Incorrect... From the Rules:
4. Quality. High post quality is a benchmark of Stormtrack membership. Users are considered to be in violation if they (1) contribute excessive numbers of "one-liners", "LOL", and "smilies" -type posts; or (2) post in Bar & Grill without a corresponding number of quality chase/weather posts. Users routinely contributing noise to our discussions are subject to suspension or termination.
I wonder why this isn't practiced regularly? I sure see no sign of this rule being enforced at all... LMAO...
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't occurring. Moderators are encouraged to handle all administrative and moderating matters through the PM system to keep such matters off the public board. So, unless there is a problem/violation that occurs several times in a thread, any moderating/administrative action will not be specifically noted in the thread. So again, just because you don't see us acting on something certainly does not mean that we don't.
In addition, it would be extremely difficult to try to enforce a quality rule outside of the condition that you noted in the rule. If I recall correctly, we tend to do a couple of memberbase "prunings" each year, which includes performing a B&G-to-meteorological content ratio examination. In the past, users deemed to have too high of a proportion of B&G posts to chasing-related posts have been disallowed from posting in the B&G forum. This can have an unintended consequence of low-quality posts in other chasing-related subforums like "Weather and Chasing" solely because users want to decrease their B&G-to-chasing content ratio. Then, on the end of the mods, it's nearly impossible to judge what is "good enough" to count. We certainly cannot go into that game... We've had similar discussions in the past, but the general consensus from the Stormtrack membership was that everyone should be able to chime in to any discussion, with no regard to how basic or "advanced" the topic matter is. This is fine, but this also indirectly means that Stormtrack is a public forum, into which anyone can join (a la "anyone could subscribe to the old Stormtrack magazine, so anyone should be able to join Stormtrack, regardless of whether they chase"). Note that there really should be no implied connection between the knowledge level of a member or discussion (beginner, advanced, etc) and the quality of a thread. We were all beginners at one time, and there are certainly high-quality discussions that may address "beginner" topics, just as there are low-quality threads that may try to address more advanced topics. We have many members who are new to chasing and try their best to maintain a high-quality board. We appreciate all members as long as the rules are followed.
At this time, the best way, I believe, to keep ST a high-quality board is to do what we can individually. In other words, those who can should contribute to technical or more advanced discussions. Likewise, avoid commenting in those threads that you consider "low-quality". If you have concerns about a particular member, please PM one of the moderators, and we will try to address those concerns.
