Forum Non Technical issues

Non technical forum related issues here.

add more emoticons like flags of different nation etc .

We need an emoticon with double facepalm, it is really necessary.

A ROFLOL emoticon would be good. I have seen some nice ROFLOL emoticons on some other forums.

Even our LOL emoticon can be improved.

There is this issue of plagiarism by one of the forum users that have to be addressed. I have given him a clue about this in my response to one of his posts, but he hasn't responded. I suggest for him to come forward with this as soon as possible.

Militarov wrote:

Morpheus Eberhardt wrote:

Militarov wrote:Meanwhile no SU34 ever downed anything in combat. ...

How do you know that?

How do you know it did? There would be reports of such incident especially in todays world. People cant keep their mouth shut if it was their life in question.

Moderators,

Since this user (Militarov) joined the forum on 03 September 2015, according to my last count, he has posted 996 times. Some of his posts are copy-and-pastes of images, which are somewhat useful. However most of his posts, like the one quoted here, are nonsensical and can only degrade the value of a thread.

Please note that it is not the vacuous nature of this user's posts that are of concern to me, but the disturbing and the intolerable fact is that this user is one of those that serve only the one purpose of wrecking perfectly good threads.

In order to save this and other threads and to avoid a repeat of certain episodes from the forum’s past, I would like to propose that this user be given a month-long ban.

Ummm... no.

However, the issue raised on the forum technical issues thread is worth discussing.

The voting system.

Please voice an opinion here about what you see as the purpose and usefulness of the voting system.

I notice so far some are abusing the voting system as some sort of popularity contest, or to in effect punish members for posting negative or non positive news regarding Russia.

There are even accusations that some are creating alternative accounts to boost their own rating or to lower the ratings of other members.

We have two obvious solutions... one is to do nothing and just ignore the ratings, the other is to turn it off.

Do you find the ratings system useful, or is it a distraction?

While I have your attention I have noticed a lot of personal attacks and bad language recently.

This will lower the tone of this forum, and will need to stop... you can show a bit of self control and stop it yourselves, or I can stop you. Your choice. My method of stopping people is guaranteed to last a week as that is the length of the ban to be given, and to be clear being provoked is not an excuse, so if there are two in the fight it will be two bans... not one.

I hope I have made myself clear and have given fair warning.

If the system could show who voted for a post and whether up or down, then it may deter downvotes made not on the basis of the content of the post, but purely against the poster. Another system is this. There is a certain other forum for "sofa warriors" were if you vote a post up or down, then when voting, a pop-up dialogue box appears were you can enter brief comments about what you liked or did not like about the post. This message is not public but appears in a section of the member control panel, and remains there so a record of who voted for what and why is kept. That forum is based on the same model as this one so I guess those admin tools are available here as well. Other members cannot see who is voting in either direction for a post and the way it is seen that a members posts become popular or not is by a green or red progress bar under the avatar. This system can be turned on or off by individual members.

GarryB wrote:
I notice so far some are abusing the voting system as some sort of popularity contest, or to in effect punish members for posting negative or non positive news regarding Russia.

GarryB wrote:There are even accusations that some are creating alternative accounts to boost their own rating or to lower the ratings of other members.

Garry, I agree 100% with your statements above. I suspect this is exactly what is happening.

GarryB wrote:We have two obvious solutions... one is to do nothing and just ignore the ratings, the other is to turn it off.

I feel turning it OFF is the best solution. We are adults here not kids.

GarryB wrote:However, the issue raised on the forum technical issues thread is worth discussing.

I think turning the voting system off is probably the most expedient solution.

However, should some kind of sanction also be taken against the known vote-riggers? I know this would be a lopsided approach, as with the capabilities that are probably available to the forum administrators, this approach is only effective against those who use multiple accounts from only a single IP address.

In the way of some background, I should mention that, on the forum's "Technical Issues Thread", I provided some “circumstantial” evidence against one of the forum’s prime vote-rigging suspects. For now, I wouldn't rename this suspect.

Since then, I have realized that there seems to be a lot more circumstantial evidence regarding this user's vote-rigging patterns. Very interestingly but not surprisingly, it seems that, after I raised the issue, the suspect went to the ground and stopped receiving votes and stopped down-voting others for a "few" days. He has, however, started receiving up-votes again, possibly through accounts using other IP addresses.

In that post, I alluded to another suspect but didn’t name him there. It is quite interesting that over the last few hours this second suspect has engaged in some “interesting” behavior, which I may mention is a future post. I am not actually sure if these two suspects are one and the same users.

There is a lot more to be said about this issue, and I think this matter is as important as any other mission that this forum may have. After all, without human ignorance there wouldn’t have been an ISIL.

Regarding the voting system, My opinion is that it on itself its nice to see if certain posts are appreciated. However, when its indeed misused like described here by other users to stab anonymously at someone just because they do not like their opinion or indeed go off and make other accounts and vote to go wage some sort of contest then it may be better to disable it all together.

If people cant handle that responsibility to handle it fair, then just disable it.

Someone just down-voted one of my posts, probably an older post, because I can't even see which one has been down-voted.

If a controversial user may throw in his 2x cents...

I do see the voting system as a positive and sometimes as a negative thing. The good thing is that on this forum the Voting system is more balanced then on other forums due their voting mechanics. Other forums use an open voting system where people can see who upvoted and how many people have voted and that in itself has two problems in my opinion. The first problem is that this massive amount of votes other systems have without 24h cooldown is that votes are getting inflationary and reduce the reputation of the entire voting system. Not that this reputation points are of some value, but the perception that people get in an inflationary voting mechanism and in one that is more reluctant to recieve or give votes, especially once a day you can give only one vote for one single post like or dislike that makes it less inbalanced to punish or to glorify someone, however it has its problems like we can see. The second problem i see with the open voting mechanics is that whenever you have made foe or friend and you see that one of those groups of people constantly can be seen voting for one or the other posts, comments, news, reports or whatever, that creates another perception that if that is a "foe"  (foe = someone you do not like or have to deverse opinions) and only other users with similiar opinion vote for one post it creates another perception of disliking therefore the entire post, news or a black and white aligned thinking. I hope i could make clear what i mean by that one. The problem i see with it is that i have caught myself on such specific voting mechanics on other forums of ignoring such posts when to many people that have much different opinion that i have, vote for one post that it makes it for me and i think for others aswell, to read the entire post and just move on and ignore it.  Maybe it is just me but i do not think that this is individually case but rather majority are affected by such things.

If you are willing or wanting to change the system maybe one very simple method would strike as the best. Make all votes like they are now, anonymous, except that Mods and Admins can see them, by that they can check if someone is rigging the voting system and since that is open knowledge for people that only Mods/Admin can see who voted for what they will be more tamed to rigging.


I see the voting system as overall good, despite noticed abuse of voting system like in the case of TR1, even tho we hate each other with passion, i noticed that after he left in his drama scene after that navy thread debacle, he was daily downvoted to zero. Even tho i do not like that guy i think it wasn't fair at all, not that i haven't overreacted and downvoted him whenever he came up with insults direct/indirect, anyways.

Since the voting system isn't that inflationary an annonymous i see upvotes as a good thing, because no one can be influenced about someones comment just by seeing who has upvoted that users comment, meaning it will not effect him but only the post himself that will not affect or contribute to more black and white thinking which i have perception that open voting mechanics are  unwillingly creating.

When i see the relative rare upvotes on this forum i think they are mostly well deserved for elaborated and good posts. Usually i upvote whenever someone has provided good source of information, good information itself, made me think, a post that has educated me or for nice helicopter pictures i can use as a wallpaper.

Other solution is just leave it as it is and get rid of downvotes and limit upvotes for once or twice a weak or get full lazy and get rid of it at all, not that i with what i say give a damn shit about voting and reputation points at all.

Woah, i became "non technical issue", my mom would be proud. Whoever doesnt like what i post or how i post should probably block me or send PM to mods, posting in public thread is not really bright idea. This i say to everyone who doesnt like my posts, if you dont like me, block me, solution for all your problems is 2 clicks away.

Now, when its about vote system i gave 13 votes in total since moment when i joined this forum, if i am one of the suspects regarding this vote system rigging you can scrap that file and throw it into recycle bin, i advise you to check also fact that i have reputation 32 at this moment, and that my posts are extensively being targeted by downvotes, even the simple news about something being repaired or put into production and i get downvote for that, no sense whatsoever. If i was into making "reputation" here i would just write script to use bunch of accounts and upvote the hell out of my post, however i care about rep on forums less than education system in Panama, you will excuse me on that.

And i am not the only person that has same issue i must add, i saw at least 2 other long standing members (i am somewhat new here) having their "out of conversation" posts with news being downvoted (news posts with source, link, pic, following all forum rules). So its either someone having issue with persons or someone who likes to troll for the sake of it. I aim at second option, this forum seems to have significant issue with trolls (they all do actually).

Also my post with 11 volumes of ISIS magazine got downvoted twice i belive, and i got PM from random member saying that i am "Daesh propaganda machine", what if i share Nazi Germany newspapers scans in WW2 part of the forum, am i going to be tagged as Nazi propaganda machine? I am not crying here or something, i am just pointing out...issues. Also that is the only piece of ISIS propaganda material that i ever shared, i just found it convinient for people to see what kind of people we are up aganist. Some members are failing to see difference between information and propaganda, being sarcastic also brings you downvotes, been there done that.

If you ask me, changes to vote system should be: reset to 0, and 1 vote per week available. So noone spends its vote on random posts. However there should be separate trollmeter vote system, that system votes should reset daily, if someone gathers certain number of troll votes - ban first temp, later perma if person keeps trolling and flooding forum with BS.

Hope noone got offended by this post. Enjoy.

PS Solncepek START POSTING SOURCES I BEG YOU!!!

So is the up and down vote system gone? It doesn't seem like it's around any longer.

Due to abuse of the reputation system it has been shut down.

Vladimir79 wrote:Due to abuse of the reputation system it has been shut down.

I definitely understand where you are coming from and I did notice that Militarov was getting down voted for no reason lately. Same thing has been happening to me and some other guys until recently. looks like Militarov was the latest ''target'' of choice.

Still sucks though. I posted lots and lots of cool pics to earn triple digit reputation, I was kinda proud of it...

Maybe mods could do following:

1) leave current positive reputations

2) reset all negative reputations back to zero

3) from now on only allow positive votes, like on Facebook

PapaDragon wrote:

Vladimir79 wrote:Due to abuse of the reputation system it has been shut down.

I definitely understand where you are coming from and I did notice that Militarov was getting down voted for no reason lately. Same thing has been happening to me and some other guys until recently. looks like Militarov was the latest ''target'' of choice.

Still sucks though. I posted lots and lots of cool pics to earn triple digit reputation, I was kinda proud of it...

Maybe mods could do following:

1) leave current positive reputations

2) reset all negative reputations back to zero

3) from now on only allow positive votes, like on Facebook

Even a system that only allows "up" votes is only useful if the users refrain from using multiple accounts to up-vote themselves or their cohorts. I should also add that, with respect to this matter and other related matters affecting this forum, there are forum members and moderators that exactly see what is happening.

The voting system is gone? What!?

It was a great source of comedy, and how is *a certain user that shall not be named* going to show his disproval of me now?

All joking aside, I actually liked having the voting system in place. It's a great way to show appreciation of something being posted without just saying thanks.

Mike E wrote:The voting system is gone? What!?

It was a great source of comedy, and how is *a certain user that shall not be named* going to show his disproval of me now?

All joking aside, I actually liked having the voting system in place. It's a great way to show appreciation of something being posted without just saying thanks.

Agreed. See I just demonstrated our point.

I liked the voting system too but some members were abusing it for the purposes of bullying.

In all the time I have been here I have not given any negative votes to anyone... even people I ended up having to ban... few though they were in number.

People on this forum don't take interest in discussing US and China military developments. I've been updating them but hardly any feedback.

max steel wrote:People on this forum don't take interest in discussing US and China military developments. I've been updating them but hardly any feedback.

Well, there is a reason for that. The "military" developments between China and US have not yet reached their shooting war phase, at least to the extent that the public are aware of. As the current world war moves away from its phoney war stage and transitions into its real phase to reach to its conclusion in about 20 years, China and US military interactions would probably go through the shooting phase that would be a characteristic of any such war. During that phase the forum members would take interest in discussing the developments.