yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Very good points :)

I used XDA for a long time before even registering :)

There is little need to register if you don't want to post, as a simple "site:xda-developers.com problem installing myROM 1.2.3" will find it on google :)
[About XDA developers] 4thfloorcaveman:
Great

It's even educational as new user will be forced to either search or go to general where they will be tought, just that, to search. 10 times over before they can post in /dev :)

But what to do about the 10 post that follows wrongly placed questions with "lörn to search neewb" ;)

cheers
[About XDA developers] samyvibrantuser:
I would like to suggest something like (I am a windows Developer) and i use Codeplex.com which gives each developer a project page with Home to their change log page, downloads,discussions,Issue Tracker and so on..

this can be only for developer forums. I know it can be a major website design change but this way developers have their own page and forums instead of searching the whole development forum for an answer.

like for example: if i need a ROM or Kernel done by Team Whiskey I go to his page and get and if i create one and people who need help can come to my project page and grab and ask only about my ROM or Kernel.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Well... If a user hasn't learned by 10 posts, that they don't post everything in dev, then we will move them as usual. Hopefully this will start to help with the problem though.
[About XDA developers] othermark:
I read this somewhat bemused -- it's been a problem for a long time. Back in the day we had moderated mailing lists. You posted, then you had to wait for the moderator to approve the post for it to show up.

As a moderator, you saw a ton of junk (even in the pre-spam days) from people who did not read the mailing lists rules before posting.

And of course there was moderated usenet newsgroups. Or the self moderation of the alt.2600 newsgroup....

Not sure how these lessons and solutions from the past could be applied to the forums. It would be nice if developers could self-mod their own threads approving each post -- but I know I wouldn't want to be stuck with that job on some of the more popular forum posts.
[About XDA developers] tarekkkkk:
>50 posts = perfect now all the experienced members can finally rest and for100 times questions asked will be answered on its own thread in the Q/A page ;)
[About XDA developers] monkeyfishing:
XDA has the 'thanks' system. Perhaps if there were a way to 'no thanks' posts as well, then the forum magic can happen and anyone with more negatively voted posts than positively voted posts could be automatically banned from posting. no?
[About XDA developers] dffmmm:
I totally agree with you, but I would like to see an exeption for users like you and me.

Something like if you're member for more than lets say 6 months (showing you know how to use the search button and that you're not a spammer), you should be able to post everywhere.
[About XDA developers] Lennyuk:
any form of negative voting on a large forum will always be abused, always! people will end up being voted bad just because someone has a dislike to their post/rom or whatever and not because what they have said is wrong in anyway.
[About XDA developers] mrkite38:
I think that's the heart of it. Some of these devs (say, myn and mdj off the top of my head) have threads that get hundreds of posts per day. This should keep some of the junk out.

Couple of questions:

1. I assume that < 10 posts users will still be able to 'thank' in a dev thread?

2. Has anyone thought about having devs create two threads, one in dev for dev/test/advanced user questions and one in general for all the n00b questions? Might only be advisable for some of the really hot ROMS but might help guide people to the right area.

3. what about giving op's in the dev subfora the ability to delete or hide posts, or moderate them ala moderated mailing lists?
[About XDA developers] cPT.cAPSLOCK:
I'm having mixed feelings about this.

I've been a member for quite a while, but before I signed up I had been reading the forum for ages.

As people have said before, 10 posts is not that good of an indication about one's basic intelligence (which basically is the requirement for using search, using correct titles for topics, and being an asset to the community in general) and therefore I doubt whether this is the correct approach.

After all, a flamer / troll / someone-that-shouldn't-be-here will reach the 10-posts requirement much sooner than someone who only speaks their mind when he has something useful to say or if he has a question to ask that hasn't been asked before (which this member knows by searching).

While I definitely agree that it's necessary to find a way to decrease the amount of garbage on the forums, I'm not sure if this is the way to go.

We'll see how this goes, and depending on the result we can keep enforcing this or find another way.
[About XDA developers] Star Shadow:
After reading a few posts in the first page, I can confess that I lurk more and not post because I don't want to appear stupid, or like a complete newb. I just like to read posts more. I read here but only recently just registered (I think there might have been something wrong with my phone hardware wise).

I have been apart of other communities and they too had policies where you had to have so many posts before you could see or post to other sections. They do work. I does kinda force one to make themselves known more before heading to the more difficult sections. Whether it will work here or not is for time to tell.

As for as the size of XDA, I feel as long as the admins and/or moderators feel they can handle the size, then it is not too large. I do agree with what was said about not turning away people because they have a less popular phone. This is a place for development and sharing of ideas, so as long as the Admins/Moderators feel comfortable with the amount of sections, then there is no problem and everyone should except that. Yes, XDA will grow, but growth is good. It brings in fresh minds and new ideas, it's when you stay the same and stagnant do you die out. Communities evolve and become more than what they were in the beginning, it can be scary and you can panic, but in the end it's good, because XDA will live on and be great. With new people, who knows, maybe there will be new ideas done for a less popular phone that no one thought of, and those ideas will propagate to other phones. Share and share alike.

I like what I read here and I feel there are a lot of really smart people here that can help out with most questions, which is why I registered.

Cheers.
[About XDA developers] ngphobos:
True, but reaching the "10 post barrier" is i think too easy!You can see that we both have 2 already.:cool:
[About XDA developers] lillysdaddy177:
I personally think it is a good idea,Maybe your should impose a "moderation" period,

Say for example i am a new member having signed up this minute, You should make it mandatory that you have to read forum rules and "introduce" yourself in a dedicated part of the forum, therefor giving the moderators more time to clean the forums make sure people are not just "Hit and Running" or spamming.

Or implement some way of restricting certain forums (like you already are) so that again you gain "privilages" and access to the Devs section . . .

Just my pennies worth, its been implemented on various forums and is a proven way to stop spamming,hit n run's and nonsense post's . .
[About XDA developers] stevecyk:
+1

Have always been able to find what i need by reading.
[About XDA developers] tmknight:
Thoughts/Questions/Suggestions

Not being overly familiar with how vBulletin works, I have these thoughts/questions/suggestions via the forum's built-in tools:

Can we require a certain number of searches before first x number of posts? (e.g. until you've posted 10 times, you must perform 5 searches before being permitted your post). Sounds very complex to achieve, but was a thought I had.

Can we require the posting rules/suggestions to pop-up when "post reply or start thread" is selected for x number of posts? They have to read/acknowledge before the post template is revealed.

Can we require capcha for a certain number of posts before capcha is no longer required?

Can we perform word verification for a certain number of posts to ensure the words are legit? Certain words/comninations are not permitted.

Similar to above, can we require a certain number of words before a post is considered valid. Simply posting "thanks", "first", +1 is not sufficient.

Can we implement a voting system to vote-out irrelevant or redundant posts (similar to comment section of many blogs)? A type of community self-policing to relieve the strain on moderators.

Can we restrict the number of consecutive posts per period of time from users with less than x number of posts? There is a timer in place for searching, wonder if this can be extended to posting frequency.

Can the system automate notification to the poster that their post was deemed "inappropriate" with reminders of the posting rules/requirements/suggestions? We don't just want to delete without educating why - but also need to keep the education out of the topic (wagging fingers at noobs to search is part of the problem).

While I am not certain how any of these can be achieved and even if they would have the desired affect, it is clear that the DEV forums are a mess and some sort of automated solution needs to be added in addition to some way for the community to assist with policing the chaff.
[About XDA developers] Darnell_Chat_TN:
On other forums that I've seen limit rights before a certain number of posts, this is exactly what happened. People would just post 10 simple posts to reach the pre-defined posting limit.

I think a better method would be to only allow people who have received at least one "Thanks" from someone else who already has received "Thanks" to post in the Development forums. This would prevent someone who has no Thanks from creating a 2nd bogus account to give themselves Thanks. I guess you'd need to create some sort of "Super Thanks", to distinguish people who received thanks from someone who had already received thanks earlier.

Some kind of method that requires one person to vouch for another seems better.

You can only see the Thanks button on the "XDA 2010" version view of the forums, you can't see it if you're using the "XDA Classic" view.
[About XDA developers] Becksman:
First of all, I would like to thank everyone involved in this great project, this forum actually is. This goes to the moderators and administrators and the developers especially, but to every user who is dedicated to improve this site and helps others as well.

I think the suggestion made is a good first step in increasing the quality of the boards. An additional measure might be, to be stricter about the behaviour in the threads. However, this requires a huge amount of maintenance and time. But to start it would be pretty helpful, to warn and / or take effective measures against users who do not comply with the most basic rules.

Maybe the best example would be a typical CyanogenMod thread in any device's forum: Once it is written, within seconds people start spamming those threads, making it impossible to seperate useful posts from crap. 98% of all comments are:

- "Installing now"

- "Whooohooo"

- "Can't wait to try this"

- "Doesn't work on my device, please help" (without any further useful info)

This happens despite the fact, that devs regularly ask explicitly not to post such crap. If any user who would ignore such requests would receive a one week suspension, I guess the problem would be solved very fast. In the beginning it might take a little, but after that people will refrain from posting such crap, because they are aware of these consequences.

To realise this, two steps would be necessary.

1. Make the development fora visible for registered users only and put up a large, eye-popping advise on the top of the forum, that certain posts are not desired (with examples).

2. Anyone who obviously disregards this basic rule, will be suspended for a week from accessing the development fora.

I guess people would adjust their behaviour pretty quick.

Best regards and keep up the good work,

Becksman
[About XDA developers] Binary100100:
I am LOVING this idea! Maybe I won't have to be constantly deleting or moving these stupid posts in Development asking how to sim unlock or root their phones. I'm so happy! This seriously made my day (or week!)
[About XDA developers] lillysdaddy177:
I'm no expert by any mean's but if in time you need more staff, i'm willing to lend a hand? . . Maybe elevate users privileges who have over say x amount of posts ( useful posts ) and have been around for x amount of time, so they can police the forums and lessen the strain on the few who are keeping the forums afloat . . . DON'T close the forums because of some people inability to read rules and thank those who help them. . . .
[About XDA developers] boborone:
I've suggested this before, I think a time limit would be more beneficial. It makes the user read, if they want to mod, they must read before hand and not have the ability to post a thread, I BRICKED MY PHONE HELP!!!11!!!1. That would instill the fear of, hey man, I can screw up my phone, and make people read. If they do mess up, then they have to search, yeah that feature most of the new people don't use.

After say, a month, of reading. Then allow someone to post. They should be knowledgeable enough then to make coherent posts and threads and more importantly, ones that benefit the community.
[About XDA developers] irteza_h:
I agree with the problem, though the solution sounds a bit off. If a person has read a lot, and is applicable for posting in the development section, why should he have to post 10 irrelevant posts in other sections. Consider this , instead of dealing with 1 post in the development section you would be dealing with 10 in some other section.

This being said, i really agree that there are a lot of junk posts. I don't know if this can be done but here is my idea. Whenever we make a new post, the title head already shows a dropdown of similar posts. If you can match the title with the search and check to see that if more than lets say 3 keywords are the same, then the post would not be published but instead take the user to the search page. I think this would fix the problem of repeated posts.
[About XDA developers] lillysdaddy177:
Is there not a way to put a minimum amount of characters in a post's . .that will stop the silly " i'm installing" posts etc . . . say a minimal post of 30 letters?
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
This feature exists in vBulletin, and is used internally to temporarily hide a thread while it's viewable by moderators.

Given the number of new threads, we're not in a position to be approving every thread manually... There's 500,000 threads on XDA, minimum. Divide that up, and it comes out to a lot of threads per day. Not really practical, site-wide, but the features are there.

Regarding moderating own threads, that's been looked at before, but there are issues there. An unscrupulous developer could remove comments critical of their ROM or work, while still being polite, or could cause other trouble within a thread.

Perhaps a bigger issue is that I'm not aware of any method to do this, since moderating ability is per Forum, rather than Thread.

Still, fair points, but with forum specific moderators, it's a bit better now. And if a developer disappeared for personal reasons? Nobody could get support until they had time to approve hundreds of messages... And sort-of goes against the idea of a forum being for others to help you with your questions... The dev would be left with everything.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Not going to work, I'm afraid. Positive voting is really the only successful rating system against a user, as any negative system is too easy to sway (I say this from experience, as I've looked into such things before)
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
1. Yes, users with more than 5 posts (to prevent thanks abuse) will be able to thank as normal.

2. Yes, I suggested that before in this thread :) It's something I'm aware of, and am happy to discuss with any developer, as it's possible to assign the second post to a designated "support" person too :)

3. See my previous post.
[About XDA developers] tonyzoc:
I tend the think the net result of this policy change will result in a flood of "custom ROM" questions posting to the general forum rather than the developer forum where they belong.

Maybe all posts should be in a que and face approval from moderators prior to actually posting. (Yes, allot of work....but do you really think forcing noobs to play 10 questions to the general form is going to somehow stop dumb questions.)

Maybe relaxing a bit, take a breath or two, and just ignoring questions you find annoying, and answering questions you find worthwhile to be the ultimate solution.

I'm still wondering what a "garbage" post is? Maybe this is one.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Being overly familiar with vBulletin (:eek:), I can answer these questions from a general perspective, and will pass on some of these.

1. Don't think that's a good idea. I'm sure it could be coded from scratch, but searches are intensive on resources, and you don't want people "facerolling" searches to reach a number. TBH if someone will not search properly, and doesn't see the value in it, then we can't really do much about that. They could simply search for "chicken", and then ignore the results, rinse and repeat...

2. Perhaps... Custom code or addon required.

3. Yes, I think this is possible by default, will check, as I like this idea :)

4. Yes, I know how to do this, and am aware of this one :) More as a block-list, but it's do-able.

5. Currently, a post requires 10 characters to be "valid". People will spam out the length, no matter how long a post you require.

6. I like this idea, and am trialing it on a site I use for testing vBulletin on. It's an addon that does this, digg-style

7. Yes, this is something we're aware of, and it's already here :) New users can't flood posts - 5 minute flood-period on them.

8. If a post is out of line, there's a nice button that issues a warning or infraction to users... You won't see it there obviously, but it makes it easy to send a formal warning about something, which is recorded.

Hope that is of interest, from a general (non XDA) perspective.
[About XDA developers] Becksman:
I agree to this suggestion. The vast majority of posts is some useless call for "HELP". A time limit will give new users the time to research, search and to find a solution for their problem, or the time to read into how rooting works.

Regarding the suggestion of a minimum post length: This might work in the combination with new users (so people with a certain amount of posts are only allowed to post if the post has a minimum amount of characters), but I would say it would be a hassle for devs. E.g. if you only want to discuss which ADB command could work for something, you should be able to post just the command instead of having to inflate your post with useless characters.

Regards,

Becksman
[About XDA developers] lauchon:
an idea...

what about forcing to read the forums rules, by making an online test?? the ones who scores over an xx% will be allowed to post in specific trheads?? creating ten (10) standar questions will make people read before they can post. Just an Idea...
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
We've got a large number of mods, called Forum Specific Mods, who act in their "home forums", and a couple of others. They basically do this job, and are selected by being here for over 6 months, being helpful, and contributing to the overall XDA atmosphere. More info in the announcement in About XDA, underneath Svetius' one about this, where it is about applying to be such a mod.

We won't close the forums off, but these changes mean everyone can read and enjoy them without finding questions posted all over the place from new users.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Trouble with a time limit is that I read the forum for about a week before registering. But when I registered, I was ready to post, and had made a basic "ROM" that booted etc... And had rooted my phone without asking any questions on the process...

To insist someone reads for a month will just drive people away.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Well, if they make 10 junk posts, I'll find them, and I'll deal with them as such. :)

There are flood controls on posting. These restrictions will encourage support threads in Q&A, where people should be asking questions, rather than in development.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
It's currently 10 characters.
[About XDA developers] pulser_g2:
Perhaps... But what if devs make a thread for "MyROM 1.2.3 Questions" in Q&A?
[About XDA developers] lillysdaddy177:
I think that will work in theory, you know, say i post for help, then have my posting restricted for 5 mins, but only on that particular forum. . . . Maybe it'll be too laborious to implement . . ?

I agree it mat be radical and a pain in the bum to do, But In order to get results you need to put effort in,It'll be worth it in the long run.

I also like the idea of the ability of reasonably well established members say 200 posts or more, to police a certain part or have the ability to warm members etc . . . .I have noticed alot more members popping up around the time when new rom get released etc, they get what they want, with silly and wasteful posts like heeeeelp!!,i've bricked it . . then they get the help they were after and then once they have what they are after they "run" . . . Its members who only post say 5 times then leave, and not return that are clogging the forums also . . . . Maybe if a member don't post for a month has to be reactivated . . . ?
[About XDA developers] tilleke:
Hmm...there are positive and negative aspects to this change.

I am a developer of software for mobile-devices (Windows Mobile and Android). In my case, my published software here at XDA is not a matter of clicking on a button and everything works out of the box - instead my software requires some configuration what regards networking and other particular set-up files (but that's the nature of my software of course).

I have normally advised new users of my applications to come here at XDA and read my threads and see if they find a solution to their problems or post a question if they are stuck. Of course, with the new rule, many new users will not be able to ask their questions and not being able to run my software. In addition, they will not be able to leave valuable feedback until they have posted 10 posts somewhere else.

I guess the idea behind this new rule is to reduce many of those "not necessary" posts in the crowded threads dealing with various builds of Android and ROM-development but for me, who is posting in the less crowded threads of "Windows Mobile Software Development" and "Android Software Development", this new rule does not make sense and could halt the development of my projects.

Just my thoughts...
[About XDA developers] lillysdaddy177:
But therein lies the issue with these silly post's,i personally think 10 characters is to low a number, If you have a real issues or genuine question's then its highly likely you are going to need in excess of 30 digit's just my logic . . .