Code Posters Plague Community!

[diafol]

The Community Forum on Daniweb has been hijacked by code posters. There appear to be loads of these people posting their junk all over the place. WTF? If you can't find a (sub)forum that fits your niche, the next best thing is the community forum!

So next time you can't find an obviously suitable place in your wardrobe to hang your waistcoat, do the next best thing and hang it in the kitchen. Oh wait up, you then realise that you DO have a place to hang your waistcoat in the wardrobe after all. Ah sod it, you buy more waistcoats and keep hanging them in the kitchen. By now, you've started a trend. Total strangers are hanging their clothes in your kitchen too. Some are hanging trousers, some scarves... you think "cheeky gits".

[JamesCherrill]

If someone has code or a question re Java I'd be happy to see it no matter where they posted it. When we had specific forums for specific topics we didn't have this problem. Now all we have is tumbleweed blowing and settling at random. :(

[happygeek]

People aren't tagging their posts effectively is at least part of the problem.

[diafol]

When we had specific forums for specific topics we didn't have this problem

Indeed.

[JamesCherrill]

People aren't tagging their posts effectively is at least part of the problem

When people have a problem using something blame the people?

[diafol]

People aren't tagging their posts effectively is at least part of the problem.

While that is surely part of a wider issue (like my tags! he he), I think this is debatable, as many of the code-help posts here are actually tagged with java, asp.net, etc. Just they didn't realise that they were posting to the Community Center. The "Start a New Discussion" is a generic invitation. With the tagging system, some may assume that the post would get listed automatically under certain forums from wherever they make the new thread.

It's never affected me as I'm used to the old "forum" system. We now seem to have a hybrid system, that allows threads to be placed in ONE (sub)forum - and a tagging system that: helps search / get related posts / visually or manually filters threads. I can see why somebody would get confused.

Maybe a Post this to the ... (sub)forum dropdown - but seems retrograde.

[AssertNull]

At the risk of psychoanalyzing and doing a regression analysis/correlation with too few data points, I'll note a downslope in the severity/outrageousness of the problem and an upslope in the motives/intelligence of the offending posters in Diafol's posts with relation to time elapsed from whatever may have caused his early-morning bad mood (too lazy at the moment to do the time-zone math required to confirm that the thread was indeed started in the morning) . First it's a "plague" with "loads of people" committing "WTF"-level stupidity and selfishness, the content "junk". Morons are hanging their clothes in the kitchen and other morons are following suit. Something must be done!

Then JC and HG weighed in with posts suggesting it might not just be that these are hopeless selfish morons and this is a fixable problems. I saw this and thought "Popcorn time. Diafol's going to double down and there's going to be a big fight that I can watch and enjoy."

Then he... agrees with HG and offers a nuanced response to JC, half agreeing and offering mature feedback on why the problem occurs and how it could constructively be solved, suggesting that he now believes that these are good-willed people who put in an effort to do it right and he "can see why somebody would get confused". A civil conversation. My Jerry Springer fantasy of HG losing his cool and telling Diafol he slept with his wife and making a bunch of anti-Welsh epithets is dashed.

You've done a 180 here Diafol. The kicker is that this "plague" has "never affected you". Is this a problem needing to be solved or not?

[diafol]

Ha ha very funny. No, not quite AN. Firstly - tongue-in-cheek rant about apprearance of rubbish strewn all over DW. Would like something done about it though. Getting bored with flagging for moderation - move to approp. forum.

WRT to my agreeing with both JC and HG - well that's because I do agree with them. JC - as the forum structure has become confused (IMO) and HG because tagging is not really working as it should.

I offered an idea as I don't generally like to rant (much!! he he) and then not back it up with something constructive.

For me not being affected much was a nod to not being confused by the "start a discussion" prompt and posting to the wrong forum.

Now finally, as for pirouetting around on my original stance AN - I have been known to change my mind when a better argument surfaces. I bend so I don't snap. Although not sure if that was the case here. Anyway, whatever - hope those waistcoats find a place in the wardrobe :)

[AssertNull]

On to my contribution to productive discussion, though always reserving the right to re-hijack this slightly with smartass replies.

I just "started" a new thread just to remind myself how it went. I didn't go through the whole process obviously and perhaps I didn't go far enough, but I saw nowhere to specify the forum I wanted this new topic to be in. I assume the default is whatever forum you're in NOW?

Maybe a Post this to the ... (sub)forum dropdown - but seems retrograde.

Since we still have forums and subforums here and the whole point of your thread is that people aren't putting new topics in the right one, it hardly seems retrogade. It seems easy to implement too. I imagine it would help. Don't see a downside to it.

And retrogade is the new trend. Go to an Early-20's event. Listen to the music. Today's kids are the first generation that nod in agreement when their parents tell them their music sucks and they're blaring Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Peter Gabriel from their crappy cars. I'm finally cool again when I tell them I saw those guys live. They're jealous of that and the fact that I went to it in a 1967 Cadillac Coup De Ville gas burner that could fit seven people comfortably and the sky's the limit when parking is three bucks per car and you're all broke. They'll never ever have that experience and they know it. I of course hype the stories up to make them even more miserable.

So don't worry about retro. Drop-down menus still kick ###, plus I'm a function over syle kind of guy anyway.

[Reverend Jim]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don't see why new threads containing code, or tagged with C++, java, vb, etc. can't be automatically moved to the programming forum. Why involve the moderators at all?

[ddanbe]

OK Jim, but where to place for example a thread like this one?
It is tagged with C#,vb.net and even vb6.

[Reverend Jim]

Exactly where it was when I looked at it. In the Programming forum. Better there than in the Community forum.

[ddanbe]

I agree.

[Reverend Jim]

I figure the tags could be scanned for the obvious language tage. If one is found then put it in that language (if there is a place for it). If more than one then it can go in Programming.