[Wood]

In the last couple of months I have had to learn some new skills in one area:

*Forum Combat*

This used to be a brute force kind of confrontation - Ville regs would post 3 new topics in a day, I would read through them all, and take my lumps with the spam and senseless posts.

Now it has become more of a Cold War game involving advanced filters and relevancy metrics. I can't take the banality of the forums anymore. I'm too battered and bruised. There are still people out there with useful, thought provoking and stimulating ideas: Tips and techniques, what makes games great, how to help out your teammates, and WITTY humor. But to get to those posts, I have to wade through a rank pool of drivel.

So I have developed my own personal quality matrices which I use as a filtering tool for threads on the forums. Basically here is how it works:

Every time I read a thread, I note my reaction to the contents by author and topic. Then I use those reactions to determine which threads I read. Gross offenders go on a "hot" list.

Now, I get on the forums, I scan through the 20-30 NEW threads and automatically reject threads initiated by certain posters (my "hot" list), and any threads whose last post was by a member of this list. Then I assign a risk rating for each of the 3-4 remaining threads, based on who started them, and the topic. Anything that relates to "I'm out!", "Why was I banned?", "How good am I?" or "[POLL] - ..." gets the boot.

I am probably missing some interesting stuff this way, but at least I don't have to go through the mind-numbing task of cranking through 3 pages of "yeah, me too." posts.

Here is an interesting corollary: the bulk of the people on the "hot" list are in the top 10% for posts/day!

BTW, Hoax and KRG are not on the "hot" list. Refer to Hoaxies excellent thread on "Artful Spamming" for the reason why I still like to read anything they write.
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[The Nanite]

Damn Dude that's awful complicated. Reading the forums is supposed to be fun. You make it sound like work.
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[hoaxie]

[Sully]

Wood, brilliant!!!

Unless this post puts me on the list...
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Sig courtesy of K.R.G.

[Computer]

I'll have to agree whole heartedly with you there Wood. I used to come home every afternoon and add my two to twenty cents worth of thoughts in the 12 or so new topics, and try to respond in an intelligent meaningful way, this would be exempting any post I made to blown, deathbringer or in the Off Topic thread.

Now I motion my way into my room and sit down to 50 new topics (exaggeration). I used to try and read through most of them but found myself reading 4-5 pages of: "lol" "hehehehe" "me too!" or something to that effect.

I too have my own methods of figuring out what to and not to read. But I think it pretty much fits your description.
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"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."

[Ragnarok]

Lol...............me too. Hehehehehe

[Chen Kenichi]

LOL

Ken Kaniff... what a great name
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[Ragnarok]

Bet u feel stupid now....lol.