Can we open up a dialogue here on possible “forum” policy changes/management ? As we are entering a new era, it seems like an opportunity to add some new ground rules. The type of thing that springs to mind right now, is AOVYP. We have had an influx of “talented” guitarist arriving on the doorstep and dropping stellar performances for their first ever post. They then proceed to add no further input to the forum and no previous links to using Justin’s courses. OK this is the Grumpy Old Man in me but these folk are just using our members to up their YT ratings and no doubt their coinage. I don’t want to discourage Community members and JG students posting in AOVYP but I think this is an opportunity to stop these people taking advantage. I know from the replies Richard and David have politely made to these folk and I myself on occasions that this activity is recognised by not just me and also not welcome. I don’t know what other’s think but the launch of this new platform seems like an ideal time to do something about it. If I can be locked out for exceeding a set number of replies or creating too many posts, as a new member, I am sure we can ring fence certain areas to make this self policing. If this has already been covered within the JGT apologies but seemed like a good time to raise the issue.
We have lots of seasoned “forumites” here, so there may be of issues that may need reviewing while we have the opportunity to do it.
Conversely, if there are any policies being discussed in the background, would it be a good idea to run them past us Guinea pigs, so you can gauge potential member reaction ? And to be clear I am not referencing data migration in that discussion.
It’s true, we have those people from time to time, coming in, acting real friendly, and promoting a video as their introduction.
Truth is, they create throw-away acocunts on many platforms like this and they won’t be bothered in getting thrown out.
It’s hard to detect these people right away and we give people the benefit of the doubt.
Everybody gets a fair chance here.
It’s a good point you raise this issue again though, as we might be able to run some smarter reporting now, on people posting links and then never coming back.
Also: We do have to find a good way to present the guidelines.
Not all “rule-y” and conservative BUT easy to find, read and reference to if needed.
Is there a way to prevent posting of links or videos until you’ve passed some milestone, such as number of posts, like we had with the old platform?
I noticed that the platform has some concept of “trust levels” which was, initially, limiting how much people could post. Maybe it’s possible to tie into that?
The Trust Levels I encountered on the first day made me think about raising the issue. I appreciate its almost impossible to identify this type of “poster” up front. But a restricted access to AOVYP might discourage some not all. However, we need to make sure we don’t give away a bypass to those restriction, like we do/did on the old forum.
“Hey I can’t do this”
“that’s ok post this 5 time and all will be well”
Difficult to police but I just have a thing about folk turning up just to milk Justin’s students and followers, for their own self promotion.
But hey I am sure we have time to consider options and see what others think.
So when you visit my channel, please hit that SUBSCRIBUTION button and all the other stuff that goes over my head. Only kidding !!!1
Slap me a like, hit subscribe … my inner voice is shouting just how much slapping and hitting I’d like to do … to the Channel Owner. And the ones that niggle me the most are those YTers that have made a special clip of them asking for likes and subscribes that they append to every video. That’s the moment when I hit the return to home page button
And I think my “thanks for watching, comments welcomed” is different
i actually think that’s fine as it requires some human interaction on their behalf.
It’s been a long time since I was a forum moderator, but the patterns I see here as a user seem familiar. Most of these posts are drive-by spammers. They are trying to post their links on as many forums as they can. They generally don’t have time to interact and go through some process in order to be able to post their spam.
So, in practice, these sorts of limitations seem to do a great job of putting off unwanted spammers.
One of the problem with the old forum is it didn’t seem to restrict the posting of Youtube links, so most of this sort of spam was from first-and-only time posters.
The mods may correct me with this, but I don’t recall any case where someone has gone through the “5 or more posts” thing and then turned out to be a spammer.
That all makes sense Keith, especially the drive-by analogy. And I am sure an automated gatekeeper using the protocols I have already seen, would deter most. Certainly the minimum Title and post characters would work, its already driving me crazy and I am not fishing for viewers !!
Please subscribe like and hit the notification doofers and I’ll be you bezzie for life.
Thanks for your insights all.
We’ll know to deploy as soon as deemed necessary; this tech has some out-of-the-box solutions for trust levels. Implementation to be considered.
On the old form there where some spammers that got around the 5 post thing before posting
external links. On this platform I think it may be harder to by pass because you have to be a
member of the the website to access the forum.
On the old forum you could access it thought Google with out signing up to the JustinGuitar site
There was / is a Sticky in forum AVOYP stating etiquette etc.
I can look at that - rewrite (probably condense and neaten) and add it over here too.
For sure, the people being alluded to here ignore it but if it is there as a marker then members and mods can point to it is say - “hey, you’re being uncool!”
Great idea Richard, certainly needed. I think there will be a good chance that the character and post limits will discourage these chancers and they’ll go off to spam other sites.
This has been bothering me for a while on the old forum and I’ve been pretty vocal about it too before my extended ‘break’. Since this is not open to the public and will possible be deleted before the big launch I feel comfortable dropping names.
There are three kinds of ‘spammers’:
People who only come in to post their stuff and don’t contribute anything else to the forum outside their threads: wyldelife, WimVD, etc.
They’re obviously there only for themselves and that’s fine - atleast they have some kind of relation to JustinGuitar and don’t pretend to be something they’re not. They’re not harming anyone and maybe they can inspire newcomers to pick up the guitar and practice which is great. You’ll never see me replying to their threads however.
People who come to shill their YT channel under false pretenses: mikeydob, Tomasz A, etc.
“I’ve been playing for years and here is my wisdom! Justin who?”
We have lessons and courses for that, thanks. Should not be tolerated but can be given benefit of the doubt.
Scam / spam / etc.
Outright ban, no questions asked.
Hopefully trust levels will be enough to weed out or dissuade 2 and 3, otherwise the flag system is there as backup. This is why I was testing flags in that other thread to see how many are actually needed to hide the offending post but maybe @LievenDV can tell us about the thresholds instead.
Even the recent ones who already have a foot in the door, will have to go though those initial hoops when they move over and may therefore be discouraged, At least I hope so. I now tend to adopt Adi’s approach, when the next post arrives and just don’t view it or only to pass through it. In fact I use the phone app to mark entries like that read, so by the time I get to the PC its already been flushed,
I don’t think we have the equivalent here but I am off to look at the shortcuts again !
Took a look at the thresholds which seem reasonable and clearly defined.
I am sure this was raised before and there were restrictions when we were first granted access
but now seeing the requirements for each TL, is there a facility to ringfence a sub category by Trust Level ? I am thinking for “Drive By” management for example, AOVYP accessible by TL2 and above ?
I am not convinced getting to the TL1 level would be a sufficient deterrent, as they will be made public as was suggested and with which I agree. Whereas the requirements for TL2 would most likely do so.
To get to TL1 would take you at most the 10-15 minutes, I would think the persistent Drive By Player would not see it as much of a hurdle and likely encountered elsewhere (?).
TL2 would take a week minimum and a lot more effort, plus none of what I would call our “normal” members are posting in AOVYP in their first two weeks or two months for that matter. Access to AOVYP after say a couple weeks in reality, would be an acceptable time span for new folk joining the Community, so I would suggest if we took that option, not switching it on until Jan 15th in line with the “all new users enter @ TL Zero” directive, would protect existing users from being penalised and encourage engagement.
Just a thought.
Get to trust level 1 by…
Entering at least 3 topics
Reading at least 15 posts
Spend a total of 5 minutes reading posts
Get to trust level 2 by…
Visiting at least 7 days, not sequentially (default 15)
