Free Market Solution to Offending Posts---Yes? NO? Maybe? DK? :)

Jul 9, 2008, 4:52 PM

I was thinking about free market solutions to offending posts here on TUSCL. Some people want a more friendly board; actually most people want a more friendly board. :)

Allow members to create a credit balance in $25 purchases or larger. In return for the credit balance the member will be allowed moderator power to remove any post he wishes at let's say $1 or $2 per removal. The original poster would be allowed to repost, but he needs to be watching and reading the board to be alerted that his post was removed and it would take his time to repost even if the was just a simple cut and paste. To wit:

Makes TUSCL a little $$$.
Gives Power to Injured or Offender Reader
Doesn't Completely Censor Original Poster but does give him notice that someone is truly unhappy and takes his effort and vigilance to repost if he so desires.

Just thinking up possible solutions to a perceived problem. :) So what are the loyal readers' and writers' views? Feel free to give laconic responses as delineated in the Thread Title or be loquacious as a lark.

comments (11)

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CarolinaWanderer17 years ago

parodyman would mortgage his house to eliminate all of shadowcats posts.

jablake17 years ago

LOL! :)

Maybe Founder would consider auctioning the rights to certain TUSCL usernames. "Shadowcat" might fetch a cool $50 on Ebay. :) Then he could go back to "I give up" or "Books R-4 Luzers."

DickJohnson17 years ago

I appreciate your attempts to try to find a solution to stated problem. Just for statistical purpose I probably wouldn't be a subscriber, but maybe others would enough to make it pay off. What say u guys?

jablake17 years ago

If my financial condition wasn't so pathetic and it has gotten worse, then I think it might be fun and stress relieving. Some starts smashing book readers and BOOM that hate speech meets the terminator. LOL! Ideally, it would make the board more appealing to tender-foots without having a real moderator.

I HATE moderators in general---even very good ones. :)

jablake17 years ago

Correction:

Someone starts smashing book readers and BOOM that hate speech meets the terminator. LOL! Ideally, it would make the board more appealing to tender-foots without having a real moderator.

MisterGuy17 years ago

As is typical of most "free market solutions", this solution favors the rich, which means that Davyboy (and his supposed 6-figure salary) would reign supreme...no thanx... ;)

jablake17 years ago

No, he wouldn't necessarily reign supreme because he is too busy working and porking young tenders to monitor reposts effectively. :) In fact, it is the beat down dirt poor that use the board as entertainment that may have the upper-hand. Billionaire James Bond nukes the posts of dissenters or nonbelievers AND the masses rise up with ANEW with more truth exposing posts!!! Since the masses out number him by a good margin he'll have to learn how to work, pork young tenders, post, and nuke all at the same time to have any hope of stemming the proletarian masses. :) Or, he could be one hell of multi-tasker already.

I can see James Bond issue an order to a computer set up with voice recognition software so he can work, a young tender or more is taking care of all his right areas, two more computers run so that he can post new wisdom while nuking what he doesn't care for. He probably doesn't even need sleep! That 'ill teach the welfare bums and nonbelievers of TUSCL. :)

JerseyJack17 years ago

Unless it was something that was somewhat democratic, I wouldn't want to see any moderation added to these boards. That's a slippery slope once you're on it.

I agree with MisterGuy that the scenario proposed by jablake would most likely be blatantly abused by anyone with money to burn and a lot of chips on his shoulder. The most obvious solution would be to have actual moderators, but who among us is most worthy of such power being granted to them?

My solution -- and this would require programming by Founder to implement, so I doubt it would happen -- would be to provide the ability for anyone to vote "thumbs down" on any given post. Behind the scenes, TUSCL would have a predetermined threshold for the number of negative votes a post must receive in order for it to be deleted. To avoid any "stuffing the ballot box," you wouldn't be allowed to "thumbs down" any given post more than once.

What would the threshold be? Don't know. Something like 5 seems too low, while something like 25 seems too high. To be the most fair, it would have to be based on total readership. I would think that there has to be a way to figure out the average number of people who read these discussions each day. Assuming that could be done, then perhaps the threshold would be 60% of that number. In that scenario, if 20 of us (on average) are reading these boards each day then the number of "thumbs down" votes required to banish a post would be 12. If readership increased or decreased, then the threshold would follow suit.

Like I said, implementing something like this would require some dedication on Founder's part (being a techie, I have a pretty good idea of how much effort something like this could take). But it seems to me like a more fair way to handle this than either selling such power to anyone willing to pay for it or granting moderation powers to a chosen few.

jablake17 years ago

OK, OK. Self-proclaimed Billionaires would have to pay $5 for each post removal. :)

Clubber17 years ago

IMHO, a silly idea, at best. TUSCL is just fine as it is.

casualguy17 years ago

I second the motion by clubber, leave things as they are. If you want thumbs down or thumbs up go to marketwatch.com and make a comment. If you don't like something here either don't read it or don't post to it. I remember when this discussion board used to be nothing but a big flame party. I think it's civilized enough. Besides if moderators started taking over, where would I get a chance to read about dirty ol man jokes anymore?