Wanting the Public's Opinion, Please!

[Lady Renae]

I have recently gotten back to doing my job in the PubAd, and I have noticed that there are a lot of people who are submitting and approving quotes from sites that don't follow the guidelines or generally shouldn't be used for common sense reasons. Since I have no way of contacting these individuals (partly due to not always knowing who they are), I thought maybe it could at least remove excuses if a list were to be created of sites from which quotes should not be used. However, I would like input from the members before going to Distind with this (though he'll likely see this thread... Hi boss! *waves*).

Here is a list of the sites I know of that meet criteria for auto-deletion (with a few possible exceptions), and the criteria that they fit:

• Landover Baptist (known POE)
  
• FML (quote collection site)
  
• Not Always Right (quote collection site)
  
• Facebook (randomly requires login)
  
• YouTube (virtually impossible to verify, especially considering the good quotes get removed)
  
• Valley Church of CHRIST a.k.a. AlaskaValleyChurch.com (requires login)
  
• flyleaffans.com (requires login)
  
• Topix (frakking impossible to verify)
  
• WikiHow (impossible to verify, attribute, or anything else)
  
• Richard Dawkins Forums (requires login)
  
• EncyclopediaDramatica (POE magnet, impossible to verify)
  
• IslamicBoard (requires login)
  
• Society for the Practical Establishment and Perpetuation of the Ten Commandments (POE site)
  
• Men Are Better Than Women (POE site)
  
• Shelley the Republican (POE site)
  
• God Hates Goths (POE site)
  
• Learn From My Fail (quotes collection)
  
• OverheardIn sites (quotes collection)
  

I know there's ones I've deleted recently due to the reasons listed in the poll, but I sadly didn't write down the sites in question before so doing. This was silly of me.

So what do you guys think? I'll be more than happy to review and apply whatever feedback you all can provide on both the proposed guidelines for the list and the contents of the list itself.

[Armand Tanzarian]

Can't Distind include a few lines of IF [source] IN ANY ('[banned sites]') THEN NULL?

[Lady Renae]

He probably could, but this would require everyone who uses PubAd to sourcelink intelligently, which is far from the case.

Besides which, it strikes me that it would be better to simply cultivate a pool of reliable PubAd admins as well as decent methods by which future administrations can screen applicants, which is also something I'm working on in my spare time.

Even if he created an automated script, it still would be only fair to be able to inform people which sites would result in their quote being auto-rejected.

[Bluefinger]

Yeah, a more clear list would be great for screening purposes, but we'd also need to make sure it is very visible for people to read or have an incentive to do so. Otherwise, I'm all for screening of anything that's too hard to verify.

[Lady Renae]

Ideally, the incentive is that they'll be able to avoid having their quotes get auto-killed, but a better system is more than open for suggestion as far as I'm concerned.

[Dragon Zachski]

FML should be blocked from the PubAd, but not just because it's a quote collection site, as it has a comments section. However, the truly fundie comments get removed, and often it seems like people are talking to thin air anways. It's worse than Youtube's comments.

[SimSim]

I agree all those sites shouldn't be allowed, but would like to an add a criteria in. Subforums of forums that require special permissions to see, ex:need to login to see. The specific example I'm thinking of is RR. That to me seems the best option, rather than not allowing the whole forums, or continuing to allow an area that not everyone can see allowed.

[Lady Renae]

Not sure how to handle the subforums thing as a "rule" per se, since it really should be more up to people going through PubAd to actually do their bloody jobs and verify quotes.

However, in light of recent events, I'm adding EncyclopediaDramatica to the list. Seriously, people? Submitting from Dramatica? Do you honestly think you will be able to tell who isn't just being a troll or something on Encyclopedia-fucking-Dramatica???

[Distind]

May 31, 2010 9:42:27 GMT -5 Armand Tanzarian said:

Can't Distind include a few lines of IF [source] IN ANY ('[banned sites]') THEN NULL?

Sort of, if they formed the URL well consistently I could, however any measure I take to compensate for crappy input can cause other places to wind up banned(particulary if there are subdomains which are public and others that are private).

Though I've been consistently amazed at people quoting quote sites lately.

That said, why bother to list private forums and quote collection sites individually? I'll have to check but I believe those limits are both already in the submission guide lines we've had for ages now.

[Lady Renae]

The limits are in the submission guidelines, yes, but there's four things to be taken into account:

1) People don't always realize the site they visit is login-only. The brain short-circuits and assumes that if they can see it, so can everyone else, not taking into account that maybe the reason they can see it is because they're a member. (Example: Facebook)

2) When you call something a "guideline", people tend to take that label at face value: it isn't a rule, it's 'just a guideline'. They assume that if their quote is good enough (and they obviously think it's AWESOME or they probably wouldn't be submitting) that the guideline, being 'only a guideline', will be overlooked.

3) The list is more than just a reference to warn people submitting quotes that their quote will be deleted on sight (that also removes excuses if there's a full list, but I'll discuss a way I think it could be used with you in PM later); it's also a tool for PubAd members. Having the list to refer to can both hasten the process of verification (for those extremely few members who actually do their freaking job and verify quotes) and help to remove the margin of error known as "shitty connection". If there's a list of confirmed login-only sites to refer to, it's less likely that a quote will get downvoted or deleted because the source link is simply having problems and redirecting to the home page or something that day.

4) Unfortunately, people apparently don't necessarily understand what "quote collection site" means. This site's layout makes its inclusion in the category fairly obvious, but how many people do you think realize that sites like FML, Lamebook, Emails From Crazy People, and PostSecret are quote collection sites? Yes, Lamebook and EFCP should be a bit obvious, but since when do people adhere to shoulds? Maybe a better guideline would have to be that the source of the quote has to be the point of origin for the words being said or something like that, but this is what we have so it's what I'm working with.


Also, it removes excuses. I'm a fan of removing excuses.



The list doesn't have to be entirely comprehensive of EVERYTHING that will get killed; it just needs to have a sufficient number of solid examples in each category as well as a few sites that wouldn't be accepted for reasons not necessarily listed in the guidelines. (Example: icanhascheezburger, though I don't think anyone's been that stupid yet) If a site becomes a problem, whether temporary or long term, for reasons such as a known troll attack on the site or a sudden influx of submissions we're tired of having to remind people don't qualify, then the site in question can be added to the list.


I may have rambled a bit. I'm multi-tasking.

[Lady Renae]

Adding a new site to the list: IslamicBoard requires log-in to view.

[devilschaplain2]

I think we ought to keep YouTube on. The quotes don't always get removed, and there's a whole lot of stupid there. The rest of them I would totally ban. I'd also add some more:

*Society for the Practical Establishment and Perpetuation of the Ten Commandments
*Men Are Better Than Women
*Shelley the Republican

All of which are Poe sites.

[tolpuddlemartyr]

Just known POE sites or sites that require a login, all the other examples have deep veins of fundie looniness running through them, especially youtube.

[Bluefinger]

Jun 8, 2010 0:10:30 GMT -5 @devilschaplain2 said:

I think we ought to keep YouTube on. The quotes don't always get removed, and there's a whole lot of stupid there.

There's still the issue of verification. If a comment is found on a pretty popular and well commented video, it can take ages to just sift through the list of comments in order to find the one in question. With no way to link directly to the quoted comment, it becomes a question of whether it is worth spending the extra effort in trying to verify potentially elusive quotes.

I do agree that Youtube is swarming with stupid. However, it doesn't make it easy to catalogue said stupid. That's the main issue here.

[Lady Renae]

After verifying, I'm adding the sites DevilsChaplain mentioned. Also, Blue's post about why YouTube is very accurate to my main objection. My secondary objection has to do with the number of transcribed quotes from the actual videos I've had to delete over the past year as well as a few (for some stupid reason) that were nothing more than a link to the video itself as if they thought they could submit videos as quotes. >.<

There's also the problem of verification. YouTube is something of a troll magnet, and one of the reasons some people love quotes from there is because loads of Internet Assholes love to congregate there and post the shittiest things they can think of just looking for a rise. Honestly, it can get worse than EncDrama in there on occasion.

ETA: Oh, and while we're discussing sites... what are everyone's thoughts on Argue With Everyone? The name of the site alone to me screams "impossible to verify", but I'd like to hear what other people think on this.



ETA: New known POE site: God Hates Goths (no, believe it or not it is not run by WBC)