Over the past few weeks ive noticed that byond's help forum is going down the drain hardly any "mods" if you will post in the area, and ive noticed alot of problems going unanswered myself Daniel.Beta - funny we have the same name :P and YMIHere ( sorry if i missed anyone but that is clearly who i have seen doing the majority of the post ). Have been trying our best to keep the peace the abense of "mods" is a giant factor.
the forum is going no one it is useless if people cannot get help.
ID:277887
 Jun 24 2008, 2:33 pm
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Yes but most of the people in the help forum have genuine questions even they may of been answered before hand some of them haven't and no one has given an answer.
Idea: Force searching before post in how-to and code problems. New post - force search ( please search to see if the answer you seek has been answered ) No answer ( button on the bottom of the page ) Normal posting area. Sounds like a pain in the ass but it would force them not to be "so" stupid. | |
A help forum FAQ, maybe with most of the questions answered and/or linked to. Maybe that would lessen the amount of people asking questions after you referred enough of them to the FAQ, and it would also ease the burden, because all you'd have to do is refer them to the FAQ.
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Perhaps for the Classified Ads you should post examples of copyrighted material. Such as: Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball Z and Harry Potter. And if people still do not obey the rules they should be banned from posting in that forum for say a week.
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A.T.H.K wrote:
Yes but most of the people in the help forum have genuine questions even they may of been answered before hand some of them haven't and no one has given an answer. Sadly, they will still click the "No Answer" button without correctly searching. Hopefully once they realize no one is going to answer their post that they will then search for the problem, or possibly give up and move on. | |
Upinflames wrote:
Perhaps for the Classified Ads you should post examples of copyrighted material. Such as: Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball Z and Harry Potter. And if people still do not obey the rules they should be banned from posting in that forum for say a week. A user should be smart enough to realize animes are copyrighted material. Those who do post unwanted material on the Classified Ads most likely skipped over the rules anyways. Which makes having examples useless. Also, banning them for something that happened once is sort of harsh, they should get a warning and if it continues then they could possibly get banned. | |
172.16.0.1 wrote:
Upinflames wrote: True, I guess but for those 10 year olds it could prove somewhat helpful. Also, banning them for something that happened once is sort of harsh, they should get a warning and if it continues then they could possibly get banned. They would only be banned from Classified Ads for a week to show them that they didn't read the rules but they have another chance to post something new in a week. | |
How did a post about the help forum http://www.byond.com/help/forum turn into something about anime and classified ads.
The help section has nothing to do with this please hijack someone elses thread. | |
Upinflames wrote:
They would only be banned from Classified Ads for a week to show them that they didn't read the rules but they have another chance to post something new in a week. Still, people like getting warnings and having a chance. I wouldn't want to be banned for a week because I "misinterpret" the rules. ATHK, as I stated before, forcing a player to search for their problems probably won't help too much. There will still be a high turn out of unanswered post as the kid wasn't willing to correctly search their problem. | |
In the time it took you to write that post, you probably could have helped two people. Or told five to fill out the template for the specific forum so anyone who can help them even has the slightest idea about their system.
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172.16.0.1 wrote:
A user should be smart enough to realize animes are copyrighted material. Those who do post unwanted material on the Classified Ads most likely skipped over the rules anyways. Which makes having examples useless. A one-shot ban for that sort of thing isn't ever really done, but I don't think warnings are always appropriate either. I'll send a warning if I feel someone is sort of on the verge of getting a clue but repeatedly fails to do so on their own. Generally I just delete said posts without comment, and if someone is just aggressively posting crap I'll give them a short-term ban. I feel it's a waste of my time and energy to go to the trouble of a written warning when someone is doing their level best to ignore obvious instructions. I have however given some thought to how we might improve the guidelines posted for CA because some people just don't get it or manage to miss the copyright thing. I'm thinking that should probably go earlier in the guidelines, and yeah, I wouldn't mind examples being there. My feeling is that the terminally clueless might well zero in on the word "Naruto" out of habit, and thereby accidentally read something. Lummox JR | |
A.T.H.K wrote:
How did a post about the help forum http://www.byond.com/help/forum turn into something about anime and classified ads. Actually they're highly related. The high chaff factor is one reason BYOND Help just gets overwhelmed. The same kinds of poor question-asking go into both forums. What can solve one problem can likely help solve another. Lummox JR | |
Classified Ads is fine right now, as far as I'm concerned. There's nothing we can do to prevent people from not reading the rules. I was talking about the Code Problems and How-To forums.
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Foomer wrote:
Classified Ads is fine right now, as far as I'm concerned. There's nothing we can do to prevent people from not reading the rules. I was talking about the Code Problems and How-To forums. Well I posted this template before but I assume no one saw it. This was a simple outline of what a template could look like for the Code Problems forum. Snippet: Post a snippet of the code you are currently having trouble with. Also provide a line number in which the error occurs on. Detailed Problem Summary: Give the error the program produces; remember to have DEBUG mode on. Expected Results: What should happen when you run this snippet? Does this problem occur every time: Does this error or problem occur every time you run the program? | |
172.16.0.1 wrote:
Snippet: That's good for the cases where the problem is a compile-time or runtime error, but for logic errors line numbers are unavailable. Detailed Problem Summary: Again that description of "error" would only apply to compiler/runtime errors. Expected Results: This is totally a good idea. Does this problem occur every time: I'm not sure if this is as useful a piece of information. Lummox JR | |
A better one for the last one would be this:
When Does The Error Occur: In what situation does this error show (i.e. stepping on a certain turf, bumping into an object, using a verb, etc.). | |
Lummox JR wrote:
My feeling is that the terminally clueless might well zero in on the word "Naruto" out of habit, and thereby accidentally read something. That was funny until I realized it wasn't a joke. Now it's just sad. =( | |
172.16.0.1 wrote:
Still, people like getting warnings and having a chance. I wouldn't want to be banned for a week because I "misinterpret" the rules. That's the problem! It's not that there "misinterpting" the rules, there just throwing them out the window! I say a week ban for rule violations, that will get it across (hopefully.) | |
Flame Sage wrote:
That's the problem! It's not that there "misinterpting" the rules, there just throwing them out the window! And we do that, when appropriate. The admin logs are full of warnings and bans to people who cross the line in CA. The repeat offenders get the boot for a period of time. | |
We really need to establish some better forum guidelines for people posting in the help forums. Most of the questions being asked any more are things like "how do you build a combat system?" "how do i make some AI?" People here don't know how to ask questions properly.
Personally, I just get sick of people asking the same how-to questions over and over. Its as if they're all making the same game, and not one of them ever bothers to use the forum search to see if their question has already been answered.
If you have some ideas on how to improve the quality of the questions and answers on these forums, I'd love to hear them.