yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] aaronsmckee:
One idea that I would like to add, QA should be strictly enforced, 1 warning then any follow on offenses (within say 90 days) result in a revoke of posting priviliges for a set period. I've seen QA fail in other forums because users continually ignore the rules, if we add QA it has to be enforced with an iron fist (rza I believe we may have found your calling:D)
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
I totally agree. Right now i think most people kinda see the general Raphael subforum as the Q&A forum. So the rules will have to be enforced more heavily to make sure the threads stick to questions and answers only. I am sure RZA will have no problem in enforcing his brooklyn ways. lol
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] RizwanKhan:
i couldn't agree more with this. Due to this some of your good chefs have left us and gone away from cooking.

One of the latest examples is Leo (L26, lurentius), a awesome guy and a very talented cook. For those of you who don't know who he is: he cooked for the kaiser for long time and than went to touch hd, but due to the overwhelming amount of *ickheads in the thread for his rom, he is giving up rom cooking.

So my plea is the same as of the many before me ... bother .. bother .. bother to search and research and learn and fix and give back.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] addicus:
Scotchua I think each device having a Q&A forum is a great idea. It will allow a more direct approach to the problems people have and hopefully allow more answers. A general Q&A forum for non specific phone questions still must exist though.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] vido.ardes:
I think the only way to solve the problem, is to have a membership fee fo ranyone who doesn't provide software that is useful. That way those who want to learn and use the software will pay, until they get good enough to cook thier own stuff (or keep paying). It will drive down these 'n00b's you all kepp banging on about, drive up the number of useful members and generate some cash. Perhaps you could choose to syphon off a percentage of your fee to a particular member (like a chef or developer?)
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] tyguy:
I still believe that paying is not an option though it may scare a lot of people away thus reducing traffic and hopefully stupid questions.

The Q&A idea may work but it has to be ON TOP of all other sub-forums, otherwise no one will bother to read.

Another neat idea (though could cause trouble with some firewalls) would be to set a tracking cookie in a way that, if somebody with a very low post count didn't check/read/open the Q&A or FAQ thread, is simply not allowed to reach other parts of the forum though a NOOB may not be a NOOB 'cause he/she may came from another device...
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] hitekdude:
dito that my friend
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
Did you really just agree to something that was from page 1 on page 20? I think one of the points on this thread was to avoid stupid posts like people just agreeing with someone or saying "awesome downloading ROM right now". Now the other point is that your post is agreeing with someone else who agreed on something. To me this just seems like thread crapping. I just find it amusing that someone would do this on a thread where we are trying to figure out how to avoid thread crapping. There is nothing wrong with agreeing with someone but adding some input or something useful or your opinion on the topic would be better than just saying "ditto"
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] Jdilla:
I dont believe that noobs will always be noobs. i myself am a noob and im trying to change that. im only 20 and am new to the software programming scene. im horrible at math im trying to take a programming class in college so that i can one day become a contributing member, even though im a political science major. i dont have very much money so paying would be a huge bummer. i personally do my best to not thread crap and so on. I JUST WANT TO LEARN! and google/wiki is my best friend and should be yours too!
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] tyguy:
Sorry mate IMO that's total BS. Fees should be off limits and "useful" software is very biased in the eyes of the beholder. First off Joe and Jane Doe think different from an engineer and especially their feedback may make a piece of software over time to the icing of the cake. In addition - following the beholder theory - look what "happend" recently to arrup. He writes beautiful ROMs and gets almost slammed for his idea of changing icons and symbols, a true sign that you'll never get it right.

I guess the first step is done just seeing comments - constructive on top - from true NOOBs here

that's a good sign and shows that they can and are willing to read.

Who wants to make the cut "who's a good member and who's a bad one?"

Me def. not!

Get the Q&A rolling and mods may contact members by PM to get them together that members contribute directly to a thread or the Wiki to get it a little bit more conclusive.

IMO it would make sense for example to combine at least parts of the Diamond and Raphael threads (all around appearance, g-sensor apps, TF3D themes) due to their similarity as a first step to succeed reducing gazillion redundant questions.

We have our graphics design experts (Mobile Matt and Showaco come in my mind) with a lot of knowledge under their belts, get some more of these functional groups together and we can ALL clean up the mess. I'm in, too BTW since I'd judge myself Calm as a Hindu cow...
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] antjmon:
Just was reminded of two things (by this thread---> http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=479174 ):

(a) how important it is that something is done. I really doubt creating a new sub-section for silly questions will work because people don't read the friggin directions that already exist, why would they if more were added?

(b) more importantly there is a system in place already where we could really help the moderators out. Its probably best looked at as a poor man's version of the peer system that I mentioned earlier. In Kyphurs own wording "Please remember you can help us by reportin[g] posts & threads that need our attention. Just click on the tria[n]gle with the "!" in it (upper right of every post) to let us know what's up."

@ mods-- is this helpful at all and how many actually utilize this?

edit: I possibly stand corrected. I dont recall seeing this message in times before, once clicking that a small line at the bottoms reads "Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising messages, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts."
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] P1Tater:
Not nearly enough use it. I don't think some users even know it's there. And some users use it to ask questions which is why that notice pops up. That triangle is not for asking questions. It's to report posts or threads. That to me is the main thing. If more users actually used that triangle to report fighting, WAREZ, rudeness or whatever it may be, that would help out a lot.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] AllTheWay:
I always wondered what that was for :D
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] AkWizKid:
I can attest to this being effective. I reported an inappropriate post one time and multiple mods were there within minutes to warn and eventually close the thread.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] antjmon:
@Tater/ATW/other mods

Ok, I'm still just a little unsure about reporting. Would threads that have been newly created when multiple threads already exist qualify as an inappropriate post or not? B/c if it is painfully obvious that some people just haven't search as evidenced in my referred thread, then that little triangle could already be a variant of the peer system already in place (just under utilized). If it is appropriate to report such activities, then our mods wouldn't have to do as much patrolling I'm thinking.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] P1Tater:
Yes, that is perfectly fine to report a thread like that in my book.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] AllTheWay:
I concur with the P1Tater.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] scotchua:
I also agree, which is the most important since I'm obviously more important than both Tater & ATW.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] DaveShaw:
As the not Fuze moderator (and therefore most important), I also agree.

Some users just report rubbish anyhow.

I know not all moderaters feel this way but the ones that count do ;) :p

Ta

Dave
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ryan_h:
Thought from a "Noob"....

Okay, by definition, I am a "noob"... I never post (I think I have posted 2x). I read. Thats about all I do. Now, that being said, if any of you asked me about the Nokia N-Series / Symbian world, I could talk about it until I was blue in the face. I am by no means "new" to this, but I am "new" to doing it in a Windows Mobile environment. That being said, a site I used to use required a proficiency test of basic questions to become a member. All of these answers (about 40 questions) could be found by searching the page / googleing. Why not implement this idea here? If you don't get a 90%, you don't get a membership. Period, end of story, you may retry in 7 days.

Just my 2 cents.... I am all about quality, not reading annoying braty two year old posts of "I want this and I want that."

Ryan
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] duke_stix:
one thing which is slightly aside from all the how to prevent n00bs doing their business here is to actually deal with it once its on here. theres already a handful of locked threads because the questions have been answered already, so why not delete the threads? particularly if rude like demandings software or such

just a suggestion
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] juju-35:
May I offer a totally different perspective that may apparently not respresent the majority?

In my personal opinion I am not sure what is more insulting:

The NOOB that asks a stupid quesiton or the Chef/experts that bash them back.

I think there is something fundamentally broken in the attitude of some senior people here in that on the one hand contributors propose their softwares/ROMs for getting more exposure (whatever is their motivations: getting donations, or getting more known, or just having fun), but yet get pissed off when people ask (sometiimes stupid) questions, or ask for improvements.

To me, the whole idea of a community like XDA is to learn form each other, be open about the fact there will be experts and total beginners, and respect each other. I would think that there are a few rules that should be put in place.

1- Receiving an email with clear rules/regulations/expected behaviors is certainly a good idea

2- By definition if this is an open Forum there will be NOOBs, and by definition they will ask beginner quesitions. it is the natural counterpart of getting the maximum exposure to contributors.

3- Noobs will become medium skilled users. Medium skilled suers will become advanced users. Advanced users will become experts. Rather than experts bashing Noobs, wouldn't it be more useful if each category would help the previous category? This way everyone can make progress, nobody needs to be frustrated. Medium skilled users will be happy to share their knowledge and explain to Noobs, experts to medium users,......

So, I do think something needs to be changed, and XDA needs to decide whether it is:

1- An elitist group of ultimate experts that talk to each others only?

2- An open community that work together to imrpove everybody's level and knowledge, whatever their initial level is?

For me, I definitely prefer 2. I have asked a lot of stupid questions. I did not know what a registry was when I joined. Now I edit registries, program SASHIMI to compeltely reconfigure my device, edit XML files for customizing Manila,... I am no expert and sorry I cannot make suggestions of many of the bugs that I find. I can report them or even make suggestions because by now I have tried many things. I think it can be useful "at my level", and hopefully other more experts can propose fixes to Chefs and then I can help answer easy questions to a few Noobs.

But if some people want 1 then you should create an expert commmunity that only experts can join.

On XDA: Peace. Respect. Help each other.

Just my 2 cents.

Juju
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] scotchua:
I know you said much more, but in the interest of space i'm not gonna quote it all. Thank you for your ideas, and i understand what you are getting at. I think the major issue that you are overlooking is that the noobs who are actually interested in learning really aren't the problem, or the ones we are complaining about. Those users tend to follow the rules, think about where they should post, and are generally respectful when informed that they have made a mistake. I have not experienced that it is difficult for this type of user to get someone to help them learn. The problem users are those who come here with a "give me what i want, and don't expect me to learn anything" attitude. The ones who treat XDA like it's tech support, rather than a learning community.

On that note, attacking a user is not the way we want to handle any of this. If you see any user, senior or not, being abusive then feel free to report it. As Mods we only see so much, and obviously won't deal with what we don't know is going on.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] duke_stix:
i agree totally and i think its the posts made by these users which are cluttering up the forums

just doing a simple search on google will throw up dozens of threads which include the words used in the search but are dead-ends because of the 'demanding' nature of the poster

so why not just do a good spring-clean of the forums and get rid of any and all useless posts and allow the chefs COMPLETE control over their threads

and perhaps also make that tiny little 'report post' button a little larger and perhaps place it in a more prominent place like down by where the the 'quote/multi-quote/quick reply' buttons are
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] NotATreoFan:
Spring cleaning is a great idea... but with over 3 million posts on XDA, it's a monumental task that can not be easily done.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] scotchua:
As NATF said, spring cleaning would be a HUGE task, and all the Moderators are volunteers who do this in our sparte time. So the quantity of time to do it in addition to the other work we do just to keep up wiht the new stuff is quite significant. As I explained before, the idea of giving chef's complete control over their threads is very problematic and doesn't really solve anything. Plus why just chef's, why not every person who has a thread with software they developed getting complete control getting complete control? Then you run into the issue where people are gonna complain becuase they believe the OP is deleting a lot of negative posts so that people will use their rom/app and donate, blah blah balh...it gets very tricky. Even as moderators we have to be careful about how heavy handed we are with deleting thing, so it's not really just as simple as that.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] mr_Ray:
I'm really going to have to agree wholeheartedly with the general principle of this thread.

Back in the old days I use to be a Mod/Admin on a PPC site (and elsewhere), so I do know what it's like on that side of the fence and the potential troubles from trying to "enforce posting quality". It's also clear that most of the suggestons in that poll would be either ineffective or just as much harm to the site as the problems they'd aim to fix.

But in the years I've been reading here I've seen the site sadly go from a detail-centric technical forum to one where the signal to noise ratio just puts me right off. Interesting threads are hard to find, and even when you find them, they're mostly filled with junk. ROM threads tend to be page after page of asking the same question, often ones answered in the first post...

Back in the day, the impression of the site elsewhere was "know what you're on about before you post there, they're tech heads", but now it's more "got a problem with your ROM? go post your question there". Major difference. The move of WinMobile more into the mainstream sure hasn't helped, either.

"Noobs" aren't the problem though. Everyone starts as one. Half of the problem is the people who are too lazy to search and read. I went from zero to posting physical dissections of devices, releasing software, and making my own ROMs without a single "how do i put this Raphael ROM on my Nokia" post. Because I read.

The other half is the people who answer them. Sure they're trying to be helpful, some even try to educate them with "here is your answer, but next time search", but so what? The lesson has still been learned that you get the best result by saving your effort searching by putting extra workload on others to both answer and trawl through hundreds of junk posts. Giving them the answer just makes it worse. The whole "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" problem.

As long as there's a result to be had from asking stupid questions, people will do it, and it's naive to think an email, a FAQ, a wiki, or a handwritten letter from the pope will stop them. Remove the incentive, remove the problem.

Bah, rant over. I'll go back to lurking and searching for the odd gem.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] DaveShaw:
I saw this nice post from one Junior to another and I couldn't help but share it...

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=3287081&postcount=219

Thanks

Dave
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] SamsungGalaxySamsung:
I Think that is NEO, the one who will make a big chance:cool:

It's not always the Junior's or Noobs that are goofying around.

Here:http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=468836&page=3

Thread started by an Senior, it doesn't even contain specific info or doesn't even have a value.

All keep up the good spirit and thanks for all the hard work that you've all have done.

Really appreciate it.

Greetz
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] Dane Austin:
Just out of curiousity How many mods are there on xda? One of the problems I had as a mod on another forum was that there wasn't enough of us to offset the number of posts per day. Has there been any consideration of adding more mods and dividing up the forum load. Something like a mod for each of the busier catagories (Raphael for instance) and a mod for two or three of the less active forums.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] SamsungGalaxySamsung:
Hi,

i was using the button.

This is what a mod told me : ''Hi.

We don't close threads unless something is illegal!!

Please stop reporting threads on this issue.

Thanks. ''

Now you're welcome:confused:
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
Hmm i have reported at least three threads that were repost of the same exact topic and they were closed down.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] arthurbrownleeiv:
I think this is one of the best ideas. I know I don't have much of a post count to add my weight, but one of the most irritating thing is sometimes the 20 pages you have to flip through of useless posts to find the few per page that are helpful.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] SamsungGalaxySamsung:
I have the original mail message :cool:

What also could be an option:

Throw an lock for opening an Thread. So that everyone who wants to open an new thread automatically has to send an request to one of the moderators and so that you have the aproval of the mods.

This is one way to stop the useless threads.

just my 2 cents.

cheers
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
I hate that too sometimes. One of the best ways to solve this problem i think is to have a wiki post. Here is an idea (http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=1173377) of what i am talking about on slickdeals.net Basically there is a post after the OP posts which can be edited by anyone. So people can edit this post and we can get updates and things like that without having to go through 20 pages of crap. I know on XDA chefs like to reserve posts and things like that. So we can give the creator of the thread the option of where they would like the wiki post to appear for example after the 4th post or 2nd post or things like that. Also people can post problems they are having with a rom or any other software on the wiki post and chef/developer just has to look at that one post to see what the bugs are instead of going through 20 posts of the same bug. Also we can have answers to the bugs right there which should eliminate some people who post questions/bugs because they dont want to read the 20 pages.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] iammaz:
Well that's a really good point actually but i have an idea to take it a bit further. There's no reason that someone else cant do this anyway.

Make a wiki page for each particular rom release. Then instead of answering all the questions in the 100 pages of posts that follow, just move the questions with their answers to the wiki page. If no one answers the questions in the threads then

1) it'll reduce the length of the threads,

2) there will be a central place to look for answers for the particular rom

I personally use ROMeOS and do constantly read all the posts in that thread and most of the rest of the forums. I'll get started on a wiki page after work and we'll see how it goes. Theres no reason that others cant do this for their roms right now rather than just talking about it in this thread.

Just an idea that I'm going to try.

Maz
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
i personally think that just having a wiki post in the thread will help a lot more than having a separate wiki page because most noobs that come to threads dont know about the wiki page. I myself rarely check the wiki page i know its a bad idea but i dont know i feel the wiki is confusing and i dont really like going to the wiki page lol i dont know why but i never liked it.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] iammaz:
So you post a link to it and they can learn about it. The problem with putting it in the thread is that the chef has to do it. Or have orgainised with someone else. The chef should be free to do thier own work and let someone else deal with the stupid n00bs that cant be bothered to look around the site and find the wiki which is full of answers to the normal questions.

Maz
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
No anyone can edit the wiki post. Not only the chef every member has the ability to edit it. At least that is how it is at slickdeals.net and it works fine. So the only the chef would have to do or anyone else can do is. Create Sub headings in the wiki post for "Reported bugs/known issues" "Solved bugs" "general questions" or something to that effect. I agree with your idea iammaz with having a wiki post and just linking to if but i think having a wiki post within the rom thread or any other thread is better since the answers are right there as your looking at the thread. Lets see what the other mods and admins say as well since they have the ultimate say on this lol
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] iammaz:
I imagine to actually embed a wiki page into the forum would take some modifications to vbulletin? which means it isnt likely to happen today. whereas modifying the wiki i can start right now and we can transfer it if we do manage to embed them.

Maz
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] ptyindian:
Totally makes sense and i agree that it is not something that will happen in the near future.
[Touch Pro, Fuze ROM Development] DaveShaw:
Although it is not required moderators are encouraged to fill out there name and watches on this wiki page: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Forum_Mods

Another thing to bear in mind is that we are all volunteers and the ammount of dedication we can give to the site varies based on our personal situations. Some are students with exams to worry about, some have families to look after, some are now busier with life than when they first became moderators, etc, etc, you get the idea :)

Thanks

Dave