Admin :

Whatever. The damage has been done.

I have been reading a thread on not606, and there now appears to be a schism. Several there want the Spurs 606 tribe to come together, but they are increasingly stating that they won't be coming here.

They appear to like a lot of the features on not606. But the telling comment is they perceive that the WUM situation is under much better control there than here.

And on that point, you should take heed.
Warned by me and others near day one of ja606 about the likes of Michigan (who single-handedly attempted to ruin the Spurs BBC 606 board) , and the need to control them.

But quick to wipe out Ensil accounts (who ironically and FYI , was one Spurs BBC 606 denizen who fought hardest to purge the Spurs board of WUM vermin) .

How committed are you to the WUM issue ??
We want our forum free of them, and are doing what we can.

What about you ??

Committed enough to do something simple like showing me how to write/change your web page presentation for the "comment by" box from blue to red, so I can complete the WUM filter for denizens here ??

It was always going to happen, it always does when a board closes. The members get scattered all over the web. I tried posting over on Not606, but there seems to be an unhealthy bias towards the Liverpool and Arsenal boards, with the Spurs board members appearing gutless. A lot of them over there seem to think that this place is infested with WUMs, although my experience of the matter is that neither place is worse than the other, on that particular score. I don't think we have a WUM problem, here, to be honest. It is important that we maintain a healthy balance between serious comment and banter, which I think is achieved, here. At the other place, they seem to be too far up each others backsides.

I am committed to the WUM cause.
I have the means to build a simple WUM filter that I can distribute to all our clan, that will allow each of us to decide who to render irrelevant, and how (ignore, identify etc) .

At the moment I could provide something that would remove all postings (articles, comments etc) by identified WUMs from view. But tis too Draconian (I would prefer users to see their rubbish easily identified to be ignored) , and doesn't help article creators quickly identify WUM infestations on their articles, so they can quickly remove them before non-filter users take the bait.

I am not web page / CSS fluent. All I want to know is how to change one part of the web page a different colour. With that, I believe I can complete the job.

I would prefer the bods who actually produce the content on this site to tell me (they would know best) , but failing that, is anyone here CSS fluent to look at the page sources to see how/where I can change the "comment by" box from blue to red ??

RDBD - how does your software determine who is a WUM and who isn't ?

The RDBD (crossing the void) (U1062) - I wouldn't bother working on that if I were you!!! Cause you will be kicking yourself in a couple of weeks. We are "WORKING" on WUMs

JPB :

You do.

You would just put the user ids (U12345 etc) into a list, and the rest is done. So if you recall the Michigan "Joker" OCD account on 606, who regularly changed his display name to confuse people, that would be pointless as he cannot change his user id.

And you could have consensus.
Once every N days we can decide who the WUM vermin are of late, update a default list that would then get shipped with the filter.

But providing on demand edit of the list is no big deal.

And FYI, what you call "software" is not really that. Merely a web page that provides a facade to a bit of Javascript that reformats the page according to the config (remove certainly, highlighting I hope very soon) .

You may have noticed Michigan is now no longer using the site.

Sounds like a challenge.

Tell you what, someone from your side give me the CSS info I desire, and we'll see who can do what, how quickly, and how simply.

FYI, I am looking at JS DOM analysis of your pages, adjusting the content based on the "filter" criteria, and then redisplaying the subsequent tree.

Mitchigan is a sad Spurs obsessed OCD.
He will be back anywhere he is allowed.

But there will be much more basic forms of WUM here. My philosophy is let them come. I will attempt to provide the tools to let them be rendered irrelevant (the temptation to reply goes if you cannot see their postings) , or expedite the removal process by article creators.

No reams of whining to moderators to wipe them out (the BBC 606 issue) .

Simple tools to do the job. And if they really do the job, then by all means feel free to incorporate them into your systems as features etc.

But first things first eh ...

the trouble with the WUM cleansing approach is where do you draw the line. ive been labelled a wum before for suggesting that thudd and modric were overrated. if you arent allowed to submit an opinion which doesnt represent the populist point of view, what's the point in having a discussion board at all ? you might as well have someone writing down the latest popular theory, and seeing how many people you can get to say they like it. hang on a minute, that's facebook isnt it ?

and to be honest, if you just want to post the same thing that everyone else is posting, the best place to do it is somewhere like facebook, with people who tend to have the same views as yourself. if you are not prepared to countenance opinions other than your own, or even to accept that such opinions exist, then what is the point in taking part in a public messaging service designed for the purpose of an exchange and discussion of views and opinions ?

by the way, i understand that some 606 users who thought they agreed on everything (including the need to cleanse the world of WUMs), so made a facebook group. within a few days they had all fallen out with each other because they each decided that all the others were WUMs after all.

If you user the Firefox extension Firebug, right-click on the elements you wish to restyle it will show you the CSS. You can then save these off onto an external Stylesheet styled to your desire.

Your idea, is very similar to what we are working on, but you are more than welcome to give it a go. We will be doing most of our WUM filtering server side.

I think it isn't necessarily the wholesale cleansing of WUMs, but the experience of each user that is important.

The problem you face there RDBD is that it would set up a kind of "Kangeroo Court" style of judgement, giving people the opportunity to label others that they either don't like or feel aren't worthy of contribution the name "WUM". For instance, I was an occasional poster on the old 606, and very sporadic on here, so just because people don't recognise my name they could easily call me a wum if people don't like what I say. It's a dodgy line, no one likes to see the likes of michigan, but I for one found people like little dinosaur and rogerbold as just funny lunatics!!!

I think the issue is that some people would prefer not to see the known WUMs that cause get them particularly irate or who pollute their well written articles with rubbish. The old 606 lost control of it a bit, and we carried on from where they left off, by not having much control of it either. Tomorrow the site will be one month old, so we are still new and there are a lot of things will are still working on, but the site will continue to improve.

All :

My concern is that the filtering should be user discretionary (or in Admin speak : client-side not server side) . One mans' music is another mans' noise.

LDL is a classic.
Sometimes he is a valued contributor. But his end days on BBC 606 was just increasingly worse by the day.


THudd :

Consensus is not a "kangeroo" court.
I think you know what the consensus is/was on Michigan on BBC 606, and still is after that.

The usual WUM takes a couple of weeks to emit a "body of work" on which they can be judged (the pattern emerges - frequency, content etc) . Then a consensus can be made as to whether to label them so.

Similarly those that jump on people after a couple of postings should be jumped on as hissy little prats etc.

With systems of all kinds, an equilibrium is eventually reached, where "false positives/negatives" become few and far between.


So, given a consensus view on who are deemed to be WUMs, and the tools to act on that as you see fit, will see this board become a better place IMHO.

WUMs starved of attention. Newbies forewarned before getting sucked in. Site owners able to concentrate on the real task of making the site a go, rather than being pestered moderators of sad OCDs, ESOL school-kids on half-term etc.

Control of articles by their authors would avoid a lot of the wum problem. Just delete them.

On their own wum articles ignore them (not easy sometimes I admit).

These 2 things would starve them of what they seek and crave.

"My concern is that the filtering should be user discretionary (or in Admin speak : client-side not server side) . One mans' music is another mans' noise."

The filtering will be user specific discretionary, but server side, we just wont pull back the WUM garbage from the database, as per settings in your preferences.

Control of articles by their authors would avoid a lot of the wum problem. Just delete them.

On their own wum articles ignore them
=================================

it really is as simple as that.

Fair enough RDBD, it doesn't sound quite as cliquey as I first thought. I like reasonable, rational debate, with a dash of lunacy and idiocy thrown in. I can't be bothered with wums or wumming in general (save for the North London/Woolwich derby lol) but my biggest concern is where people draw the line between light hearted banter (90% of people), through mercilessly, sadistically torturing themselves (LDL, Rogerbold), through to the downright pains in the a**e (michigan/joker whatever!!). I'm looking forward to seeing the changes, seeing where it takes the site, presumably if they don't work other things will be tried?

Incidentally Admin, whats the ruling on swearing?? It's not as draconian as 606 is it, or is there still a bit of a cosh on the rudies?!?!