[About XDA developers] aMpeX:
Hello fellow XDA-Users,

I have been a member of this forum for quite some time now, and currently spend my time in the Optimus 2X section.

People from there might recognize me from my guide on how to build cyanogenmod7 from source and some bits and pieces

from the O2X section.

Some of you might know, that LG delayed the update for this phone quite a bit, which brings me to the purpose of this

thread: The amount of spam and Off-Topic in the general section as well as the development section has blown up

insanely over the last 2-3 months, and this has caused a lot of tension between users and mods, among users and of course

users and devs. While, in case of the general section, this might be bearable, it is not for the dev section, since the real

devs can't work properly because all the useful information gets buried under the same questions and off-topic again and again.

Just recently, a mod was required to close a thread containing bleeding edge information and made it clear that he had no

intention of reopening it again.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I want to dump my thoughts for a solution in this thread. While

I don't know to which degree these can be implemented or if they might contradict the philosphy or user-rights of XDA,

I still want to post them. These ideas apply first and foremost to the dev section. I see the dev section as a read-only

section for anyone that doesn't have anything to contribute towards the development, no matter how long he has been

here or how many posts he already made. Therefore I propose the following mechanics to keep the dev sections clear of Spam.

Allow only recognized developers, contributors and the other verified ranks in the forums to start threads in the dev section.

This prevents off topic threads from being created in the first place. If someone new really wants to start a new thread because

he really has something useful to share, I imagine some sort of verification process where users can submit their threads and

moderators, or maybe even the parties allowed to post already, to review and approve the topics. This will create additional workload

on the moderators, but I believe it won't be that much more compared to the endless reports they are receiving right now. Also, allowing

a larger base of users (recognized contributors/developers) to approve the topics will reduce the workload even further.

To prevent the spamming of existing threads, apply the same strategy as mentioned above with the following changes:

For a specific threads, the thread starter (and possibly a list of users defined by the thread starter) can either approve single

posts or users in general to being able to post in the thread. The user, after being approved, will be able to post freely in the

thread, or maybe even in all threads by the approving thread starter.

I know these are very strict rules, but since they are only applied to the dev sections, I think they are worth considering, since it

will reduce all posts made in this section to those really dealing with dev stuff. Like I already mentioned, it may increase the workload

on whatever mods/users will have to approve. This gave life to my idea of expanding this userbase to the recognized developers/contributors

as well.

I see that my concept is anything but precisely laid out, but I think it represents a good base to create a system, that will make the

dev sections of this forum what they used to be: A place where developers can develop without having to read through pages of spam and

off topic and thus be more productive and less pissed off. The approval also puts another step into the process of thread/post creation

that might make users reconsider if they really want to post or perform a simple search first.

Thanks for your time!

Also, in order for this thread to be recognized, please give it a good rating. Thank you.

aMpeX

edit: Just to make myself clear again, this approach is far from perfect, but I believe with some input and discussion, we can make it so.

Please feel free to post your opinions, corrections or extensions to this idea.

I will try to collect some ideas from the discussion to summarize it here:

Inspired by anasdcool71's post:

Give OPs the opportunity to decide whether they want to moderate their thread, or accept any comment that is made during thread creation

by ticking a checkbox for example.