A Final Solution to the Proving Grounds Problem

[LOWERCASE LETTERS]

Just shitcan it. Good threads will naturally rise to the top of whatever forum they're in and shit ones will sink into obscurity.

 

[RetroCrab]

When I signed up I didn't understand the place and my first PG thread was shit and poisoned the well on a good cow.
What made him special was his chimping out over any criticism. A million bucks says he would've signed up here day one.

My second attempt I thought was fine but I guess they wanted a life story on the guy.
If one spends 100 hours researching a cow to get it PG approved are they really any better than the cow itself?
You have to be autistic yourself to get your posts out of PG.

A great target that died in PG twice was Hushy 4lung and I warned he locked his account and would likely DFE 40K tweets soon hiding all his evidence. And he did. I wasn't going to waste my time a third time. Now you've got a popular predator out there with no evidence of their degeneracy.

Option 2 from me. Delete shit OPs like my first one. But you don't want the cows to outnumber the farmers, as these are high maintenance animals. Maybe also move dead threads (say two years with no posts) to registered users only so you don't fuck up our search engine crawl rate by filling the board with garbage.

 

[A shitty ass clover]

I mean, i have some ideas for threads in IC but most of the times either can't make a decent OP or it stagnates in the generals, kinda like a bystander effect. Or sometimes it goes to the wrong audience, like the guy that made a DayoScript thread in english when no one really cares about him on anglo countries.

I'd say Option 1 since a nice OP can be a really pleasant read and a good summary of a lolcow.

 

[crocodilian]

Outside of literal spam and moving threads to Main Discussion, I don't understand why Proving Grounds needs any adjustment.

• Subject is well-documented and amusing = thread receives attention, thrives. Will be moved to Main Discussion.
• Subject is well-documented but becomes inactive = thread dies, but the info is still there and chronicled. Will be moved to Main Discussion.
• Subject is badly documented but amusing = OP is declared a fag, interested users pick up the slack and post info. Could be moved, if it ends up good.
• Subject is badly documented and fucking boring = OP is declared a fag, thread is left to rot. Thread doesn't move, dies.

Isn't this how it's supposed to work? What am I missing here?

In the old days, we just let threads that seemed boring get zero posts and die naturally.

Why did this stop?

 

[la mort]

IMO option 2 is better. I think we need to improve the OPs of the international clique, sometimes grammar and spelling mistakes are a disaster, but we can certainly do better. I have read some threads in Spanish and Portuguese that have a lot of potential.

 

[Turd Burglar]

@Critically Correct, do you, by any chance, shit your pants on the regular?

On-topic, nuke it from space.

 

[Hamplanet Fitness]

I like the proving grounds system. Ensures quality, though the standards for what makes it out seem a bit nebulous; not sure why my Saira Rao thread, for example, didn't make it out but Robin Delphine Warren did?

 

[4str4staleatherbelt]

I feel like allowing option 2 would result in an influx of threads by people who are mad at the internet and make threads on people whom the OP has some personal beef with instead of finding a legit cow. Sure shit threads will be relatively dead but I imagine exceptional OPs being the ones who post the most in their own creations. This is why I voted for option 1.

 

[Mapo Tofu 2]

I feel like allowing option 2 would result in an influx of threads by people who are mad at the internet and make threads on people whom the OP has some personal beef with instead of finding a legit cow. Sure shit threads will be relatively dead but I imagine exceptional OPs being the ones who post the most in their own creations. This is why I voted for option 1.

I thought shit threads get deleted quickly?

 

[Jester69]

Maybe a category where people can post whatever threads they like about whoever they want, and threads that gain a lot of traction about specific individuals get their own lolcow thread, with the OP including the details provided in the original thread.

 

[Critically Correct]

You guys are so new at like

 

[Critically Correct]

A poet yungnhungrytnt @ Twitter

 

[ClipBitch]

Digging the new direction. The site has felt kind of dead lately in regards to new content. This might help!

 

[TiltdownDove]

What about maybe using a template for people to work from?

Have the template include in the fill boxes some of criteria to be met. This way it's formatted at least to a degree, and leaves unfilled criteria up to whoever the fuck wants to admin that shit for if a post sticks or not.

This way, you can see what the OP was going for in an easily read format for the mods, and not stomp down new ideas

 

[Sam Losco]

If you go through with the OP as a wiki idea (which is a good one), I would suggest creating a group of users (not just mods) that you trust to be able to keep shit organized and on point, and give them the ability to edit and not just everyone on the site with an account. Make it so everyone can make a new OP/wiki page, but only this new group and above (mods/admins) can edit. The creator of the OP can edit as well, or not, and only give them edit abilities if they did a good job with the OP.

For fucks sake, if you can, restrict mobile users from starting threads (site wide) and from either: a) adding attachments, or b) putting attachments inline. Every time there is a massive screenshot, it's from a dipshit mobile user because the site scales the image down so it doesn't appear huge to them. Either that, or get a mod for Xenforo that restricts inline image size. I've seen that with other forum software, so I'm sure it's possible with Xenforo. I see these huge screenshots every where but I'm not going to flood the report feature with reports on them.

By the way, thanks for unbanning Bryan Dunn. It's great having that autistic faggot shitting up every thread he posts in again. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the mental gymnastics you did to unban the one douchebag that you went so far as to send a C&D to.

 

[BlancoMailo]

Given the immediate community consensus, I am lifting new thread restrictions on all on-topic boards. Proving Grounds remains up because it is the only board where there is no edit time restrictions on OPs or posts for all users. I will think about how I want to deal with its existing content and how we're going to move new threads from PG out.

I don't know if this function is within the coding of XenForo to easily do but is it possible to have maybe a 2-3 dark period on new cow threads, similar to how only senior users are able to see PG, in order to prevent premature OPs from causing a cow to DFE before proper archiving can be done?

 

[Coke Pope]

Both are shit because they provide a huge potential for abuse by powerusers but I think that the option 2 is better than the option 1.

 

[Dysnomia]

Option 2. OPs can be awful but the thread content makes up for it. If the thread goes nowhere or is full of autism just nuke it.

 

[Iamthatis]

I also like the idea of polls and perhaps this could serve to fix the issue you mentioned.

So let's say I make a thread on Pedo Furry #57938214. After a day or two, open a poll. Poll lasts for one-two weeks. Make the minimum requirement to be able to vote be something like "have active membership for at least a month prior to voting." That way when furries try to make sock accounts to vote down the thread, they won't be able to. Afterwards mods can go through and check for any obvious socks/trolls that got through the system.

Would never work, all threads on alt right cows would get vote brigaded.

 

[dreamworks face]

In October, I was thinking about starting a thread on Tracy Castro-Gill, but I did not think I could get the thread up to the standard, and it might've been fun. That said, holy shit are there a lot of terrible threads in the proving grounds that deserved to be nuked.