Moderation in everything, including moderation

Yay!!!
If you are new and have a question to ask, please post it in the Beginners Central forum and someone here will help you. Also, please only reply to a speedsolving question/concern if you have something of value to add. If you notice a post that you think is inappropriate, please use the "Report" button below that post and one of the moderators will take care of it.
Thanks pjk.
 
Although, that message doesn't show up in the Standard Blue theme. I sort of like not seeing it :)
Yeah, most of the mods I do are done to the default skin. I plan on working on the others with basic mods later on, but for now, they will stay original.

I have made the Announcement collapsible (click on the minus on the far right). If you collapse it on the forum home (or any other page you see it), it will be collapsed on all other pages you see. This forces you to at least look at it once, at least I hope. I hope that makes it a bit more convenient.
 
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Personally, I don't tell people to use search (or Google) until after I take the few seconds to confirm that the information they're looking for can actually be found. So when I say "use search", it's not "I'm too lazy to find the information for you so I'm resorting to a cop-out answer", it's more like "don't be lazy; if I can find it with minimal effort so can you."
 
Personally, I don't tell people to use search (or Google) until after I take the few seconds to confirm that the information they're looking for can actually be found. So when I say "use search", it's not "I'm too lazy to find the information for you so I'm resorting to a cop-out answer", it's more like "don't be lazy; if I can find it with minimal effort so can you."

If you have already found the correct search terms to find an answer to the question, why not just post it? That way you help that topic and everyone that references that topic in the future.
With a "I could find it easily using the search, don't be lazy and try it yourself"-reply you are making the search work less effectively in the future. Please read this again:

Answering peoples "how do I get faster question" with "use the search" is the worst thing you can do. It has been done so many times now that if you search for "how do i get faster" you only get topics that tell you to use the search. By being unhelpfull a vicious cycle has been created. In order to break that cycle i propose you post something like "this question has been asked many times before. If you use the awesome search function on this forum like this (insert good keywords) you would have found this topics (insert a couple of the best results)
 
Heres a suggestion, a beginner's improvement thread. When I first joined I was like around 30 or so average, and I thought, hey, I'm no freakin' noob, I'm posting in speedsolving. Maybe even just an "Improvement Advice" thread, to not make it seem as though the noobs are being caged within a freakin sandbox with toddlers. I think this could filter out all of these how do I get sub XX times posts, and gives them a place (like the beginner's section), for all of the junk that nobody really wants to hear about.

Now on the topic of people asking "I need 4x4 BLD guide plez". There really isn't an easy solution for that. People are lazy, and they choose not to look. Besides, there's a place for that, the how to section. Good work on that one by the way. I think that if we just move all the garbage into what would serve as a sort of candy coated junk folder, everyone would be happy. I mean honestly, the amount of crap coming in is not going to stop until new members are barred, which i think most agree is a bad bad bad idea. So why not just tell them to put it in the right section next time, and move it?
 
Brunson, I find it slightly hyprocritical that you complain about people being rude, whilst at the same time, comment on how stupid people who are new to this forum are.

Personally, I think you should give more people administrator rights, i.e. Dene(y) who obviously posts alot (2,400 posts) and would be able to move topics, etc. There should be limited administrators, that can move threads, delete them and delete posts. That way, when people post questions such as, How can I get faster? Or What is the best method? they can be moved to the beginners thread, and answered there?

Just a suggestion.
 
Whether or not Brunson is hypocritical or if he has "backseat moderated" is sort of beside the point. The point is, don't be a prick just to be a prick. If you are going to be a prick, be a useful prick.
 
Many people would change their mind about creating an account here if they were required to read pages of rules and on top of that have to take a quiz.

pjk, what about letting the person register but not be able to post, or at least not be able to post in any forum besides "Beginners Central", until they read the rules and pass the quiz.

Beginners Central is where new people can post their questions, if experienced solvers get annoyed by their questions they shouldn't go to that board.

I feel the same as Jason Baum, I loved Twisty Puzzles. People were much more helpful and very nice because it was such a small community. It makes me feel sad when I see the half-new people being mean to people that just joined the forum, or being mean to someone that doesn't understand something. I probably don't post as often as I used to and I don't practice much anymore. I've lost a lot of interest in cubing because the boards just aren't much fun anymore, they were a way to keep me motivated, interesting posts with interesting ideas helped keep this hobby a common thing throughout each day.

pjk, I'm not saying your site is horrible, I'm saying that some of the people here are making me avoid almost every topic.
 
I feel the same as Jason Baum, I loved Twisty Puzzles. People were much more helpful and very nice because it was such a small community. It makes me feel sad when I see the half-new people being mean to people that just joined the forum, or being mean to someone that doesn't understand something. I probably don't post as often as I used to and I don't practice much anymore. I've lost a lot of interest in cubing because the boards just aren't much fun anymore, they were a way to keep me motivated, interesting posts with interesting ideas helped keep this hobby a common thing throughout each day.

pjk, I'm not saying your site is horrible, I'm saying that some of the people here are making me avoid almost every topic.
I hear you. I'm considering closing registration for now and manually review accounts once or twice a month. This way we can begin to filter out people and build the quality. This is quite a hard situation to deal with, and I am completely open to suggestions. Perhaps a private forum (in addition to what is already here) only for people who have competed officially?
 
You could have a private Cube Theory forum, and only allow people to post there if they have created their own cube theory topic. That might start up some new discoveries.
A Cube Theory forum is in the making, but not private. Expect to see some changes in the next couple weeks (probably next weekend).
 
pjk said:
Perhaps a private forum (in addition to what is already here) only for people who have competed officially?

But I've never competed! I've been solving 3 years, am sub-16 with Roux, but have never been to a competition.
 
pjk said:
Perhaps a private forum (in addition to what is already here) only for people who have competed officially?

But I've never competed! I've been solving 3 years, am sub-16 with Roux, but have never been to a competition.

You should compete! Sub-16, you'd definitely make it to the finals, probably winning the competition too. pjk, I like your idea, but how do we prove that you've been to a competition. Someone could just get a random WCA ID from the WCA website and say its theirs.
 
Pat, could you embed a welcome video in the registration process if we created one? I believe most people would watch that (people love videos, especially those who hate reading), and it could make a good difference. I'm thinking of about three minutes of quickly covering some cubing and then covering aspects of this site (forum, wiki, chat).
 
Pat, could you embed a welcome video in the registration process if we created one? I believe most people would watch that (people love videos, especially those who hate reading), and it could make a good difference. I'm thinking of about three minutes of quickly covering some cubing and then covering aspects of this site (forum, wiki, chat).
Definitely. That would be a great idea.

Edit: If anyone here is good at screen capturing and tutorials with audio, I'd greatly appreciate someone to put something like this together.
 
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