How do you think we can improve After Hours?

RoundyMooney

The snowball effect. Some threads can run wild in the space of mere minutes.

One thread last week in TV (by no means the busiest forum on boards) regarding the Late Late picked up about 500 posts over the course of the show.

Another thing that irritates me tbh (and I don't expect the rank and file mods to comment) is why mods are still listed for the forum who patently don't do a tap.

This is not exclusive to AH, but it is far more visible here (and on Adverts, but I digress).

It's a pain both in terms of users who may not know better claiming over moderation (due to a mod list as long as your arm), and on the mods here who do work their asses off for little thanks.

Yes, it's voluntary and all the rest of it, and no, people can't be omnipresent. But. Srsly like.

Overheal

In regard to that, some threads are a little more sober than others. Some news articles for instance (someone gets raped, shot, bertie does something outlandish) where it can get wildly off topic or where the signal to noise ratio is just crazy. You'd be trying to have a proper discussion with someone all the while 15 other people have chimed in with useless commentary then its that much harder to keep up with the substance. Eg. "In This Thread, post your story about X" and if you arent posting a story about X you don't post. Yes, we all know its funny and we could all point out that inuendo but for the rest of us we just want to read the substance not the commentary. Too much posting without thinking going on. Some people simply need to be encouraged to sit back and enjoy rather than battle with 1200 other users for the center of attention or to see who can post Yore Ma the fastest (old argument, true analogy).

Maddison

Stop recession talk Its bad enough It happening in reality but I come to afterhours for a giggle not to be depressed:)

RoundyMooney

The boiler plate answer there, is of course to head to Humanities.

I'm sure it's a grand forum (in fact, if nesf still mods there, it must be-he's one of the best mods on boards), but I can't say I've ever even read it, which is my fault utterly.

Point being that AH is like the busy pub in the middle of town that everyone frequents because their mates do, and the craic is also excellent.

Just mind out for the boorish beer louts and the puke in the corner. The bouncers are generally an effective bunch and will get it sorted.

Humanities is the place down the road, much smaller and more comfortable, and the stout is better too, but none of your buddies drink there, and it can be rather quiet.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Some threads I've seen late at night could end up having over 20 posts in the space of about 10 minutes. During peak times (when most people would be on) it's a hell of a lot worse. I can imagine it would be hard for someone new to keep up. Hell sometimes I find it hard to keep it up.

There are various site tools that are handy such as auto-subscribing to threads you post in and then using your user cp but I doubt many newbies would know this. I know I myself took a while to find them and I only found them out because I kept hearing people go on about it in places like feedback.

Same here. I teed to be a little restrained if I see the person I'm replying to has only about twenty posts to the name, but I've seen cases where this hasn't happened and I thought it was a tad unfair. Especially where someone gone over-the-top on some poor sod who's used txtspak. I think a standard reply to people who do go OTT might be worth a try.

Perhaps a "Welcome newbies" sticky with said tips as opposed to the 'charter' and a warning that things written are more foreceful than what is said be a it thick-skinned. I know there's something like that already, and you can never guarantee it'll be read, but it might be an idea.

Red Sleeping Beauty

I'd suggest doing something to remove After Hours posts as Posts of the Day. Perhaps there could be a post of the day just for AH ?

Not sure if this will improve AH and it's probably a site-wide development issue
Just throwing it up anyway.

Abi

Maddison wrote: »

Stop recession talk Its bad enough It happening in reality but I come to afterhours for a giggle not to be depressed:)

I agree. AH imo was always a place for randoness, laughs, few debates and silly polls. Perhaps an 'R' forum is a bit excessive, but even a sub forum to AH would tidy things up, and in turn killing the 'lets cheer up' and 'the non recession happy' type threads. They are clogging up AH at times.

Terry

Ok.
I'll agree to recession being off the table.
What say the rest of you?

We can have the odd thread here and there, but I do agree that the amount of them at the moment is ridiculous.

dr.bollocko

Terry wrote: »

Ok.
I'll agree to recession being off the table.
What say the rest of you?

We can have the odd thread here and there, but I do agree that the amount of them at the moment is ridiculous.

Lock or move or merge tho?

javaboy

How about having a handful of OFFISHUL recession threads?
"How to fix the recession"
"Good+bad things about the recession" etc.

Something like that or maybe just one big recession megathread?

If someone starts a thread which is better suited to politics, we can move it and we can lock or merge new threads which are rubbish or belong in one of the OFFISHUL ones.

Terry

All agreed say aye or something.
I ****ing hate laptops.

javaboy

Aye but not to a hard and fast rule.

here.from.day.1

Less threads about faeces?? :pac:

OldGoat

javaboy wrote: »

How about having a handful of OFFISHUL recession threads? <SNIP>

Seems like a lot of unneccesary faffing around. The clue, as they say, is in the title. Most readers would simply look at the (existing) thread titles and decide for themselves to read it or not. If people don't want to read about the ressession then they simply don't open that thread. Lumping all the threads into one Merge makes following any given argument/discussion/running gag a real pain to follow.

javaboy

here.from.day.1 wrote: »

Less threads about faeces?? :pac:

I think faecal matters were discussed earlier.

Feel free to vote on the poll: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055498167

Note it's result will not necessarily decide the issue though.

javaboy

OldGoat wrote: »

Seems like a lot of unneccesary faffing around. The clue, as they say, is in the title. Most readers would simply look at the (existing) thread titles and decide for themselves to read it or not. If people don't want to read about the ressession then they simply don't open that thread. Lumping all the threads into one Merge makes following any given argument/discussion/running gag a real pain to follow.

Good point. The recession does seem to be swamping the forum lately and I'm not in favour of an outright ban on 'R' threads. One merged thread may be too strict and would as you say mean there's no flow.

Maybe just a general crackdown where threads which don't bring some original idea or novel approach to the thing get locked/merged. Also a lot of the copy and paste from a news source threads can be lumped together.

OldGoat

Has a system wide (or AH specific) request for an 'Ignore Thread' button ever been discussed or dismissed?

javaboy

OldGoat wrote: »

Has a system wide (or AH specific) request for an 'Ignore Thread' button ever been discussed or dismissed?

It's probably been suggested. It's probably too much hassle. However the existing thread rating system could be adapted to do that. It probably wouldn't take a huge effort to only display threads that have not been rated or have been rated highly. That way if you don't want to see a thread, rate it one star.

It would be a site-wide issue I'd imagine and probably not too high on Ross' (CuLT) priority list but no harm to suggest it in development.

Personally I don't think it's that big a deal to just ignore a thread if you don't want to read it.

here.from.day.1

javaboy wrote: »

I think faecal matters were discussed earlier.

Feel free to vote on the poll: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055498167

Note it's result will not necessarily decide the issue though.

I did look at that but its so black and white. I only said less not gone altogether! I mean as long as the the posts not overly detailed and doesnt make me want to regret eating my breakfast, its cool with me.

OldGoat

javaboy wrote: »

Personally I don't think it's that big a deal to just ignore a thread if you don't want to read it.

Agreed, however it might prevent the complaints about particular topics 'ruining' AH
I'll drop a suggestion into Development and see what happens.

Quazzie

javaboy wrote: »

Personally I don't think it's that big a deal to just ignore a thread if you don't want to read it.

It is fairly hard to ignore them when they take up most of the first page with similar themes with slight twists.

Terry

here.from.day.1 wrote: »

I did look at that but its so black and white. I only said less not gone altogether! I mean as long as the the posts not overly detailed and doesnt make me want to regret eating my breakfast, its cool with me.

Fluttering Bantam is allowed to create one crap related thread every two months.
He is the only one allowed to do so.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Add prefixes to AH . That way you can have a Recession pre-fix or a fecal matter pre-fix or a happy thread pre-fix or a Random thread pre-fix or whatever

Abi

Terry wrote: »

Ok.
I'll agree to recession being off the table.
What say the rest of you?

We can have the odd thread here and there, but I do agree that the amount of them at the moment is ridiculous.

Move them according to content. Economics, politics, TCN - where ever the fúck. Please. Kind sir.

here.from.day.1

Terry wrote: »

Fluttering Bantam is allowed to create one crap related thread every two months.
He is the only one allowed to do so.

Thats fair enough. It was a good story after all!

RoundyMooney

Mega 'tube thread on AH forum rather than the sub-forum.

Why so because?

Terry

Mever happened.

/points finger at perpetrator.

RoundyMooney

Hehe.

Red Sleeping Beauty

More boobtoob threads I say... moooooaaar...

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Incorporate a prison system, members who are banned go to "prison", the general public of boards.ie can then go visit the prison and throw tomatoes, cabbage, etc etc at the culprits.

EG:

"Randomer" banned for muppetry. 7 days. Throw rock? 1659 rocks thrown so far.