Re^2: "Off Topic" nodes

My impression is that most of the OT nodes here are actually very restrained.

Mine too.

I don't quite understand why people seem to get so hot and bothered about "prevalent" OT nodes. If off-topic nodes were particularly common, or if many of them were blatantly spammy, then I'd be more symptathetic -- hell, I'd probably be in the vanguard of the charge to curtail them. But as it stands, we don't get very many OT nodes at all (as a SWAG, I think maybe two to five "OT-delete" considerations a week), and most of them are at least glancingly related (Javascript questions, for instance, as opposed to job postings or foobar-enlargement-pill adverts). I just don't think the "problem" is worth the effort it would take to "solve" it without causing more harm than good.

That said, I haven't really done a lot of research for this reply; I'm just going by my perceptions. Don't take my word for it! :-)

-- F o x t r o t U n i f o r m Found a typo in this node? /msg me % man 3 strfry

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Re^3: "Off Topic" nodes by apotheon (Deacon) on Oct 29, 2004 at 05:33 UTC
My knee-jerk reaction is that you're right on the money. While it might make sense to allow people to check a box in user settings so that they can "ignore" all OT-marked nodes, I think that any additional administrative treatment of topic policing beyond what's done now is likely to fail to have the desired effect. Signal:Noise ratio (in this case, on-topic:off-topic) is very high here at PerlMonks — higher than almost any other specialized online community I've seen. Attempts at stricter controls run the risk of either producing a paradoxical reaction or reducing that "community" aspect (if not both). Take all of this rambling of mine with a grain of salt. I have no scientific evidence to back this up. I'm mostly going by gut instinct, here. - apotheon CopyWrite Chad Perrin	[reply]

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Re^3: "Off Topic" nodes
by apotheon (Deacon) on Oct 29, 2004 at 05:33 UTC

My knee-jerk reaction is that you're right on the money. While it might make sense to allow people to check a box in user settings so that they can "ignore" all OT-marked nodes, I think that any additional administrative treatment of topic policing beyond what's done now is likely to fail to have the desired effect. Signal:Noise ratio (in this case, on-topic:off-topic) is very high here at PerlMonks — higher than almost any other specialized online community I've seen. Attempts at stricter controls run the risk of either producing a paradoxical reaction or reducing that "community" aspect (if not both).

Take all of this rambling of mine with a grain of salt. I have no scientific evidence to back this up. I'm mostly going by gut instinct, here.

- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

[reply]