All is not happy in OMNI-land. Despite having been given back OMNI after losing it once, it would appear that people are once again engaging in annoying, anti-social behaviour. While this behaviour is not currently against the TOS, most people would agree that it doesn't contribute a great deal to the board.

So why not change the rules? One of the most noticable anti-social behaviours taking place in OMNI right now is needless bumping of posts. A quick, easy way to deal with this is an anti-bumping rule. I suspect that an anti-bumping rule would be welcomed by most FTers, in the same way as the 'no cross-posting' rule.

In my mind, 'bumping' is the act of moving an old thread to the top of the pile without adding any meaningful or relevant contribution. On FT, bumping has taken a number of forms:

- the throw-away one-liner
- the "see also" link to another thread (which should be handled by moderators only, IMO)
- the news article with no original content added
- the smilie

I'm sure I've missed some, but these are the worst culprits.

It should be stressed to all posters that posts should only be 'bumped' if you have something important and meaningful to contribute, like a couple paragraphs at least. No one-liners, no smilies, no links to news articles. Infractions of the 'bumping' rule attract warnings; repeated infractions indicate to me someone who should probably receive a temporary or permanent ban.

It's no fun to come into a forum only to find page one flooded with months-old topics bumped by someone who has nothing more valuable to contribute than, "Yeah, I agree with this," or, "Any update on this?" This is spam, pure and simple. And with a board as good and valuable as FT, it's a shame to let a few people spoil it for the rest of us.

What do others think about a no-bumping rule?

I disagree mostly, although you do raise some good points. I think the solution lies more in the creation of a news link specific forum. If we eliminate all the news links from OMNI, we will have solved 90% of the problem.

Okay, I'll bite. Why do you disagree? What are some valid reasons for bumping up old posts, and why do they make a positive contribution to this board? The only situation I can think of is some of the posts which are occasionally bumped by moderators (like the FAQ in the Mileage Run forum), but I think that UBB has the capability to make some posts "sticky", which could solve the problem.



[This message has been edited by MatthewClement (edited 09-23-2003).]

People? Or person? (always the same person...)

I think that the answer is 'people', although I will grant you that some are more persistent offenders than others.

There are enough legitimate reasons for bumping that I would be very sad to see a "No Bumping" rule imposed.

I, for instance, recently bumped this thread, with the happy result that I got to meet eastwest, which I assure you was a truly delightful and enriching experience. I have also seen instances where a long-time FlyerTalker has reached back into the archives and pulled forward a thread that was very interesting to the newer posters and fun for those who have been around for a long time.

Now bumping for the sake of bumping, or to prove some testosterone (it always seems to be boys) laden point, is a bit silly and annoying, but we can always just ignore them. I realize that the primary parental rule of ignoring bad behavior and encouraging good behavior doesn't seem to work on FT as well as it did on my kids, but there is always hope.

IMHO, a better (and easier) option would be to archive OMNI posts using the same criteria as is used on the Miles side. The only difference is that I'd see no need to save the archived OMNI Posts.

Just my $.02

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Sean
aka: skofarrell
Moderator, OMNI & American Express

[This message has been edited by skofarrell (edited 09-23-2003).]

It's tricky to simply 'ignore' the behaviour when the first three pages of OMNI are full of nothing but bumps.

And I don't think that archiving is the right solution. Firstly, I think that OMNI should be archived (because there are some very funny and some very useful threads in there worthy of saving). Secondly, the problem recently has concerned posts which were only a week or two old, so archiving wouldn't help.

Punki, I agree that there are some legitimate reasons for a bump. But it doesn't take a brain surgeon to spot a 'legitimate' bump from a frivilous one. I'm not proposing a blanket "no bumping ever under any circumstances" rule. I'm proposing a broad no-bumping policy, but one with clear enough guidelines about what is and isn't acceptible.

Or maybe we shouldn't do this at all. Maybe we should just punish the users who are causing trouble. Why implement a rule that affects 100% of posters when only 0.01% are demonstrating that they can't control themselves?

BINGO

I little bit of self control and self-moderation goes a LONG, LONG way.

We should stop talking "rules" and "TOS" and just let the moderators who I TRUST and RESPECT to ban anyone who is disruptive to the general flow of posts in Omni.

Whether it's for useless bumps, deliberate duplicate postings or personal attacks, I think it's time to start removing posting rights for a few days per violation. It has to stop somewhere. If nothing is done then pretty soon we'll be without Omni FOR GOOD. It's always the same reason Omni's troubles errupt. Last week we had a period without a certain poster and for a week long we didn't have a single issue with Omni. I'm not laying the blame on one person, there are 2 sides to this but it has to end NOW.

It was my understanding that (currently) only Randy has the ability to suspend users.

I'd be happy with the moderators (who are closely involved in OMNI and are aware of the situation on a day-to-day basis) making decisions about including or excluding people from OMNI. Maybe that's the right solution to this problem?

I was told that the moderators for Omni will be getting a tool to revoke the posting rights. As I said earlier, I trust Skofarrell and JFE enough to use that tool well and hope it is implemented ASAP. Once someone sees his posting rights removed for a few days each time they disrupt omni then I'm quite confident things will be back to normal pretty soon.

I agree that Moderators should have the ability to suspend someone from OMNI, even for 24 - 48 hrs until RP has a chance to look at the matter. As for it being one person, it is not. One continually adds news topics, which I ignore, but another continually bumps old threads, starts duplicate threads etc. - that is much harder to ignore as you have no idea when real content has been added, or he is just being a @ss.

Suspend away.

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For a truly unique FT experience, surf over to the Air Canada forum, where employees control the content and dissension is not tolerated.

Okay, I, for one, am going to just keep my mouth shut for a couple weeks, and see how things play out. I'm sure everything is going to work out just fine in OMNI (and I'm glad it's back - we all need to just calm down and give it time, as Randy asked).

But it's still a 2 way street when it is done in response to one person. As I said, I'm not blaiming ONE person here, it's a larger picture. ONE person however is able to provoke a reaction from many others.