By far the largest content group within dpreview is our discussion forums, with around 24 million posts over a period of almost 10 years from around 320,000 posters (dpreview forum stats). One thing I've noticed in the past year is that everyone (admin & forumite alike) has a different take on the forum's nature and likewise everyone struggles to articulate their mental model of it. This will be an issue for the dev team when forum development resumes, because everyone has a feature request (or five) at the ready but no shared vocabulary or model exists to help concisely explain issues or solutions. My goal then is to produce (over a series of blog posts) such a 'forum model' to facilitate productive discussion, analysis and visualisation.
The knee bone's connected to the ... ?
So
what exactly am I looking for? At the very least a comprehensive
(interlinked) glossary of dpreview forum-related concepts. Even better
would be a suite of diagrams really capturing the low-level actions
(posting, replying etc.) and higher-level phenomena (cliques, debates etc.).
Geek heaven would be a set of techniques to measure, describe &
visualize user activity (individual and aggregate) and overall 'forum
health' (based on metrics yet to be defined). So roll up the sleeves,
it's time to talk social network theory.
The who and the what
Before we tackle the juicy stuff (factions, reputation, mood) we need to cover the basics. First, let's look at the
various players and some of the simple (observable) behaviours actions they can perform within the system:
- anonymous
- view list of forums
- view list of threads within forum by date updated
- read posts / threads
- members
- all of the above
- start thread
- post reply to thread/post
- quote user
- edit own post (within allowed time frame)
- reference images in their post(s)
- link to any URL in their post(s)
- view list of threads they've participated in recently
- complain about any post (including their own)
- admins
- all of the above
- all user actions
- delete post (and all follow-up posts)
- delete thread
- lock thread
- move thread
- issue forum-specific ban to user (temporary or permanent)
- issue all-forums ban to user (temporary or permanent)
- view complaint list
- bots/spiders
- advertisers
- developers
Constraints
So
now we know who's playing this game, so what about the rules? Our forum
rules come in two flavours: 'hard' rules, imposed by the unyielding machine, and 'soft' rules whose enforcement depends
largely on whether the moderator (a dpreview writer procrastinating mid-review) lost their last foosball game.
- Hard rules
- 3 posts in 15 minutes per user
- Posts can be edited up to 15 minutes after initial posting
- Maximum of 150 messages per thread
- Message length limited to 8kb in length
- Messages will be blocked if they contain censored words or coupons
- Messages will be blocked if they contain blacklisted URLs
- Html tags are be removed from submitted posts (plain text only)
- Soft Rules
- No schilling or classifieds: It detracts from the conversation.
- No coupons: It puts us & advertisers in a precarious legal position
- Relevant images only: Technique-related only. Happy-snaps go in samples & galleries.
- No cross-posting: No posting identical message to multiple forums, it leads to problems
- No multi-posting: Repeatedly posting the same message frustrates others.
- Nothing risqué: What is tasteful to some may be pornographic to others
- No inappropriate child images: Illegal, wrong.
- No voyeur images: We don't want our community to go in that direction
- Be civil: (most infringed rule) Insults beget insults, nobody wins.
- No Off-Topic: It distracts. We move it if can, otherwise it has to go.
- No bashing: Broken-record, unsupported criticism of brands/individuals wears thin.
- No bumping: Pushing your pet thread to the top distracts from bona fide popular threads
- No off-board harassment either: Just because it happens off-board doesn't make it OK
- No piracy: It's illegal. Enough said
Individual behaviour, group behaviour and user archetypes
Ok,
so we've covered the main players and most of the rules they're (theoretically) playing by. Now to the meat of the issue: behaviour. Many existing features
and most feature requests (including ports of other forum's features)
represent attempts to shape, curb or encourage various individual and
group behaviours. Here's a list of a few such behaviours (desirable and
undesirable) off the top of my head:
- Conversation: the obvious one. But can conversations exist above and/or below the level of threads (probably)
- Cliques: People who interact with each other to the degree that they can be considered a group. What is the participation threshold which implies clique membership? Can cliques overlap or do they merge?
- Fan-boys: What degree of content analysis is required to detect this behaviour programmatically?
- Bumping: I'm pretty sure we could detect this programmatically
- 'hit-and-run' posting
- Cross-posting
- Flaming
- 'Me too' posting
- Bashing
- Ad nauseam debates
Here's where you come in
The lists above are incomplete, I'm
sure of it. There's a huge community of dpreview forum members and
readers with a deep understanding of our forums (and other forums) so
I'm trying to tap into that here. If you can think of any other
individual behaviour patterns, group patterns, user archetypes,
metrics or resources on the subject I'd love to hear from you (no
'I was banned', 'jimbo99 calls me names' type comments please).
Aside: What do I mean by 'visualization' anyway?
The expression 'visualizing the forums' may sound like a buzz-phrase,
but it refers to a growing field of research around producing
graphical representations of complex structures using statistical
analysis and computer generated imagery. Feel free to suggest visualisations we could derive from the dpreview forums dataset. Below are a few social networking visualization examples (courtesy visualcomplexity.com).
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@Haje
Anonymous users can already view and search posts (http://search.dpreview.com). In the 'copyright infringement' hypothetical you mention I would recommend the feedback channel (http://www.dpreview.com/misc/feedback.asp)
@Charles Hueter
Adding a little questionnaire to a thumbs-up/down system does increase the utility of the information gathered but unfortunately reduces the likelihood of users taking the time to provide it. Still, the idea of user reputation being dependent on inter-user feedback is definitely on my radar.
@jerrith & @ziggy25
I understand your frustration, however the decision to prevent registration via these popular webmail providers was taken in response to gross abuse by spammers and trolls. As such, it is unlikely we will lift these restrictions.
@offenblende
Kill-files (or a varient thereof) and watch-lists are definately on our to-do list (or more accurately 'to-do scroll')
@p
Direct user moderation may indeed lead to 'cliques' were that only change the current system, but our inclination is more towards the reputation-style systems popping up on other niche communities. Using aggregate input from many users (whose own reputation may determine their input's weight) is less likely to be abuses and more in keeping with the democratic ideal of web forums.
@Matthew Miller
Though your appraisal of google's 'push them away and they will return' philosophy, your guess as to our reasoning for excluding certain external links is off-base. The forums are not the money-spinners some assume them to be, instead they're more a community feature. External urls are blacklisted only when they are linked to in violation of our posting rules (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/rules.asp?forum=1000). If you believe a particular domain has been blacklisted unfairly, please use our feedback channel (http://www.dpreview.com/misc/feedback.asp)
Posted by: Jaysen Marais | Dec 8, 2008 11:30:25 PM
Jaysen Marais ????
I had posted several threads in an attempt to understand the inner workings of DPR. They have been deleted. The last thread was in an open talk forum. It had a DPR link and a quoted DPR request for help. Did members complain or is this an internal DPR restriction ?
Thankyou Gerry
Posted by: Gerry Gray | Dec 9, 2008 11:44:19 PM
For one, make a Samsung forum. They sell a ton of cameras these days and are now one of the "big boys". Sure, they might not seem like a camera brand, but neither did Panasonic or Sony at one point. A lot of us Samsung owners post in the Other Digicams forum, but it still seems inadequate for the purpose, especially for new owners trying to find where to ask questions.
Posted by: Ezzelin | Dec 11, 2008 7:49:32 AM
Jaysen, I'm not sure of the particular details, but a lot of things I try to link to are blocked. I suspect that the "This rule includes webmasters of other digital photography websites promoting themselves on the forum" clause is being used in a very strict way.
Posted by: Matthew Miller | Dec 15, 2008 12:24:32 AM
For comment rating, take a look at the SlashDot moderation system (which is really just rating; there's very little moderation in the sense that the admins here do). It's a pretty good model: comments can be moderated up with classifications like 'insightful', 'informative', and 'interesting', or down with things like 'troll', 'off-topic', and 'flamebait'. Most of the moderating is done by ordinary users, but they only have a limited number of points to give out, and thus cannot abuse the privilege. And various other details that you could choose to implement or not depending on your needs.
Posted by: BDan | Dec 24, 2008 6:51:51 AM
"If you can think of any other individual behaviour patterns": tagging a thread with an empty post, so that the poster can find the thread later in his or her list of threads in which they've participated. (I see this behaviour in the Pentax SLR forum.)
Needless to say, this is a nuisance. It would be nice if you could block such posts.
Posted by: Rich | Dec 28, 2008 9:10:30 AM
Trigger-Happy Troll Accuser. Person who is quick to accuse anyone of being a troll who posts something they disagree with. When a THTA marks another user as a troll, it should be ignored.
Posted by: Greg | Jan 1, 2009 7:55:11 PM
Your forums are very big - how many moderators do you have to cover them? How do you pick your moderators?
My personal opinion is that no insults, however mild should be allowable, and that occurances should be floowed up by a request to desist from moderators. If people know they are expected to behave well they will.
Consistnacy of action is also essential - if a highly respected member is suspended or banned for reasons that are not clear to the membership, it will cause a fair amount of unrest.
Posted by: bob J | Jan 7, 2009 12:38:03 PM
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Posted by: MilaDila | Feb 7, 2009 8:37:03 AM
Good initiative. I like to comment on cliques. They exist, for sure, some are formed because of common interests, pretty inoffensive, but sometimes they get a bit nasty, and there's a lynch mob type of activity that gets a bit out of control. I doubt you can detect that unless someone raises the issue specifically and the message gets to admin.
Other interesting forum type: fanboys. This should be quite easily detectable automatically, if he/she also likes to flame other brands, trolling. Check someone that usually posts is some brand forum, but frequently goes to other brands' fora. Then do a check on that person's posts, if he's a fanboy trolling frequently. Soem of those probably ellicit complains, so it's even easier, to a check back after a complaint and see if he/she's a frequent troll.
Finally, one interesting forum type is the "technologically" oriented. Peopel that clearly know about the technical aspects of photography and posts frequently. They should be tracked, since they can be very sueful for other members (not all though, some tend to the arrogant side).
KUTGW
Posted by: rhlpetrus | Feb 16, 2009 9:41:24 PM
I've used the DPreview forums for the past four years, and I've been involved in building and managing forums for sports event promoters for the past 11 years. In my opinion, these forums work fine, as-is. I'm dead set against rating posts, since this leads to stronger cliques as well as scaring away some new posters. Don't mess with a winning formula.
Posted by: Chuck Lantz | Apr 24, 2009 4:08:10 AM
I'm surprised that there has not been a cry of protest as camera makers add more and more "features" nobody wants or knows how to use. Ask yourself how often you use the load of features. And ask yourself how many of the features you COULD use if you wanted to. I say DOWN WITH FEATURE BLOAT! Let's have a minimalist but high quality camera please.
Posted by: Xenophile | May 6, 2009 4:00:43 AM
I think your forums are overly edited with extremely overzealous so-called moderators who in reality are truly just censors. This make for very boring conversation in the DPReview.
Posted by: Gary N. Winnick | Jun 28, 2009 11:14:16 PM
Hi,
Your articles are great to read and to get some knowledge.Your discussion forum is very hit between the users to get and give good information.
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