Ten Years of TV Forum (and how to fix it)

[m-in-m]

I wasn't even aware any moderation happened in t'other place - perhaps it's just far less visible to all around than over here or another forum I am on.

Perhaps additional moderators (considering no one will be interested in every thread) and make the moderation more visible - then it acts as a warning to newer members.

[dosxuk]

I actually look fondly back on the days when there were complaints of over-zealous and heavy-handed moderation. At least the cretins knew where they stood...

Anyway, my suggestions:

- (Re)join TV Home Forum and The Newsroom and dedicate it to Presentation

- Create a new Presenters & Personalities forum

- Change the Media Websites forum into two parts - an alphabetical list of related sites (TV Room / TV Ark / TV live and the hundreds of yolasites), which can have one thread for updates, and a forum for other sites (such as bbc.co.uk / channel4.com). They are two different types of site and often a big update to one of the broadcasters sites gets hidden underneath a layer of crap with skyidents' myriad of sites being updated constantly. Some sort of rating (could affect the sorting) of the related sites could allow the wheat to be seperated from the yolasit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H chaf.

- Run a monthly challenge in The Gallery - it only needs a theme set by the admin team, and while we would end up with lots of similar mocks each month, it might provide some variation from the normal BBC News / Daybreak mocks that inhabit the place, and also allow those who are good to shine, while showing those who are crap what they need to do to improve. Winners (based on ratings at the end of the month) get a badge to display in their profile, and a title underneath their name on their posts.

- Make the Requests section easier to use - ask questions instead of a freeform posting - add categories - rate responses (like the various Yahoo Answers type sites). Instead of just getting a new topic button, have a new request button, with "What are you after? Audio, Video, Graphics, Fonts, Homework Help, or something else?", "When and where did you see it?" and "Where have you already looked" type questions to make the posts easier to read. When someone does supply an answer to the request (and the OP marks the topic as met), that reply should be moved to underneath the OP to allow the answers to be found quickly.

Across the site:
- Moderation
- Have sticky threads pointing out what each forum is for
- Moderation
- Moderators who post guidance, rules and instructions when things need to be said. This keeping everything in the background and not publically telling people off is only good for so much. Sometimes you need the "OI! Stop IT!" type posts.
- Moderation
- Strictly enforce the rules. If a group of people are harrasing someone, give them all 24 hour bans and post saying so - they don't have to name names, but it serves as a warning to everyone else. If things (like the IDIOTIC X-Factor thread) appear, delete it as soon as possible. Don't wait for things to boil over.
- Moderation
- Reputation system, with an automatic ban for 24 hours if someone gets -25 points on a single post in (say) an hour. Should stop the idiots (MMTV, mrBBC, ethan) from posting crap if they lose the ability to after each post.
- Moderation
- Linked to that, user levels. With appropriate labels like "trainee tea monkey" up to "been here since the heydey of TVF (1924)". If your reputation gets high enough, you move up a level. The site really needs a way that someone (like noggin) posts stand out from amongst those from people like jdav. And that new people joining the site can see that it's knowledge and approval from other posters which improve your standings, not asking the most questions.
- And finally, moderation

I shall finish on, I don't understand these comments about there not being as much presentation stuff going on these days as there used to. Yes, we don't have any dire attempts at IVC on the mainstream channels at the moment (ITV2/BBC3 I'm looking at you), but we have new channels launching on an almost daily basis. Hardly a day goes by when there isn't some new presentational device being used. Or going wrong. Or falling off air. Or accidentally broadcasting the wrong thing. It's not that presentation has changed, it's that the forum has. In previous years, Question Time falling off air (albeight for a few seconds) would have got a thread to itself, with detailed discussion of what could have gone wrong, queries about what the "5" meant, what they should do to prevent it happening, and finally an answer from someone in the know as to what did happen. Instead we got about 5 posts tucked away in the BBC One thread.

[Malpass93]

They should impose the "you can't post for 14 days after your register" rule. It would deter trolls.

And piss off any intelligent person who may want to join.

I like dosxuk's propositions, but they might be seen as changing too much at once.

[Pete]

You're right malpass, it would prevent people with instant answers signing up.

[Malpass93]

You're right malpass, it would.prevent people with instant answers.signing up.

Indeed it would.

*scurries back to corner*

[eoin]

In previous years, Question Time falling off air (albeight for a few seconds) would have got a thread to itself, with detailed discussion of what could have gone wrong, queries about what the "5" meant, what they should do to prevent it happening, and finally an answer from someone in the know as to what did happen. Instead we got about 5 posts tucked away in the BBC One thread.

This.

I've been reading (and occasionally posting on) TV Forum since late 2003 (I started reading around the time when News 24 relaunched, with Jamez providing leaked images of those awful lower thirds, which nobody believed could be real because they used about 40 different shades of red combined with teal and orange). It was before the "good old days" that are often reminisced about here, but things were certainly very different when I joined. Threads were about relaunches and presentation tweaks. If I remember correctly there were little or no generic threads for news channels. These then became commonplace, there was some debate over their role and the pro-generics won out. I still can't remember why.

With nothing of note actually happening on these news channels and a new forum (The Newsroom) having been created purely to house the megathreads, they became the ideal breeding ground for the kind of inane rubbish that the forum is plagued with nowadays, the notoriously shite ITV News thread being the earliest example.

This then spread beyond news channels to news organisations in general. The generic threads became so unbearable that they were split into presentation and presenters. Finally, in the last two or three years, this phenomenon made it over to the main forum where channels now have their own megathreads with no defined purpose, full of dull posts related vaguely to the channel, intermingled with the odd interesting nugget about a genuine change in presentation.

These threads have killed real discussion of TV presentation. Think, for example, of all the times that the News channel has tweaked or completely changed a countdown, or the many minor presentational changes that Sky News went through after its disastrous 2005 relaunch, none of which had their own dedicated threads. Sometimes new threads about minor changes are created, only to be merged by mods into the existing megathread.

Obviously this is not the only reason for site's decline, but it's a biggie, the main one in my opinion and I don't think it gets the credit it deserves for ruining TV Forum.

[WillPS]

+1.

I avoid pretty much all the News threads since they're totally rammed with crap I'm not interested in. A rebrand could totally fly past me.

[Pete]

I have to agree with the vast majority of both dosxuk and eoin's posts. The generic threads, whilst perhaps understandable for regions at the time of their occurrence, have RUINED the forum and are the root cause of the inaneness.

Also regarding moderation, I generally have two issues with the moderators as they are currently doing their jobs:

1. There is a difference in style between the moderation of here and the moderation of over there. Essentially, from what I can discern, the viewpoint over there is that moderation should be very subtle, as in unseen. Over here meanwhile the viewpoint is that moderation should occur directly on the forum, as publicly as possible.

Now I've done to death the issues of how moderation on here is actually very light, however I suspect this is in part due to the very public nature of how it occurs. Whilst doing it behind closed doors may seem more polite and tidier I believe, in the long run, it is counter productive.

What happens is there is no publicly visible boundary, and given that the "on site" arguments are often made to disappear as if they never happened there is no record of what is deemed acceptable or not. What this leads to - as I see it - is a lack of visible ground rules and therefore what appears to be a free reign for the morons to post what they like as they cannot see that it is unacceptable. Those who may question them also have nowhere to point back to to show this sort of behaviour is unacceptable.

As for point two, I noticed this comment the other day:

FYI I'm here pretty much every day, I don't wade in as much as I used to but the thread you mention isn't particularly awful IMO, it's a little out of place here but it's had mostly sensible responses.

Now, having done a search, that excludes on our side the staff forums, and on their side the posts that becomes untruths I noticed something rather telling:



Obviously, posting level is not a measure of quality, otherwise we'd have Worzel running the place, however it does seem rather odd that on a forum you are a member of staff on, a "community leader" one could say, the posting levels are so low. Just pointing out that when people go "where are the mods?" they actually might have a point.

(I included ison btw in light of the fact he was asked to step down given how inactive he was)

[all new Phil]

Obviously, posting level is not a measure of quality, otherwise we'd have Worzel running the place

Would that mean we'd have to stand up when we start typing out a new post?

[iSon]

...however it does seem rather odd that on a forum you are a member of staff on, a "community leader" one could say, the posting levels are so low.

Are you trying to upset me?

[Pete]

Are you trying to upset me?

Always.