runouw.com

Well, staff members have surely noticed that I'm making a lot of reports for posts like e.g. unfinished level series, levels posted in the Level Designer forum (sometimes even without code tags), and destructive or redundant comments on the LDP. What also occurs is users who want things to be updated for the SM63 designer, or who think they've discovered a glitch which is in fact well, well known. Those users can't be actually blamed or even punished for doing such things, yet they make posts which are just totally unnecessary, and therefore should be deleted.

And what happens with many of those reports? Sometimes other members reply to the post, picking up that it's a spam level topic, and then the topic in the Level Designer forum gets locked, or other members (especially newer members who don't care about using the Report button themselves) teach the poster above about what's wrong with his post, making the report itself redundant. The latter case also involves posts outside the Level Designer forums (postcounting, bumping welcome topics, being off-topic and all that). Sometimes my report is simply closed down without anything happening. And every time these things happen, it makes me displeased or even a little bit angry. About comments on the LDP, the following has even more relevance now since posts are counting there.

Take a look at this one:

http://www.runouw.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=48972

Why is this still here?

Or an example on the LDP:

Yurimaster wrote:

Nicomenya199 wrote:This level is a ♥♥♥♥

Please, do not be offensive like this when giving an opinion about a level. At least give a reason of why you have such opinion, and be less rude.

I don't see any reason why this couldn't be also told through PM. If users don't see it because they disable their "Notify me on new PM's" function, it's just their own fault.

So, what I wish for is simply some stricter rule enforcement against those troll topics or any redundant / unnecessary posts - from both regular users and staff (note: this pertains deleting those posts, not stricter punishments against users). Regular users, if you feel like a post meets the requirement (already said / being totally n00bish / postcounting or being off-topic / breaking rules otherwise), report it. If you feel like the poster hasn't meant to do anything bad and should be teached about it (being unexperienced and stuff), ask the staff to do it within your report, or do it directly by PM, yet
don't post this within the topic. And staff members, deal with reports also in case if there are further replies. If those replies are about the bad post above, delete them / edit them accordingly.

About newbies or n00bs posting levels in the Level Designer forums or posting levels in the Level Series subforums (which are often not meant to be series at all), I may understand if you want to keep this stuff at some place and if you want to preserve your postcounts. For these and glitch topics etc. I'd suggest a separate subforum which includes all these topics for archive purposes (except from levels which would fall through the filter of approval on the LDP, like in the example above).

At last, I'd like to ask for some tweaks for the General Rules, so maybe we don't have to be bothered with all too many bad posts in the future. Especially I'd like to see a special section called "Levels".


When reading through this, remember that this is supposed to make the forums a better place with less spam and other annoyances. Thank you and discuss.

You know, it is essential for users to be calling out staff if there's something wrong. We can't always find the best way to interact with people all the time.
Though, we (or at least I particularly) don't really get to PM members when it is just easier (and, on a way, better) to post on the topic, so other members can see it and take it also as a way of not committing the same mistake. It is also unnecessary to delete the posts in the Level Designer forum.

And yes, I was working with Yuri over editing the Level Portal Rules and find the best approach to so it stays clear enough for anyone to understand but apparently he went inactive for a long time and I just found no time for myself to work around it.

We're also not always online on the site. It's not easy to keep on tracking for every post/user most of the time, specially because we also have other stuff to do. We do need help so we can manage to handle it all, even now as you can see some staff is having specific problems and can't really help at the moment. And you don't need to become a Mod to help, you know.

I'd like to thank you a lot for saying this. I see this as a way for not only me but everyone on the staff to find better ways of acting too.

First off, well said. My little Gregor is growing up <3

Now that you've shot me, I'll add my piece. I think a big part of this awareness to be spread- as far as people thinking they're discovering new glitches and things like that- require better archival efforts from the site. We've got a vastly disorganized glitch topic and I feel that it'd be good to add effort into making it better, clearer, so people have a reference. It can even be tied into the Wiki, and possibly Doram's done work on this even I was unaware of.

I can say I completely agree with this. A lot of posts that are on the Level Portal and get locked (For reasons like what Supershroom said or an uncompletable level, or a spam or troll level) almost never seem to get deleted. I've seen it for time and time again for the past year I've been on this site, and it always kind of irked me.