Forum Post: How Can We Make This Forum More Usable?
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 20, 2011, 7:59 p.m. EST by lizajane
(2)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Can I get a temperature check on having the posts organized by topic? Then there could be grounds for deleting posts that are off-topic.
Here are some suggested headings:
Political Theory Economic Theory Direct Action Brainstorming Civil Disobedience and Personal Safety Non-violent Protest Techniques Anti-OWS Sentiment Permanent Space Forum
In addition, there should be forums for each working group. Either here or on the working group sites (presently, there is just an unorganized 'comments' section, which again, is hard to navigate).
etc. Users could create their own forums. The point is just that there not be simply a list of uncategorzed posts. As it currently is, the forum is very difficult to navigate and over-run by trolls. It's utterly essential that we have a general internet forum, but so far, this forum is very difficult to use.
What do people think?
IMO, THE major problem on this forum is that it is TROLL-INFESTED.
Yes, organization by topic has a lot of support here.
Speaking for myself, I definitely support that.
this information was reported in the NY Post today. They had a reporter camp out at the W Hotel after some tips and then they caught up with Peter as he was entering the lobby. I know there is a possibility that Peter might have rented the room with his own money, however, he is an unemployed tattoo artist who lives with hims mother in a bad part of Brooklyn. I believe the question of "Where did you get the money Pete?" is a legitimate one. According to the W Hotel, other members of the finance committee bunk down in the W. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063929/Occupy-Wall-Street-protesters-living-like-Gordon-Gekko-star-W-Hotel-Downtown.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
I would suggest:
Have topic-specific boards. At least have one board for operational details (police misconduct, permits, tent layout, assembly meetings) and another board for philosophical goals (demands, debates, political news). Probably more. It is a fine art to split up an online forum into just the right number of boards that people aren't piled on top of one another without making them so sparse that people don't post because no one will answer. I think most sites get it wrong. I'd say five to ten is about right. There must be a more sophisticated fractal self-organizing leaderless way to do it where boards split and join spontaneously but I've not seen anyone try to do that.
Allow rating of posters, not just individual posts, with "inheritance" of ratings from one poster to others who rate him highly. So if I give a troll a thumbs down, and someone gives me a thumbs up, they automatically give the troll a thumbs down. (Thus the inheritance continues to the first thumbs down) Optionally the ratings could be measured, not all or nothing, multiplied along the chain (I rate someone a +5 out of 10, he rates someone a +5 out of 10, that person rates a third a -5 out of 10, so that's a net -1.25 out of 10 that I automatically give the third person). Because each person rates many others, that means you inherit thousands and thousands of ratings all of which are added up to come up with a net rating. But it's not some general site specific rating that is a democracy of trolls averaged out with genuine posters - it's a rating that you develop by your choice of which posters to recommend to begin with. But obviously it would need serious software development to happen.
I think you can do it by Google, but it should be easy to see a profile of all the postings by any given poster - to decide whether to recommend him, to send as a link to friends around the web, and if need be to assist cruder administrative models.
Do what the Daily Paul does as far as format. Having top current articles on the main blog roll, and a top current on the side, And video postings on the main page, preview of posts, etc.
http://dailypaul.com
I suggested this to the Green Party Watch as well.
http://greenpartywatch.org
Have it more social and able to distinguish relevant postings.