The Future of peakoil.com

nero · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:43 am Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

Keep the open forum so you have a place to dump off topic threads. If you didn't have the open forum the off topics would hang around.

In terms of improving the signal to noise ratio, I suggest you have a more vigorous editorial stance on thread titles. Don't hesitate to alter thread titles if they aren't clear.

I'm of the opinion that the sticky threads that clog the top of a forum are also a form of signal to noise polution. The threads are way too long and often stale with little active participation. I think their only redeeming feature is that they might discourage the repeated abiotic oil posts by noobies, but perhaps these stickies can be preserved in a Best-Of forum and leave the top of the forum for the truly new threads.
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MD · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:51 am Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

On second thought, maybe you should just lock the place down. Maybe then I would get some work done.
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Petroleo · Tar Sands Joined: Apr 21, 2006 Posts: 34

I think you have to decide what kind of site you want to be. There are way too many silly and ridiculous threads, like the one recently about the most efficient way to hide stuff in your butt, and the one about the most efficient way to kill 500 million people (by throwing them in a hole in the ground made by an underground nuclear blast,). These threads have got nothing to do with PO, not even remotely, and aren't very interesting in any case. My opinion is you should not allow threads that have got nothing to do with PO. They make the site lose focus and it's getting harder lately to find interesting debates and comments.

Aaron · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:09 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

EnergyUnlimited · Fusion Joined: May 15, 2006 Posts: 3135

1. Good idea to keep open forum.
2. Reinforce code against ad hominems as those are usually of no use.
3. Try to keep contents sensible by screening out overfatalistic or overoptimistic threads.
Example of first type would claim end of US within next 6 months or Venus alike climate here by the end of current decade and example of second type would claim continuation of exponential growth of economy and population at current rate for next 2 centuries or so.

It may be difficult to screen out similar posts/threads by mods in timely manner, but those posts/threads are often making entire site looking childish.

Shortly, extraordinary claims should be supported by extraordinary evidence data and proper references.

dissimulo · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 01, 2005 Posts: 372

Just take any threads that don't fit the forum they are in and stick them in the Open Forum. Beyond that, I've seen forums try a lot of different strategies, but they never seem to work all that well and just spawn endless conflict between hot-heads and moderators.

I vote for no or minimal changes. This forum is just in the doldrums because the status quo has been reasserted. Something will happen and this site will be rockin' and rollin' in full-on doomerism soon enough.
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Petroleo · Tar Sands Joined: Apr 21, 2006 Posts: 34

OK well then I am in favor of more moderation, specifically at the moment when a new topic is started.

Hermes · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:19 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

I've always been impressed by how slashdot.org deals with this.

For those that don't know: slashdot.org is a news site for high tech news. I don't FULLY understand how it works, but I'll try and summarize:

When a news posting happens, users can respond in a threaded forum. Other users can then somehow use points to put a value on the various postings. A posting starts out at level 1 (I think...) and then others can throw their support behind it to move it up to level 2, then level 3, etc up to level 5. Conversely I believe that users can also knock a posting DOWN a level if they believe it's not worthy.

The kicker is: people 'earn' these points. So I believe that people really think before 'spending' a point on a posting to boost it up a level.

Moreover when viewing the threads a viewer can filter them for any value level. This means that you can view only the highest (5) level postings, or maybe the highest and very good (4 and 5) or the pretty good, very good and highest (3,4 and 5) etc.

This moves most of the 'work' into the hands of the users. They end up self-moderating the threads, and self-filtering them when they're viewing. If a person is interested in ONLY viewing the postings that are considered high quality they change their viewing threshold to 4 or 5, and if they want to be entertained (or have a LOT of time) they leave it at 1. And if a person is angry at a posting, they can have an effect on it by modding it down a level.

Now that said: peakoil.com uses phpbb as its underlying technology right? I'm not sure that it can deal with what I'm talking about. Like if there's a plugin or something that can allow this to happen or not.

If you could take a look at slashdot.org and see what I'm talking about it's pretty sweet, and would probably address most of the concerns that people are bringing up.

MD · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:34 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

pstarr · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

Slashdot sounds like a popularity contest. I hate popularity contests. If we had popularity contests here than nanopermaculture would win everytime

More mind-control and thought-policing is not the answer. When the price of gasoline increases again people will reappear with good thoughts.

Making peakoil.com more respectable will not attract a better class of punditry. Only the stress of impending peak will.

This reminds me of discussions regarding the homeless population in my pretty tiny town. If our public square looked and felt better (and was designed for people instead of their automobiles) then the bums would be driven out by the swells.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

no changes (see previous-same vote)

I say continue to send the idiots and comedians to the hall of flames. Let us lightweights duke it out in the Open Discussion. Reserve the Serious Forums for the Serious Punditry
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Hermes · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:55 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

NEOPO · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:56 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

I dont like this thread and think it should be deleted and the poster banned!!! Cool

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Peakprepper · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 104

I've been a peaker for a while, but I only joined this site recently.

Whilst I don't honestly know what the answer to your question might be, as the whole raison d'etre of a forum embodies the very concept of free speech, I do have several observations, in no particular order:

1) PO.com has a lot more lurkers than contributors.

1a) People behave differently on forums than they do in real life.

2) These lurkers may well be visiting the site to gauge people's opinions, and possibly even shaping future policy based on content here.

3) During periods of "relevant worldwide activity" meaning: war, oil prices, oil shortages, Alaskan pipeline probs, airline news, etc, the threads "firm up" nicely, and there is much intelligent and heated debate.

4) While there is little going on, as is the case at the moment, less topical threads seem to be introduced, mainly for the sake of it, and the whole site gets "flabby" and off toipc.
Some of them make the contributors to this site look like some sort of deranged gun-toting lentil-chewing lefties who just can't wait for the world to end. Some of them are just a plain waste of bandwidth and time.

5) This reflects poorly on the site: I personally visit less at the moment, but I know that should global tensions rise again or the price of oil start to spike (which it will), I'll be back more often. In other words things will have to get worse out there for them to get better here.

6) When TS REALLY HTF, people will come here for help and to use it as a source of reference, not to see some threads full of ad-hominems and poor-content threads.

7) One thing I feel should perhaps be enforced (and hands up, I am an offender!) is to use your profile better, and enter your real location, and perhaps your age - it would encourage peeps to meet up and swap productive ideas or help each other if they are near to each other. People would then maybe talk about it here, and encourage more people to do the same. As things start to deteriorate, you would hopefully see this virtual PO community spawning real ones.

Cool

Either way, whatever you do, it means more work for the moderators. IP logging will eventually be a distinct possibility.

9) Keep up the good work.
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TheDude · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 1:46 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

In the big Guns thread one poster edited out everything he'd written. I can't imagine him wanting to divulge his location; the same holds true for a lot of people here I bet.
I'd lose the Americas and Europe Discussion boards, which seem devoid of purpose to me. "Discussion from North and South America Geography" yields topics about reinstating the draft, "Rumsfeld resigns," what have you. I think a general political forum would cover these bases - if the Energy Geopolitics forum doesn't already.
I agree that the sticky topics on Planning For The Future should be consolidated, they add a huge amount of clutter.
Open forums are great, people will be people. I'm very impressed by the freedom given to posters here - one forum I was on was moderated by a dude who quite frankly lost it, and locked/deleted anything that even mentioned the slightest little thing off topic.

Tyler_JC · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 2:48 pm Post subject: Re: The Future of peakoil.com

There are many factors that must be considered when discussing a major change to the site.

First off, we can't eliminate the Open Forum entirely.

There are plenty of valuable threads that don't necessarily stick to one topic like Economics, Depletion Modeling, etc. Sometimes it is difficult to categorize a discussion and rather than create a thousand seperate forums, it's nice to have a single Open Forum to dump that thread in to.

Secondly, the Hall of Flames is probably a waste of everyone's time. Right?

The idea that valuable moderator time should be spent babysitting immature flamewar-inclined posters seems counterintuitive to our mission here, right? We should just delete these types of threads as soon as they are created.

Allowing a Hall of Flames only encourages people to engage in personal attacks rather than debates. Additionally, it wastes our computer database or something like that.

As for the abundance of threads with the same topic, what exactly should we do to solve this?

I could create a massive super thread for "Silver, The Currency of the Future"...but who wants to read 47 pages?

Also, sometimes a news event will change a thread completely. "$80 oil in 2005?" is no longer a valid thread. Should we just delete it?

I think the core problem is that many people, myself including, are prone to speculation. We spend most of our time on this site creating plausible scenarios and defending our predictions. These predictions changes depending on the news of the day, often times leading us to change our opinions completely.

There is no easy solution to the same topic, different thread problem.

That is, except for my solution. Razz

I believe that all thread under 1 page that have been in the data base for longer than X months (6, 12, 18, 24, whatever) should be automatically deleted. Or at least moved to a seperate data base. Then we could combine small threads with simillar topics together. Or, we could limit this automatic thread elimination to only the open forum. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here.
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