Idea: Blue Star Zone

[Reality]

It is a nice idea that we as moderators have discussed in the past but it's just not realistic to think that any group of people would be a good judge of what is considered good or bad content or who is considered good or bad users. When it comes to users, even the best users can have bad days and the worst users can have good days when it comes to posting.

It is one thing to implement rules or guidelines that define what is and is not allowed but it a completely different situation when it comes to judging the quality of posts.

-Reality

 

[Arch Stanton]

A timed football IQ test would be a good start. Not enough time to look anything up on google. 1 shot at it every 3 months.

I'd be constantly doing the test. :

 

[Nerm222]

I have spent my time wondering if this was possible too. This past week, I wanted to discuss the Cowboys, but there was a strange inability to do so.

Let me explain what I mean. If I'm talking to a friend, we can discuss a topic and exchange ideas and thoughts. Sometimes one of us might say "actually, I didn’t think about it like that"; or "hmm, I didn’t know that, that makes sense".

But on sports message boards, it seems to be a case of "I took this position, so nothing you can say will change my mind. What I believe is incontrovertible fact!".

I'm interested in politics as well, but there seems to be no website that has intelligent discussions there either. E.g. "People that believe different than me are evil or stupid".

It would be nice to talk about things with people who were willing to listen openly to others. One of the themes I have discussed this week is “I might be wrong.” Very few people on this board seem to have that thought enter their mind. It makes for a very boring conversation unless you like to insult those that disagree with you.

 

[Idgit]

There's a constant influx of young, inane posters who don't know what they don't know. It's hard to keep them out, and they've got the most time to post, too.

Maybe we have a forum for Homers and one for whatever the Realists are pretending to call themselves after having been proven so badly disassociated with reality last season. We can see over time which boards get the best conversations going and moderate the general forums accordingly.

Unfortunately, I think the best mix is probably something like 70/30 fans to 'realists,' where you don't get uniformity of opinions but you do get enough interesting debate. Our mix is way off from that right now, and I don't know how better to get it back.

I wish the mods could flag new or particularly incendiary posters and put them in a user category that had a daily post limit. If at a mod's discretion you could only post 5 times a day, you'd be more likely to make them count. There are probably only 10-20 posters who'd belong in such a category, but limiting their enthusiasm would double the readability of the board.