LPSG Members: become part of the solution.

I agree, SP... and not only are some of them unworkable, but some of them (in my opinion) just aren't THAT big of a deal when it comes to "fixing" LPSG. Good ideas, yes, but way at the bottom of the list as far as importance.

I agree meg the minor things should be left as they are and only the things that are actually in any way an issue should be changed, if it isn't broken don't fix it :-)

1. Hugely time consuming given the number of new members we get but still an excellent idea.

2. Dickipedia! Catchy name a must if people are going to click on it.

I like both of these ideas.

I think that both could be carried out by members willing to put the time into it. For the gallery in particular it might help if there are experienced photoshop spotters acting as scrutineers. For introductory posts there could be an optional questionaire "Inside The Actors Studio" style for those who wish to use it. (Possible fields: How did you find us?, What made you want to join?, Hobbies?, Favorite cuss word?, Favorite joke?) Little things that would help the existing membership get to know the new member and might encourage more readership of that forum.

It's sort of like this gumbo ( Gumbo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) sitting in this kitchen in this BIIIIG pot. And this first cook walks in a gives it a lil taste, (just a littl') and he sez, "Cher, I think dat needs jes a lil pinch of paprika." And he puts it in and moseys on out. Then the next cook comes in a decides it needs a bit more file (FEE lay). And another steps in, gives it a taste, and adds a bit of Zatarans Seasoning, and the next a bit of pepper, and another more salt... you get the picture.

Before long you got a big ol' pot of stinkin mess. Too many cooks....

You can't mandate good behaviour. People are gonna be assholes.

With that premise, the hand of justice at LPSG should be swift and silent. Correction should be made by the site owner without apologies or explanations.

Let people figure out what is or is not going to be tolerated without having to spell it out for them or by making some never-ending list.

People should be able to expect decency, not degeneracy.

The Golden Rule, ya know?

Been reading through things here and felt motivated to register so I could give a newbie's objective take...

It's pretty obvious that the problems boil to down to (1) hickboy, (2) mindseye, and (3) rob_e's tolerance of (1) and (2).

#1 is no longer a moderator.

Thank you

I'm offering this suggestion, and volunteer to take on the extra maintenance workload associated with it:

One of the underlying criticisms, apart from moderation issues, is that the quality of the posts have declined as the community has grown larger and more diffuse. This proposal is intended to encourage positive quality posts and more thoughtful discussion.

Create a board near the top of the page, say right under "New Member Introductions" and above "Sex With A Large Penis", called "The Best We Have To Offer" (or something like that -- I'm not concerned with the name.)

Nobody can create threads on that board -- threads from other boards are "elevated" to Best by nomination. There'd be a minimum "objective" standard for elevation:

• threads have to be at least 24 hours old (so that we have enough time to evaluate them)
• threads have at least five different contributors, regardless of the number of responses (so that threads of very narrow interest would be excluded)

Elevation takes place by moving the thread and leaving a redirect in the original forum, so that if someone is looking for "Great Thread" in "Women's Issues", they'll see the pointer to find the thread.

There'd also be standards for returning of threads to keep the Best-of board fresh:

• threads that have no new participants in 48 hours are returning of threads -- the interest in these threads has waned to the point that only the same old participants are continuing the conversation.
• threads that have been in Best of for a week are returned. This helps to keep the content of the board from becoming stale.

Returning a thread takes place by moving the thread back to its original forum (and removing the redirect that was left in its place).

The forum would be seeded initially (only) by the moderators, with each moderator choosing one thread for Best of; from then on, the members who create threads that are selected for Best of earn the privilege of nominating threads (no one may nominate their own threads, though). So an added incentive to create interesting, thought-provking threads is that you get some say in the Best of forum. I'd take nominations via PM and act on them when I'm online.

This involves no censorship, heavy-handedness, banning, or any of the usually-objected-to activities, but would be a way of recognizing good content and the members who post good content, and a way of creating an interesting forum for members with little time to read through everything.

I'm not wedded to any of the specifics of the proposal, and would be glad to work on fine-tuning it if we move forward with it.

I'm all for anything that raises a couple of standards, or at least gives a specified place for them. No, I don't think that we should turn the place into some academic seminar. It's just that with some of the really bright people we have on here, we could have some really amazing discussions, however... A couple of fears:
- You KNOW that articles placed in a "Best of..." section would be looked at as "picking favourites". You'd have to be prepared for more scrutiny, if you're one of the "pickers", or "pickees" for that matter.
- Wouldn't a forum like that be a magnet to people storming in, dropping a and running back out?
- Would there be (and I apologize in advance) a filter for things such as "ass sniffing"?

It's just that I, and many others as well, have confessed some pretty heavy stuff here in the past, only to be met with jokes, and even bashing. Differences of opinion I can handle, but hatred, sloughing it off as a joke, and the sometimes cruel negation of an experience, prevents others from revealing their stories in the future.
Example: Guy A, divulges he was raped. Guy B, pops in and says, "hahaha, what a pussy." Do you think Guy C is ever going to reassure Guy A by saying, "Hey, it's OK, you're not alone."? Or, offer his own story?
I get it. If you post, you have to be braced for a variety of reactions. Not everyone out there is nice. But it's beyond being "nice". We've lost civility and integrity on some really basic levels.

Another addition to solutions... In the HelpDesk forum, keep things STRICTLY business. I really try to follow that myself, and when I realize that I'm going off-topic in there, stop right away. Usually I only go off-topic when I don't realize that it's the forum that I'm in at the time. There's nothing more frustrating than legitimately looking for help, and finding diverging fluff and joking. Actually, I think that the only time that I've strayed from this practice is when someone trips over, and stumbles past the sticky, as well as the minimum of one thread per page on the topic, and then still asks "How do I delete my account?". In which case I, unfortunately, give in to a pettier side, and can't hold back from berating them.

That situation might be avoided if one or two people independent of the mod team looked after that forum. Fortiesfun has long crusaded for a 'wiki' element to the site (a component that Rob E originally promised when he first took over the site), and might be an obvious choice.

For a moderator team that it is already viewed by various parties at LPSG - just or unjustly - as wielding too much power, the adoption of a scheme that would be seen inevitably to offer further perceived 'preferential' treatment to a 'chosen few'... seems an incredibly unmise move indeed.

'Dickipedia editors', to follow up on the above Gillette-ism, would offer a far greater chance for the scheme to retain some neutrality, rather than coming across like a suggestion made by Erich Honecker's government circa 1989, as it desperately sought to cling onto power by giving itself new duties and structures.

By making the above proposal for an 'editorial team' for any 'best of' forum, I immediately remove myself from the running for any such position, should the idea ever be taken up.

It'd require a moderator to actually move the posts and create the redirects. And I suggested that the moderators initially seed the forum, 'cause you gotta start somewhere. From then on, though, the nominations come from the folks in the seeding -- that is the editorial team chooses their own "best of" posts, and in doing so, choose their own successors.

("Alex8, it's been six days, and your thread's getting rotated out tomorrow -- which thread do you want to take its place?")

There'd be a few kinks to work out, of course -- to keep the total number of threads in there from becoming unwieldily large or too sparse, and also to keep the same clique-of-two from picking each other's threads indefinitely. I have a couple of ideas that would allow fresh nominations from outside "this week's circle", but I thought the original post was detail-laden enough already.

My gut feeling is that while a few folks might be convinced that the process is rigged and smacks of favoritism, most people would see the rotating selection team as being a sensible way of giving everyone an opportunity to be selected in due time.

An "ass-sniffing" filter? For threads, or individual posts? For threads, I hope that the nominations would be more sensible than that. If someone were to nominate an ass-sniffing thread, I (or whoever takes over the mechanical tasks of redirecting the threads) would be hard-pressed to overrule it. But you would be free to PM raspberries to the nominator.

For the drive-by ass-sniffing posts in the otherwise good threads, would people want the "best-of" threads to be moderated more aggressively or not?

It's a good suggestion mindseye but personally I feel that a lot of the site gets it just about right, and out of the suggestions that have been put forward it'd probably be a better idea to concentrate on the ones that most people seem to feel most strongly are a problem.