Please Stay On-Topic and Relevant

Hey everyone,
I don't like doing this, but I need to put my moderator hat on and help make sure that people stay on topic for an individual thread. Specifically, I have had other members ask for moderation to keep off-topic discussions under control. There has been a large number of threads "arising from the dead" lately, where someone posts just a couple of words of either "that's cool" or "I don't know" on topics that have not had activity in some time. New activity will often email people interested in the topic, and they get frusrated at having many messages that have nothing to do with the topic suddenly appearing.
I don't want to drive users away from this forum by being strict, but if I do nothing, I believe more users are going to be driven away by a multitude of posts that add no value. I have spoken to some users individually, and will be deleting off-topic messages from threads with or without warning in the future. I want this site to be useful for people in this hobby. Please do continue your feedback about the level of moderation with adding a reply here or sending me a private message.

 

I agree with the thought that the rank has nothing to do with it. I think it is more often a case of enthusiasm without a target or proper direction.

I see this as a problem that can be solved with judicious use of moderator powers, which I am happy to see are being exercised.

In the future a way for the community to reward people for quality posts might be nice to encourage behavior that contributes to the signal rather than the noise.

 

I agree Nick, and would love a system like that. I don't know if there's an easy way to implement a type of voting system where you can give a thumbs up or down to a particular comment. I actually contract with a company that has a system like that on their site, and it works well -- but they have a lot of resources to do that and a custom-built system.

I also feel that getting rid of rank won't solve anything. In the next rev of RCNC, I want something where we can easily look at the profile of a person and find out a little bit about them, and see their previous posts. That will help a lot with getting to know where someone is coming from.

 

A way to keep track of who has too much time on their hands in front of a computer.

To the left of your post, you see where the private message icon is? Above that you'll see a rank, Captain, Lieutenant, etc. Those 'ranks' are based off of how many posts you've made, and nothing else.