@Mike Walsh, could you not agree with your fellow moderators, to some common standards? It's not really fair for:
- people to get used to one style of moderation, and then for completely different standards to be applied in a different forum
- people to be hoodwinked by the forum's user-interface into thinking it's acceptable (or even desirable) to mark one's own post "as answer", only for the moderator to think them arrogant and punish them for it. (Remove the possibility to mark own post "as
answer", from your own forum, if you will; for me it's not a way to promote myself, but rather, a way to helpfully flag up a possible answer to my fellow contributors. If there's any question in my mind as to whether or not I've answered >90% of the original
question, I don't mark my own posts "as answer" anyway. If other people wish to remove my marking "As Answer" because it's
not the answer to the actual question, that's up to them; but I don't expect to be marked down because of a moderator's whims or their personal tastes regarding social culture and forum protocol - that's just arbitrary in my opinion.)
I'm finding (in common with many other diligent contributors) that many posts are just not being given the credit they deserve, in 75%-80% of cases people generally don't bother to vote for other people's answers and helpful points.
There are some really irritating, obnoxious people on here who seem to be getting lots of points and medals for doing very little (providing trivial, incomplete and even incorrect "answers", and never giving anyone else any credit at all), and some really
good participants who give excellent contributions and give credit where due, who are being given almost no points. I've seen top-class, famous, world-respected MVP's on here with one or two medals only, who contribute far more to the community than many of
the people I'm seeing with three or four medals to their name on the MSDN Forums.
SOLUTIONS:
- Forum designers: Modulate a member's points according to the credit they give to others (don't make it proportional since that would be open to abuse; just mark down by
50% the points of any members who rarely if ever credit other members). Publish the fact that only those who give credit where due will get full points for their own contributions. Once this system is up and running, root out abuse of this new system by looking
for contributors who consistently credit posts that other reputable contributors do not find helpful.
- Forum designers: Give less points for an "answer" that is itself a reply to another "answer". Too many people are getting extra points for riding in the slips-stream of
the real "answer", by providing only a trivial amendment to that answer so as to persuade the moderators to credit them too.
- Moderators: Take a more active role in moderation, in linking similar questions together, and in marking real "Answers" so as to encourage genuine contributions.
- Forum designers: Give moderators a little more discretion to give extra points to those contributing especially helpful answers to especially difficult questions.
I've read on the forum guidance that those consistently contributing low-quality material will be penalised, but I've not seen any evidence of this yet. How is this done?
I've also seen forum contributors who consistently "Quote" the entire previous contributor's posting, even when only a tiny portion of it is relevant to their "Reply". Can we not do something to discourage this too?
Matthew Slyman M.A. (Camb.)
