A Final Solution to the Proving Grounds Problem

[Null]

Proving Grounds is shit and has been shit for years. It actively stagnates the entire site, bottlenecks up and coming content behind a gate, and the keyholders are anyone who feels like dealing with it with no real set of standards. It was originally set up to stop lazy, shitty personal army threads, but the daunting task of writing what essentially amounts to a full biography and the de facto requisite of a full dox (even though I have never, ever officiated the requirement for personally identifying information to make a thread) puts off basically everyone except people who just don't even bother to try and pump out whatever they feel like.

The way I see it, there are two things we can do for PG.

1. Promote 2 or 3 hyper-autistics willing to format OPs for people to meet some sort of real standard that can be empirically met and easily understood.
2. Remove it and just delete the worst of the new threads that get made.

I've wanted to make all on-topic threads wiki articles that anyone can edit and which keeps history, but I have some concerns with that and I quite frankly just don't feel like putting all the effort required to create the feature as it's more complicated than it looks like at a glance.


There are serious problems in that the only mod who really looks at PG is Ride and Zed, who have very narrow definitions of what is a valid thread. I'm not trying to call them out, imagine if any one or two people were responsible for deciding what would be a valid topic here. It would immediately, necessarily rule out about 98% of the content of the site.

A lot of people we talk about on the forum would never, ever get a thread today because the OP standards are so tight so needlessly. The idea of just letting a thread through and seeing what happens was something that was around for years until we tightened the belt that almost nothing gets through until after something big happens. In the old days, we just let threads that seemed boring get zero posts and die naturally.

If this thread doesn't find a way to make #1 work I am just going to go with #2 in a week or so. I feel this is the biggest problem with the site at the moment. There are a lot of threads just decaying in the bowels of PG which could have been funny, could have had some life to it, could have attracted new users, and could have sparked the drama that would have made it a popular thread.


Edit: Something I forgot to mention is that PG is dark to everyone except senior users. This was because we had an issue of shit OPs posting threads on trannies who would then immediately DFE because someone would tip them off to the new thread before we had any chance to archive everything. This also doesn't help threads get through (especially since first time posters will see an empty forum which is daunting).

 

[Trombonista]

I support Option 2.

 

[Bitch Kitten]

Maybe pick a couple of the most active users making thread suggestions in PG to be supervisors. Otherwise, on a forum of 30k users, the mods are still going to be deleting and cleaning up threads and those threads would probably just get deleted instead of the opportunity for the OP to be fixed.

Currently, the standards aren't very explicit and the examples for a "good" OP are old and outdated. If you go by 2016 and earlier standards, of course they're going to be shit threads compared to what there is today.

 

[JektheDumbass]

Burn it all, let God sort it out.

 

[Aria]

option 2.

 

[Ann Berlin]

Option 2 and have the turbo-autists prune the other boards instead?

 

[zyclonPD]

I'd like to make a suggestion. Take Op away from the masses and turn new threads into a mod thing. Make a thread topic a sales pitch in PG where instead of them trying to formulate a thread they give a convincing argument as to why person needs thread. The community can research the person as a whole and the mod is the one who basically copy pastes info from the various posts into the Op of a new thread once it reaches a satisfactory level in the PG.

Lot of threads have dead OP's who never update anything even ones like Comicsgate started by Neural. Maybe RandomJoe9935 shouldn't be the one making Ops in the first place anymore.

Edit: also give some basic instructions on formatting info updates to be added to the op. So posters in the thread can formulate an addition and tag the Op mod to copy paste the info as necessary and add to it. At least in the way a thread may actually be updated to the point of getting a basic rundown on a cow doesn't involve reading 300+ pages to even get accurate or relevant info on the cow itself. In it's current state most OP's of a thread are so outdated it might as well be a different person.

 

[The Un-Clit]

Yeah. Ride absolutely comes off as a bit of a narrow-focus hardass, and currently the Proving Grounds are stuffed full of fail with some potentially good cow threads just petering out.

I would agree with nuking it, and just make sure there are enough moderators in Lolcows so that there will always be at least one on who can quickly vet any new cow threads to filter out obvious trolling and spergery, and maybe offer some tips to improve the opening post if needed.

 

[Tetra]

I liked the way the old system worked. I'd go with option 2 but mix in option 1 if new/better information comes out.

For instance I've seen a few old OPs have a mod edit at the top linking you to some other post later on in the thread that has a better would-be OP

 

[Double Dee]

Nuke it and make a new one, possibly with a new mod? I second zyclonPD's idea of making it a pitch thing, or maybe making it like the TTS board, where a few turbo-autists could help people formulate a decent OP in quiet before throwing it to the fire.

 

[Gordon Cole]

>PG is the problem
>Not A&H

 

[ProgKing of the North]

I look at it this way: even if the OP is shit, we can still have fun dunking on OP instead of the thread subject

 

[AnOminous]

Ride and Zed both have a very good grasp on what makes a good thread and a good OP, but some good threads have shitty OPs. Option 2 (delete the worst) would be fine. Maybe they could slightly lower their standards if they're not approving threads but simply deleting the worst ones.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

I agree @zyclonPD's idea of pitching cows and seeing who'd be worthy of a thread as a way to filter out proposed cows that are in line with: "OOH THIS GUY WAS MEAN TO ME ONLINE/IRL THIS IS WHY HE'S THE WORST!"

 

[Angry Shoes]

To me it seems like having PG as one shitty board is better than playing wack-a-mole all over the site deleting shitty new threads.

 

[Ellesse_warrior]

We already have a thread on updating OPs so it could probably just be utilised more if the proving grounds goes. Adding more mods to the proving grounds and maybe update the guidelines for OPs might help too if you decide to keep it. Proving grounds kind of keeps all the shit in one place. Maybe potential cows should be pitched before a thread can be started in the proving grounds to weed out the worst ones.

 

[Coelacanth]

Option 2 sounds good if you've got a good quality control squad imo.

 

[L. Ron Hubbard's Cat]

It seems like the biggest problem is just defining a "good" OP. There's a lot of ways to handle the actual creation -- @zyclonPD 's sales pitch idea, for instance, or making up some kind of template/checklist that a person would have to match before submitting a new thread for mod revision/approval -- but the question really seems to be communicating what the standards are. Option 1 would only really work if the autists in question had the data to format in the first place, and collecting that seems like the job of the person proposing the thread.

It's really not hard to come up with a process (if that's what you want) provided people know what the input needs to be and what the outcome is meant to look like.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I always thought the Proving Grounds sub-forum was a stupid idea. I go with Option 2 and if fuckfaces keep posting garbage just revoke thread starting privileges for them. They can still reply to threads but not make their own.

It seems like the biggest problem is just defining a "good" OP. There's a lot of ways to handle the actual creation -- @zyclonPD 's sales pitch idea, for instance, or making up some kind of template/checklist that a person would have to match before submitting a new thread for mod revision/approval -- but the question really seems to be communicating what the standards are. Option 1 would only really work if the autists in question had the data to format in the first place, and collecting that seems like the job of the person proposing the thread.

It's really not hard to come up with a process (if that's what you want) provided people know what the input needs to be and what the outcome is meant to look like.

Agreed. My thread for Low Tier God wasn't the greatest formatted thread (It was my first when I was still somewhat new around here) but then that took off with @Dragoonism leading the charge.

 

[Jaded Optimist]

Delete it, plenty of good threads have shitty o.ps. I also think it's stopping potentially interesting threads because people don't think to put threads that aren't about someone in proving grounds (like B.P's plastic surgery thread for example).