Have low quality posts killed forums worse than anything else?

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by CM30, Mar 21, 2014.

  1. CM30

    CM30 Regular Member

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    When it comes to reasons why forums are supposedly doomed, 'social media' always seems to come high on the list. But am I the only one who thinks that fluff posting, 'seo' and spam might actually be one of the big causes?

    Because I have to admit, I can't use a lot of forums nowadays, because I just can't take the poor quality posts filled with broken english and completely nonsensical content that only seem to exist so some idiot can show their signature. It's meant about 90% of 'webmaster' sites are completely unusable.

    And it actually got me wondering. Perhaps this is one of the reasons forums have suffered so much in recent years? Perhaps the low quality garbage being posted by idiots desperate for a cheap source of page rank has kind of put people off this kind of site simply because the quality discussion they want isn't there any more. It would't surprise me, and it'd also nicely explain why blog popularity has dropped by a ton too, because so much low quality crap is found on blogs and their comments nowadays that you honestly don't know where to go for interesting stuff to read or comment on. Just try and find a good site about WordPress (other than the official site) that isn't some list of generic 'recommendations' or a glorified link farm.

    So yes, anyone else suspect this? That the terrible quality of forum discussions nowadays may have hurt their popularity significantly?
     
  2. Adrian Schneider

    Adrian Schneider Regular Member

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    It hasn't helped.

    Webmaster forums especially have the problem of users coming there with an agenda. Link bait, affiliate schemes, buy my product, and other garbage. It's hard to build community with people you don't care about. And it's hard to build relationships if people only post garbage.

    Part of the struggle has been finding good content. It's out there, but it's hard to find. You have to weave through hundreds of new posts to find good threads, if you manage to spot them. The struggle is characterizing them. Things like featuring content, or voting systems can help surface what the general population thinks is good, but as we've seen with the radio, and any mainstream media, that can only go so far.

    When the signal:noise ratio is as poor as it has become, it's increasingly important to surface the good stuff. Most forums aren't doing this. Yet, Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, reddit, etc. all do this - and do it well.

    Imagine reading the bottom 5% of entries to those sites. That's what we're doing on forums.
     
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  3. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    I agree with you, bro. I feel that it has really downgraded the atmosphere of certain forums because if users see fluffy posts being allowed, they might follow in their footsteps. Thus, creating a catch 22. But, if the staff members strive to have quality content and post long and in-depth threads/topics, then the users will more likely follow the leaders.
     
  4. Soulwatcher

    Soulwatcher Regular Member

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    I have seen a lot of forums going down hill lately. So many people like you say with broken English or posts like "that's cool" and the Admin is letting it fly by to fluff their post count. My forum is brand new and I have already trimmed about 20 posts like that. And I have even banned a guy because of low quality posts. Because I know I am never going to grow my forum if its filled with useless posts.

    Greg
     
  5. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    Exactly, only quality posts will help drive more active members to your community. I hate fluff posts, but I have the playhouse section for posts like that.
     
  6. Jack Rouse

    Jack Rouse Regular Member

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    I don't think the "broken English" argument is valid.

    If English isn't your first language it is a very difficult one to get to grips with, what you are implying is that you only want perfect English speakers on a board, which is a bit like grammar police.

    I agree that content in posts is actually poor, I also agree that it is the job of MODs to cancel that out, PROVIDING it is in the rules, I personally delete the "what I had for tea" type topics, and instead rely on good static content, like a blog or articles, hoping that will outweigh the poor content in posts.
     
  7. we_are_borg

    we_are_borg Regular Member

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    The topic about nothing just chit chat is not needed to delete them you only need to make sure the forum is not indexed.
     

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