Language…
12 users online: Batata Douce, DanMario24YT, ForthRightMC, Fozymandias, JPhanto, LightAligns, Majink12, mathew, Maw,  Saphros, simon.caio, TheOrangeToad - Guests: 252 - Bots: 310
Users: 64,795 (2,378 active)
Latest user: mathew

Comment moderation and rules

  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
We, the staff team, have decided to enforce a higher standard for comments on news posts and submissions. For that, we have written a set of rules specifically for comments. Read the following and keep them in mind when commenting on news articles or submissions, as we will be enforcing them from this day forth. They will also be added to the site's Rules and Guidelines page.

  1. Your comment must have meaningful content. If you want to tell the author they did a good job, that's great, but do not comment just to post a meme, image or otherwise irrelevant content.
  2. Comments must be related to the submission at hand.
  3. If you are going to reply to another person's comment, make sure you stay on topic and add something helpful. Do not start conversations unrelated to the submission.
  4. General behavior rules apply. You are still expected to be respectful and civilized while commenting.
  5. "Better than X" comments will be deleted on sight, as they bring nothing to the discussion at best and are unnecessarily rude to previous submitters at worst.

Failure to follow these rules will result in your comment being deleted, and possibly a warning or ban depending on the severity and recurrence.

(Updated 3/7/2020 to add the "better than x" addition from 1/6/2020)
Edited this thread to include the list of new rules here for ease of reference.
Is this necessary? I think it would be fine if these were only enforced when you're commenting to leave a rating. Otherwise, comments are such a casual thing it feels silly to enforce quality rules onto them. I don't think generally people would ever even think to read any rules at all before commenting.
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?


Originally posted by Koopster
Is this necessary? I think it would be fine if these were only enforced when you're commenting to leave a rating. Otherwise, comments are such a casual thing it feels silly to enforce quality rules onto them. I don't think generally people would ever even think to read any rules at all before commenting.


I think it is one of those times we actually try to enforce some rules so we avoid a constant barrage of not-meaningful content comment-wise. I mean, comments should be casual enough aside of rating, but one does not need to get far into our submissions to see that, in several cases, people tend to go overboard. This is not good, and if left unchecked, we could allow in the future less than adequate info to be read by, say, a person not from SMWC, thus giving a bad image of the site. Thus, while not wanting to be overbearing, I still consider that at least some quality control in comments is necessary at this point.





Dream team (feed them, please):






Originally posted by Koopster
Is this necessary? I think it would be fine if these were only enforced when you're commenting to leave a rating. Otherwise, comments are such a casual thing it feels silly to enforce quality rules onto them. I don't think generally people would ever even think to read any rules at all before commenting.


This is not YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or any other mainstream site we don't have computer algorithms to automatically delete comments nor do users have the ability to police the comments on their own submissions. The comment section has been very neglected with quite a lot of inappropriate comments or just flat out spam for example people posting "OK?".
We are striving for at least a little quality with comments being relevant to the submission or topic being commented on.
This was needed. I took a look at the Warning log and I could tell that the comments section for submissions were getting neglected. I'm not saying comment sections should be full on essays on the subject itself, but I will say that some kind of quality control should be necessary for the comments portion of the site. Otherwise, without it, the whole section looks silly.

-----------

STELLA!
Sometimes I'll want to give a hack or a song or something a good rating and at that given moment I don't always necessarily feel like writing an in-depth review in order just to rate it, so I'll just comment something like "This is really good!" or whatever. I'm fine with this just as long as those sorts of comments aren't going to be filtered out, heh.
Twitter
The handomest people in the world are ones who follow my Twitch
Those comments are fine, reviews can be very helpful to the creator but letting them know they did a really good job or that you just like their work is fine.
i just hate when i see a port and the only comments are "HURRR can/will you port this!!" or some sort of insult from a comedic genius
i don't really feel the anger of a thousand suns when i see "this is a nice port" or similar though, that's just a short-but-sweet comment getting to the point
the mods made a good decision
I wrote this post over an hour ago and forgot to hit send. It was meant as a reply to K.T.B.

These rules are more meant to deter simple spam, arguments, and other such things. In planning the rules we discussed if anything should be done about comments exactly like your example. Those short comments may not always be detailed, but they aren't the primary focus of the rules. I don't intend to delete/warn for brief comments.


fake edit: @Pat, situations like those were definitely on our minds when drafting these rules. Even before now, we were warning or banning people for continually doing that.
Understood. If short but relevant comments are still fine, those rules fall very much into common sense. I thought it was silly to have rules for such a simple thing, but I wasn't aware spam and arguments had become such a problem.
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
There will still be arguments about whether a submission is good or bad, though.

Thanks for the change nonetheless!
I have a Discord server as well! (by joining, you agree to the rules)
-----
Basically, I believe in peace and bashing two bricks together.

Originally posted by Koopster
Understood. If short but relevant comments are still fine, those rules fall very much into common sense. I thought it was silly to have rules for such a simple thing, but I wasn't aware spam and arguments had become such a problem.

Yeah it was something we noticed increasing more over time, and comments sections were an admittedly under-moderated area on the site compared to forum posts. Instead of doing a sudden and unexplained crackdown on comments, we figured it best to update the rules to explain why we would be making such a "crackdown" going forward. Glad you all understand!
These new rules are fine. I can't say much else, except what punishments will be handed out exactly? For example, if you post an irrelevant comment, would that be a warning or will it be a harsher punishment? It would be nice to know this. Thanks.
Hello.
From what I've understood, your comment will be deleted or suffer harsher actions depending on the severity. As in, warnings will be handed out, or even bans, but only if such comments happen that often.
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
To be clear, to get banned for breaking comment rules alone you would have to knowingly and repeatedly ignore the rules and any warnings we give you for earlier offenses. The most likely situation will be that we delete a comment and tell you what you did wrong. I wouldn't fear getting banned for a single bad comment in 99% of situations.
We've been noticing a lot of "Better than X's" comments in submissions and we'd like them to stop. These comments don't bring anything useful and are just a rub in the face for the authors of older submissions.

Any comments of this type will be deleted from now, and might get you warned.

Remember:

Originally posted by Comment rules
4. General behavior rules apply. You are still expected to be respectful and civilized while commenting.

Originally posted by General behavior rules
1. Do not flame, troll, or make any post that proposes or projects hate onto any user or group of people.
Originally posted by Aja
We've been noticing a lot of "Better than X's" comments in submissions and we'd like them to stop. These comments don't bring anything useful and are just a rub in the face for the authors of older submissions.

Are they necessarily offensive? A lot of ports that are obsoleted aren't likely to be up to today's standards. That's the other case than stating it's better than the deleted version even from not so long ago. Authors of old ports are most likely inactive or are aware their ports aren't exactly good are aware in most cases, but they don't feel like remaking their ports or they don't exactly know how to improve some aspects.
I have a Discord server as well! (by joining, you agree to the rules)
-----
Basically, I believe in peace and bashing two bricks together.

Originally posted by 7 up
Originally posted by Aja
We've been noticing a lot of "Better than X's" comments in submissions and we'd like them to stop. These comments don't bring anything useful and are just a rub in the face for the authors of older submissions.

Are they necessarily offensive? A lot of ports that are obsoleted aren't likely to be up to today's standards. That's the other case than stating it's better than the deleted version even from not so long ago. Authors of old ports are most likely inactive or are aware their ports aren't exactly good are aware in most cases, but they don't feel like remaking their ports or they don't exactly know how to improve some aspects.


There is a big difference between constructive criticism and just saying "the port by X sucks" that is and will always be offensive and has no place here.
Originally posted by 7 up
Are they necessarily offensive? A lot of ports that are obsoleted aren't likely to be up to today's standards. That's the other case than stating it's better than the deleted version even from not so long ago. Authors of old ports are most likely inactive or are aware their ports aren't exactly good are aware in most cases, but they don't feel like remaking their ports or they don't exactly know how to improve some aspects.

Personally I don't mind these comments but can you genuinely argue they contribute anything? Not like joke comments contribute either but at least they can be funny.

also it doesn't help when you follow them with "X's version sucks" lol
LINKS Twitter | YouTube | SoundCloud | Fortaleza Reznor
to hear birds and see none.
  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2