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Should we ban 'first' replies

General Discussion by walt22 17 replies 2.6K views
walt22

Member OP

Austin

#1

Ok so I know this is technically forum meta and maybe nobody cares but I've been thinking about this for a while (actually since the last "first" incident which was what three days ago) and I keep seeing these threads where someone posts something genuinely interesting like a new provider announcement or a real technical question and within seconds there's always that one reply that just says "first" or "frist" or some variation and nothing else and it got me thinking about what we actually want this community to be because back when I joined (was it 2019? 2020? Time blurs) the signal to noise ratio felt different and maybe that's just nostalgia talking but I genuinely believe low effort content drives away the people who actually know things and then we're left with a hollow shell where the people who could answer hard questions have gone elsewhere because why would they wade through garbage to help people who won't even read the sticky

hankels

Member

52 VPS and counting

#2

I run 52 boxes across 8 providers (Contabo, OVHcloud, Vultr, Hetzner, InterServer, Hostinger, KnownHost, RackNerd). My time is worth $0.17/GB of RAM/month. "First" replies cost me more in scroll wheel wear than value received. 😂

  • Proposal: auto-collapse anything under 15 chars posted in first 5 minutes.
  • Let the market decide.
seedbox, NAS, tape, and three offsite
polskiegsm

Member

#3

Actually not my circus, not my monkeys XD but I don't think no rules is good idea... double negative there sorry... actually I see this on polish forums too and nobody never fixes it... actually auto-collapse sounds not bad... actually we will see who stays when the low effort is hidden... actually the real posters don't need no attention from being first... xD

MeritBudi

Member

#4

Already try this on my own forum lah... auto-collapse short post dong... can or not? Already work well actually... the quality post still get attention... the "first" reply already hidden but not deleted... user already learn or they already leave... either way win lah... but need mod team active at start... users will complain... "where my reply go" dong... need sticky explain...

AZ

Member

#5

Auto-collapse under 15 chars? Makes sense actually.

walt22

Member OP

Austin

4 #6
hankels said:
My time is worth $0.17/GB of RAM/month.

That's a fun metric but it sidesteps the culture question. When I ran my ISP we had a mailing list and sure people would post "+1" or "me too" but there was an implicit understanding that you were talking to the same dozen people every week. Scale changes things. Auto-collapse feels like giving up on the idea that people can learn.

That said I don't have a better lever. We tried manual moderation in 2017, burned out two volunteers.

YU

Member

3 #7

This. Manual mod doesn't scale.

polskiegsm

Member

#8
MeritBudi said:
Users will complain... "where my reply go"

This is true actually... on my polish forum we have hidden spam and people already write to admin "why you censor me" xD... actually worse than delete because they think someone target them... actually maybe better to just delete with auto message "too short"... actually then they know why...

hankels

Member

52 VPS and counting

#9
polskiegsm said:
Actually maybe better to just delete with auto message

Hard disagree. Deletion trains users to re-post with padding. "First" becomes "First, thanks for sharing this interesting announcement which I find valuable because of the following reasons: first, it is good."

Collapse preserves the timestamp war for those who care and hides it from those who don't. Pareto improvement.

seedbox, NAS, tape, and three offsite
minh1987

Member

#10

In VN we have same problem on local tech forums but worse because Facebook groups already killed most independent boards. The remaining ones are strict: minimum 20 chars, no bump within 24h. Works okay but feels like fighting tide.

For my client services I just use Telegram now. Threaded replies there, no "first" culture somehow.

phở at 3AM, deploy at 4

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