Rapidly Declining Quality on Storm Track

[Andrew Pritchard]

I have seen Stormchasers.org and no offence but I dont think it is any better than stormtrack. Has most of the same members just different leadership. I think stormtrack has great leadership and I am happy to be a part of this fine community.

Remind me what this has to do with the post quality on ST? Has the issue of people posting off-topic not already been beaten into the ground?

Ben did not say SC was better than ST. The issue was not to be debated, though I'm sorry to hear you didn't like our forum, but I'm sure we wouldn't like your posts much more than you like our forum.

Ben is only trying to say that with the increase in people on the forum, there is going to be an associated increase in noise. The more people, the more posts, and not all of them are going to be long term veteran chasers with degrees in meteorology. There are going to be new and old chasers alike, with different levels of intelligence and education levels. The post quality will vary more, and there will be more people to complain about it. We do this every year with the same result. Honestly, this thread may as well be locked because it's becoming less and less about post quality and just becoming individual slams. Unless you feel that will raise concerns on people starting another thread complaining about not being able to speak their minds?

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Not only that, but they have had nothing to do with the thread itself. Incorrect spelling, and off-topic replies. Yeah, I do believe that's why this thread was started.

 

[Scott Olson]

No more bickering, if you absolutely have to please take it to PM.

 

[Tony Lyza]

Here's an idea:

I'm a member and very frequent poster at EasternUSWeather. At Eastern, there is a tremendous membership (over 5000 total members). The main motif at Eastern is winter wx. They have a system at Eastern that could work very well here with some minor modifications. It's called the Weenie Tag. If someone is only contributing noise and/or it's evident that they have no idea about the subject about which they're babbling, an admin (could be mod here) slaps a weenie tag on them for a certain length of time. The weenie tag allows the user to view the board and send private messages, but it doesn't allow them to post. Usually, a weenie tag is applied for anywhere from one week to one month, and, in a few cases, permanently.

Now, I think that the weenie tag could work very well here at Stormtrack. As soon as there are enough reports for a certain poster and/or the moderator feels that the poster is bringing down the quality of posting, the moderator could slap a weenie tag on the poster. Now, to keep with the high standard on this board and to minimize embarrassment, it might not be a bad idea to not let people know that someone has received a weenie tag. Perhaps just modifying a member's permissions instead of placing a member in a whole weenie group would work.

When chase season arrives and the board gets busy, the staff could go to a system much like is happening at Eastern right now. At Eastern, it's called the "Scorched Earth Policy." With SEP, it takes very few complaints for someone to receive a weenie tag. That could be a useful policy here to minimize noise yet limit alienation of members.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Seems like a good idea, but it might make people just feel they are being attacked or are being ganged up on. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work on your board, but here with the already big debate on "elitism" I'm not sure people could handle being tagged as a weenie. While there are a few people that I would just love to tag as a weenie, it might just lead to too many "well so and so just doesn't like me!" arguments.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I'm all for it. But even if we can't see it, once they realize they can't post because they were labeled as "unfit" in their eyes, they could begin quite a fit with the mods. Again, I would love to see something like that implemented, but I'm not sure everyone here could handle such a thing.

 

[Andrew Khan]

I highly agree with you about people using proper punctuation, linguistics, grammar and spelling, I believe that it in itself shows the nature of the person, and there character..as to the persona they deliver to the forum. It just makes the person sound unsophisticated, and generic, when they exclude things so imperative as these.

 

[Andrew Khan]

And, what are these mistakes? You neglected to point these out.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Guys, can we stop the bickering and just move on and discuss more important things?

 

[Steve Burrows]

One thing you may find is that more and more people are becoming interested in weather but not so much the meteorological side of the weather. Those interested in the weather arnt so intersetd in the technical side of why things happen and the such, but more interested in the fact they just happen and lets leave it at that and move on to the next event.

In a way keeping this place more directed at those 'meteorology' and 'chaser' inclined would take this forum back to how it was when I joined.

My thoughts anyway, I still enjoy ST even if I am a very 'quiet' and offshore user.

 

[Justin Turcotte]

I read through all nine pages of this nightmare and have come to a couple conclusions. Spelling, punctuation, and gramar errors don't bother me too much in a non-professional setting so long as the overall post is coherent. We all must realize a post isn't a term paper. Sometimes posts are hashed out very quickly (ie. a quick note on the forecast thread before heading out to chase). I certainly wouldn't expect this type of post to be perfect. I do feel if an individual is wanting of respect he will speak/write in a professional manner in order to gain this respect. Posters, especially newer ones, who consistently display writing problems will likely have a difficult time gaining respect and acceptence here or elsewhere. If this is considered "elitist" than that is the way the world turns.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

I dont think users are trying to hang people over invidivual examples of proper grammer you know Its a select minority of posts that have consistint grammar issues that impact weather you can understand what the post is asking we don't care about individual spelings errors You no what i means?

 

[Jeff Snyder]

For what it's worth, I personally agree that it's annoying to read through posts that one must read several times due to frequent spelling and/or grammatical errors. I can understand such errors if they are isolated (afterall, we all makes errors from time to time) or when time is limited (e.g. in a NOW thread when one is on the road), but it becomes increasingly frustrating when such errors are abundant in posts that should not be 'rushed to completion' (such as posts in B&G, where one can reasonably assume that there are not minute-by-minute changes that require rapid posting).

It's important to remember that you can actually set the board not to display posts made by particular users if you so desire. Go to your User CP, then click on "Buddy / Ignore lists" under the Miscellaneous section (the lower-left side of the page). For example, if you want to not view my posts, add my name to the Ignore List. Instead of displaying the content of my posts, then, you will instead see " This message is hidden because Jeff Snyder is on your ignore list." where the content of the post otherwise would be. So, if reading another user's posts really gets to you, put them on your Ignore List, and you won't have to read their posts. If you want to view a particular post by that user, you can either click on the link to remove that user from your Ignore List, or you can click the "View" link in the upper-right part of the post to view that particular post (while keeping the user on your Ignore List).

 

[Dustin Fan]

Ok Well......duh the solution is simple.

If you don't want people posting crude in threads, put that user on post moderation. Maybe that could be part of the "weenie" group that tony suggested, that way a moderator would have to approve the post of a person that posts badly, or with tons of spelling and grammar mistakes. I choose not to post here, because of the elitist nature of this site. I do respect that, so I choose not to add to a thread unless I have something to say. Since I am not a chaser (hope to be one day) I don't have a lot to add to this forum...

 

[Dustin Fan]

PS The weenie tag SHOULD be visible so the member actually learns a lesson, and if they change then the tag would be removed. It would be rather pointless to make a group that only mods and the member could see, IF you guys did not add post moderation to the "invisible weenie tag".