Come on admins.
I PMed theymos the day I opened this thread, explaining in more detail the issues with the Press board and linking to this thread. I have had no response, which I can only assume means he is content with the current situation. Given that, and that we have also had no response in this thread or any of the many previous threads about the Press board, there is probably no point in us continuing to push to try to clean the board up.
I remain confused why we are happy to let spammers run bitcointalk in to the ground and push away good users and good discussion in the name of free speech. I will continue to always defend free speech, but there is a very obvious difference between protecting controversial thoughts and ideas and allowing utter spam to ruin the forum.
I think that the silence of theymos doesn't necessarily means that he isn't working/thinking on making changes on the Press board. I think that it can be interpreted from two, very different, point of views:
- A - He took note of the concerns of numerous members and he's currently discussing what to do with other staff members. Perhaps he's analyzing the history of the board and evaluating our claims with them;
- B - Free speech is free speech and (we) can't do nothing that goes against it.
If indeed the path being follow is route
A then I think that a simple message like -
"We are listening to your concerns and are evaluating the current state of the board" - would be enough to at least have some sort of feedback regarding our concerns. If this was just a claim from a random user it would be understandable to be "ignored" but we are talking about numerous members and, at the same time, these members are passionate and dedicated to our forum, so I don't see anything wrong in at least balancing out the problems that we've highlighted with the sub and at least give us feedback in what the staff thinks about them. Because we could be totally wrong - I doubt it - and if that's the case then I would very much like to know why, even that would lead to counter argument from our part.
If the path chosen was
B then I still would like to get a reason why. I get free speech and I think it's one of the pillars of modern society, but doesn't the board content goes directly against the "Forum Moderation policy"[1]? Should we respect one rule in favor or ruining others? Where's the balance in that equation being made?
The policy to not remove anything worked when the forum was small. Now that we have thousands of posts a day, we can't afford 50% of them being junk. The moderators are now instructed to be less tolerant of low-value posts.
Some guidelines:
1. Free speech - you can say anything as long as it is relevant and presented in a calm and polite manner. Swearing, SHOUTING etc. make your post more likely to be removed.
2. No zero value posts or threads, like "SELL SELL SELL"
3. No pointless or uninteresting threads.
4. No referral code spam
5. No NSFW content
What I think that is also in the table is the fact that if a decision is made regarding the board, it would set a precedent to do the same to other boards (Discussions like "If you did to Board X this set of things, why don't you do the same to Board Y?). But I don't think this is necessarily bad since a review from time to the regarding the forum activity is actually beneficial to it (from my point of view of course). It is specially true when our forum has the vast dimension that it currently owns. I do believe that any kind of review that any board is subjected to, has to have a consensus - similar to how BTC network operates - regarding its current state and this "review" period - where staff gathers feedback and evaluates the board status - should be long enough in order to implement grounded and justified actions.
Otherwise this just discredits that specific board leading to more active users completely ignore it because they know almost nothing good comes out of it. Does it really make sense to have it a board just for the pure sake of having it?