What's the protocol regarding...

incredibly stupid threads?

I don't want to get in trouble for being user specific here, but what happens with threads as innately stupid and pointless as the recent "Race Traitor" and "Guy Shouts N*gger at Palin Rally" threads? Can people recieve temp bans based solely on the idiocy of even starting such a thread? Or for repeatedly starting similar threads, as the starter of the "Palin Rally" thread has done by starting a new thread for every single thing that has ever happened in the history of the Republican campaign?

And what about people posting in such threads? Can anyone be infracted for spam, when I don't think there was a single post in either of those threads that wasn't spam? I think I'm the only person on CFC that didn't spam the "Palin Rally" thread, and that's only because it was closed before I had a chance. If everyone in such a thread got infracted, everyone in OT would be temp banned for a month, there were that many posts in there. What's the protocol?

Report the post/thread. We will deal with it as necessary. Infractions, bans, whatever is called for.

In the case of those threads, it would've been nice to see them all dumped into one "Thread to Rule them all". I've used that tactic on other forums for that type of stuff and it works rather well.

/shrugs

People spamming/trolling a thread to death?

I am sick of threads collapsing due to being attacked by trolls/spam posts, who never really answer the question and instead attack the poster.


Why are they not more clearly punished, rather than the creator being blamed?

.Shane. said:

In the case of those threads, it would've been nice to see them all dumped into one "Thread to Rule them all". I've used that tactic on other forums for that type of stuff and it works rather well.

/shrugs

Click to expand...

I prefer binning them when they go completely off the tracks, it removes the incentive for PC+1 spamming or hoping one's clever demotivator-image response is displayed for posterity.

As to Sharwood's and Abaddon's somewhat related questions - there's a fine line between a legitimate (if somewhat partisan or biased) discussion thread being derailed by the unwashed masses, and an "I'm going to make a separate thread about every example I find showing so-and-so" thread that is not likely to draw serious discussion in the first place. We're trying to balance a light touch on moderating content with preventing threads that are likely to turn into train wrecks, and as you might imagine "they came in and wrecked my thread" with "why'd you let this OP survive a first look" complaints can sometimes both be heard about the same exact thread (unless we lock it, in which case we're accused of all sorts of bias, opposing free speech, fascism, etc, and it only gets crazier and more vulgar if we have the temerity to infract for troll/spam OPs).

So yeah, sometimes we just wade into the train wreck and infract people for individual posts, even into bans if they've been busy, in the hopes that next time there will be some self-restraint and the borderline thread with potential will stay upright or the troll/spam thread will not fail quite so "epicly".