Hi all

Thanks for all your feedback regarding the way that tropical cyclone threads have run in previous seasons. The team of moderators and admins have taken all this on board, digested it all, and had extensive discussions about the path forward that we believe the tropical forum should take.

The main rationale behind making these changes is to ensure that we keep a clear balance between ensuring new members feel welcome and able to post, and not "annoying" existing members unnecessarily, with spammed posts.

Initially, these guidelines will only apply to the tropical forums (the existing Tropical and Central Australia forum and the new Tropical Lows and Cyclones forum). However, if they work successfully, they will be rolled out across the whole Weatherzone forum.

The changes that will be implemented (effective immediately) are as follows:

* All forum members will be limited to one post per sub-forum in any 10 minute period. This is to limit spamming, and ensure that threads do not degenerate into "chat". This will also encourage the use of the edit post facility. Unfortunately, the forum software precludes us from making this thread-based. Hopefully the addition of the Tropical Lows and Cyclones sub-forum will go some way to alleviate this. Users will be able to post concurrently in the general chat thread in the Tropical and Central Australia sub-forum and in any cyclone-specific thread in the Tropical Lows and Cyclones sub-forum.

* To allow for this, the editing time for posts will be extended to 20 minutes.

* Localised threads will be created during major events, and moderated to show local content only. All forum members will be allowed to post in these threads (regardless of their physical location), but the content of the posts in these threads must relate to the specified geographical area.

* Threads will be split when they reach a certain post count, at the sole discretion of the moderators.

It is also worth reinforcing at this time that all forum members should be familiar with our forum guidelines , particularly regarding attacks on other members. To this end, attacks on new forum members will be treated with a zero tolerance policy, and bans will apply.

Finally, just a reminder on when TC threads will be created:

Each Area of Responsibility will have its own seasonal cyclone discussion thread to talk about developing systems.
Specific cyclone threads can not be created until a system directly threatens the coast or a watch/warning is issued on the system. Finally, it is up to mods/admin to decide if tech threads are created.

If anyone has any questions about these new guidelines, feel free to post in here or PM me directly.

Thanks

Matt Pearce
Weatherzone Forums Admin

How about trialling a web based chat room for people to converge on and chat to free the forums up?

Thank you Matthew for the information. Quite a few of my suggestions and others from other people have been listened to by the looks of it and the 600 seconds time out from each posting will stop quite a few trolls dead in their tracks and I believe it is an excellent idea.

Well done guys.

I appreciate the effort that goes into running the forum.

Hey Thomo that is a good idea but I don't think the WZ Servers are up to it after what happened last year.

Maybe as a suggestion we could start a Weatherzone Facebook Page to chat in and have a stickied link in the new forum? Just a suggestion. Oh and make Thomo the moderator for it too .

I second that thomo, not only would it weed out a lot of the one liners on the forum but it would be great for learning purposes too. They have a similar setup in place for one of the USA forums I visit for the hurricane season. This year with Irene I just idled in their chat room and learned so much over that period, newbies were asking questions and the more 'experienced' members were nice enough to try and answer them when they had time.

I'm surprised there is not already a weatherzone Facebook chat.

These guidelines are a great idea. Being a newbie myself i enjoy reading the posts and discussions and would hate to be excluded. Admittingly most of the time i have been a lurker because i really have nothing of substance to add to the threads i am reading. I agree that the Yasi thread last year was a joke and could clearly see the frustration that was being felt by people that have a clue in the forum. I will however say that the Trav Nitso live coverage was even worse for spamming so thank god it didnt get to that.

I don't like that Idea, alot of people here despise facebook, that will split up people in to seperate groups. A Spam/Chatbox/shoutbox would be cool for little tid bits, much like twitter enforce a character restriction, if it could be implemented it could be located on every page you view within the forums.

I like the idea of restriction of 10 minutes.. the problem with editing is, during peak times the numbers of people posting made it rack up pretty quick, so if you did edit your post, no one could probably see it unless they read all the posts.

just my ransom musings at this time of night. If Weatherzone made a chat room it would be responsible 24/7 for what happened in their. Maybe build up a chat room independently and in the future time be linked with no responsibility from here. Its a great idea just I dont expect or see WZ implementing it in the future

bber36, the best way to get involved is to ask questions. No matter how dumb you think they are a question means you need some help and that is what this forum is/should be based on. I am the firm believer that the only dumb question is the one that hasn't been asked. We where all new here at some stage and have all asked questions that with more experience now seem a bit silly but the truth is we didn't know so had to ask.

Trolling is looked on as a banning offence here and the Mods and Admins take seriously any complaints and soon sort out any issues before they become a problem.

If you don't want to ask a question via the forum then please feel free to PM me and I will either answer it, if I can, or pass it on to somebody who can for you.

Very good advice SBT!

Yes RD, a forum stands or falls on the ability of members to help newer members.

So this season if anyone can help someone then step out of your comfort zone a little and offer some help and don't leave it up to the few of us who do go out of their way to make people welcome. In the end it will make for a much better forum and much happier members. I am building slowly a couple of resources that people can be pointed to help out. More later.

I greatly support these new guidlines. I noticed last year the new members were coming onto the forum during the time when Yasi hit the coast and were asking questions that never got answered. I don't know everything and sometimes I'd like to ask questions which should be obvious to me but aren't and I feel stupid to ask them. Glad this is happening.

I just had a quick look through the yasi thread again and like I think it's great we have people asking questions And wanting to learn it's awesome. But for the people who ask stupid ignorant questions like - what times the next Bom warning for yasi???? Countless times I saw questions like that. Like come on its just pure laziness and it probably is quicker to just look on the Bom page for the information instead of asking it on a forum. Also another question I saw in the middle off the panic - what's that blob in behind yasi? So with 10 000 online watching the biggest and most dangerous cyclone to hit north Queensland and there are people who come onto a yasi thread asking about a bunch off clouds in Fiji......it's very frustrating.

Other than obviously dumb questions like those above I'm hoping more people join the forums and add to the conversation! It's a great forum and there are great people and personalities on here

I have just been through the impact of the new forums re wait 600 seconds (10 minutes) until you can post again.
While I have been a great supporter of change within the forums, I am truly concerned that the new rules will end up being counter productive and drive good people away.
All I can say is test them. You will see what I mean.
These changes will bring the zone back into an experts lounge where 500 word treatises will rule... and only a 500 word reply will suffice.
Trav and others have been demanding this..... I can understand their frustration but goodnight to regular chat. I can understand the rules being enforced during an event... but so much can change in ten minutes....to take out the option of posting within that time frame is both ridiculous and dangerous.

PS: said delay was within the cyclone lounge, I've also had to wait 10 minutes here... an area set up to allow people to fire off questions. Bloody hell mods... what are you thinking? You truly need to modify this system. The arguments were for streamlining threads like Yasi when they went off... and that's fine... but you are killing every other thread's intimacy and immediacy.
Selectivity please.... who is going to wait 10 minutes for an answer in this day and age ?
So why is this happening? Is it to take pressure off the mods ( and to be fair to them WZ wont cough up the cash to update a forum system that was first written last century).

But in the end, unfortunately, in persisting with this new system across the board you will kill both the vibrancy and collectivism the zone sought to be.


PS: And after 9.9 minutes how redundant is a post?

boomer
This decision was taken after much thought and consideration (between mods, admin - based on suggestions posted in the trop forum) and will be here to stay for the time being.

The reason it wasn't rolled out forum wide is to see what impact these changes will have on the forum during the coming season. If there are no issues, it will be rolled out forum wide. If there are issues, we will reconsider our options. I need to adress a couple of your points however:



This forum has never been about 'regular chat', it isn't a chat room. I think you are going a bit over the top in regards to 'only a 500 word reply will suffice'. The whole point of imposing a time limit is so people think more about what they post and to discourage chat.




I disagree. If people want the most up to date information during an extreme weather event, they can visit the BOM page. I think it's silly to suggest that limiting posting to 1 post every 10 minutes is 'ridiculous and dangerous'. There are multiple ways to get up to the minute information. Besides, you can still go back and edit your post for up to 20 minutes afterwards.



The new rules apply to the 'Lows and Cyclones' forum as well, as mentioned in the very first post in this forum. Again, admin may decide to lift this restriction depending on how this 'trial' goes.



Obviously these changes won't please everyone. But I can tell you this - admin has not received ONE COMPLAINT regarding these changes. Not one. If you have issues with the changes, I suggest you email them directly.

And I disagree that you think the 'vibrancy and collectivism' will be killed. Yasi showed that smothering the forum with posts only leads to overloads, and pages upon pages of mindless and repetitive drivel. Impossible to moderate and not at all pleasurable for anyone to read or contribute to.

I have no problems with the 10 minute rule and have said as much previously. In fact I was one of the first people asking for it to slow down the trolls Boomer.

Quite a few forums use similar times to stop spamming of forums. Some less and some more. But in all cases it doesn't halt the flow of posts, just the flow of posts from single members.

An extreme example - at one stage I (as Maxibuzz) held the record on Whirlpool for the most posts in a single thread - the Aura Thread (which i hated by the way) which was around 1200+ posts in 14 days in a thread that was over 1000 pages long before it was culled into 4 versions. Now I don't post any where near as much these days, and haven't been active on Whirlpool since 2005 but do we really want to see that happen here during another Yasi event?

OK I can see where a smaller unit may be worthwhile like 5 minutes during an actual crossing in your location where you are trying to provide 'live' updates but the 10 minute rule is fine with me for general run of the mill days.

Can I ask if the mods can activate the timer on a thread by thread basis? For example, the general cyclone thread may be 10minutes, but the whitsunday coast thread (say where the cyclone is currently crossing) could have only a 2 or 3 minute delay?

I welcome the change definitely a step forward in weeding out one liners and spam but I do foresee issues with the 20minute edit time. Such as people saying something nasty and then editing to remove the comment before mods get a glimpse. So a question would be are edits recorded or not? Im guessing not.

Post edits are not recorded unless they are reported via the Notify button in which case we get a copy of them...So if someone posts something out of line use that button and we will have something to work on. Agree with RD here - we did discuss this at length. I personally would love to see it on the thread by thread basis but the current software does not allow it. I'd love to see the forum software updated and have been hassling for that to happen - but it does not look like happening any time soon. I'll keep onto them though All of this is trial and error - if something isn't working we'll definitely try to work to fix it ASAP...All we ask for is reasonable / proactive feedback..."Bloody Hell Mods" doesn't do anything to help fix it up - positive suggestions are a lot more helpful. Remember we are all weather followers just like everyone else on here...we all want this to work as well as it can