to coming up with reasons why one way of placing the curly braces is better than another way? It's just amazing. (Especially when they're defending indenting styles other than the one I prefer myself, of course.)
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
LOL -- you see, this is why I have tried to become more "strict" with the comments. It was at 220 when Michael mentioned it to me, and at that point it was just too late. Poor Poor Mr. O'Hare -- an otherwise fun article, burned up by a flame war.
Kinda interesting though -- I think the whole thing coulda been nipped in the bud by the one guy who trolled "shoulda used a real lang like CF". Ah well, expect some changes soon -- I'm going to be upgrading the site to CS 2.1 and adding in a Custom Moderation feature.
Now that we're on the topic of flamewars, I've never seen an asp(.NET) based forum that worked correctly...
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@GeekMessage said:
@HeroreV wrote the following post at 08-24-2006 12:26 AM said:
It would be a lot easier to add a "Report flamewar" button and checkup when it gets many hits than to check every post before it shows up.
Yes! That sounds like the way to go. Of course, we could even agree to (ab)use the "Report abuse" link to report a flame war in the making, without any need to change the forum software.
Only question is, when flame wars happen as rarely as they used to on this site, will everyone have already forgotten what to do about a flame war when the next one happens? After all, flame wars being largely absent used to be one of the most fun things about The Daily WTF...
We'll have to train to remember what to do when a flame war erupts ... with fire drills! Each week, Alex appoints one person from a pool of volunteers to provoke a flame war ... the price of eternal vigilance is BBQ ...
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@Alex Papadimoulis said:
It might help if explained what I meant by that. This will only apply to the "main feed":
- All Replies (registered and anonymous users) must be approved before being visible
- Some Registered Users' replies will be auto-approved
- Privileged Users, when viewing the Main Post, will see ALL replies, both approved and unapproved
- Privileged Users will have a button on Unapproved replies that, with one click and no page redirection, will approve the post
Right now I'm "researching" the best way to add this customization.
I agree with some of the other posters that this would not be a good thing. I wouldn't want to burden either yourself or the other moderators with more work, but I do agree with your desire to keep the main feed clear of flamers and trolls. Creating a "Language Wars" section might help, but I would bet that you'll still get flamers and trolls in the main feed.
In the previous version of CS, we had the Mark as Troll button that was removed in the upgrade due to lack of use. Perhaps that mechanism can be leveraged to help control the main feed. I'm thinking that the following might help to keep the main feed clean.- Bring back the Mark as Troll button for registered users (I think that's default)
- Instead of automatically deleting the post at five votes, flag the message as Possible Troll.
- When you and the moderators login, provide a queue of unreviewed posts which can either be deleted or cleared.
The advantage is you now have a mechanism to monitor the main feed and you can provide automatic messaging to the moderators if the number of Mark as Troll votes reaches a threshold in a certain time period. You also have a mechanism to monitor individuals who mark posts as Trolls and ensure that it is not abused. If it is abused, perhaps then you can limit it to what you describe as Priveleged Users (which I assume are at a lower level then Moderator).
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Just what are priviliged users anyways???
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@Steeldragon said:
Just what are priviliged users anyways???
I'd say they are the ones that can approve posts to the main feed in Alex' plans. Not as powerfull as mods, but more powerfull than unpriviled users.
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@lpope187 said:
- Bring back the Mark as Troll button for registered users (I think that's default)
- Instead of automatically deleting the post at five votes, flag the message as Possible Troll.
- When you and the moderators login, provide a queue of unreviewed posts which can either be deleted or cleared.
The advantage is you now have a mechanism to monitor the main feed and you can provide automatic messaging to the moderators if the number of Mark as Troll votes reaches a threshold in a certain time period. You also have a mechanism to monitor individuals who mark posts as Trolls and ensure that it is not abused. If it is abused, perhaps then you can limit it to what you describe as Priveleged Users (which I assume are at a lower level then Moderator).
I find this a very good idea.
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@Steeldragon said:
Just what are priviliged users anyways???
The ones that were born with a silver delete key in their mouth.
