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Serebii Forums Suggestions Thread

Golden_Arcanine

Well-Known Member
Not sure where else to put this, but I'll post it here. Why do mods feel the need to lock threads they deem worthy of being a discussion? It seems if anything that it's going to keep discussion from happening. Let it flow organically. If a topic isn't worth discussing, it'll die on it's own accord.

EXAMPLE

This is a prime example. Just yesterday, someone wanted to discuss the future of Pokemon (and in extension Nintendo) yet WishIHad decided to lock it. Not trying to call him/her out, but wouldn't it be better to let the discussion flow?
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
Not sure where else to put this, but I'll post it here. Why do mods feel the need to lock threads they deem worthy of being a discussion? It seems if anything that it's going to keep discussion from happening. Let it flow organically. If a topic isn't worth discussing, it'll die on it's own accord.

EXAMPLE

This is a prime example. Just yesterday, someone wanted to discuss the future of Pokemon (and in extension Nintendo) yet WishIHad decided to lock it. Not trying to call him/her out, but wouldn't it be better to let the discussion flow?

It's against the rules to have speculation on a game that isn't officially announced. That's why the thread was locked. If they posted it today, after gen 9 was officially announced, the thread would have been either left open or merged into the official discussion thread.


It's rule 16.

As for locking threads, it's a case by case thing. If it's a question that's been answered, a thread generally gets locked.

If it's too off topic, then it gets a lock.

If it fits more into another thread, then I usually merge it into another thread.

Those are only a few examples.
 
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Golden_Arcanine

Well-Known Member
It's against the rules to have speculation on a game that isn't officially announced. That's why the thread was locked. If they posted it today, after gen 9 was officially announced, the thread would have been either left open or merged into the official discussion thread.


It's rule 16.

As for locking threads, it's a case by case thing. If it's a question that's been answered, a thread generally gets locked.

If it's too off topic, then it gets a lock.

If it fits more into another thread, then I usually merge it into another thread.

Those are only a few examples.
Appreciate your response, wasn't meaning to call you out by any means. I guess I feel like threads should only be locked when they're clearly off-topic/disruptive, and not meant to curtail discussion.
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
Appreciate your response, wasn't meaning to call you out by any means. I guess I feel like threads should only be locked when they're clearly off-topic/disruptive, and not meant to curtail discussion.

Fair enough. As a general rule, I don't do that. Meaning curtail discussion. Only times (for the most part) when I nip a thread in the bud is when it's clearly set up to troll or evoke an aggressive response or is general nonsense.

I watch over threads when I can and do in thread warnings if need be. If people misbehave from there, they get a warning or an infraction, depending on the situation. And the problem posts are removed.

And if it's bad enough, threads can be temp locked to be cleaned out and things can calm down. If that doesn't work, then the thread will be relocked for good.
 

Spiteful Murkrow

Early Game Encounter
Just out of curiosity, but would it be possible to implement a threadmark system on Serebii Forums? My understanding is that since Serebii since it runs off of Xenforo, which if my memory serves me right, ought to have that functionality as part of its default suite of features. So it made me wonder if enabling that would be fairly straightforward or not.
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
Just out of curiosity, but would it be possible to implement a threadmark system on Serebii Forums? My understanding is that since Serebii since it runs off of Xenforo, which if my memory serves me right, ought to have that functionality as part of its default suite of features. So it made me wonder if enabling that would be fairly straightforward or not.
If you mean bookmarks, they're already present on the forums
 

Spiteful Murkrow

Early Game Encounter
If you mean bookmarks, they're already present on the forums

No, I mean threadmarks. They're essentially a tool for organizing links to posts without requiring a manual table of contents. They additionally allow you to make different indexes of different types of posts based off their content. For example, here's some pictures that show how BG Forum's threadmarks implementation works:

Screen_Shot_2022-04-09_at_11.32.39_PM.png


Additionally, such implementations usually support parallel indexing of different posts. In the case of fanfic writers, it's a handy tool for separating story posts from things such as art dumps, but in general it is handy for jumping between a chain of posts about one topic that might be interleaved with another. Using BG Forums as an example again, these are the default threadmarks categories they support on their fanfic subforum.

Screen_Shot_2022-04-09_at_11.33.40_PM.png


There might be some sort of technical reason behind why this isn't already a thing on Serebii, but I figured that I might as well ask, since it's a nice organizational feature to have that doesn't seem to be particularly rare on Xenoforo-based sites.
 

Pokegirl Fan~

Liko>>>>>Ash
I think there should be a rule forbidding leaks in the anime spoilers subforum of the Pokemon Anime Discussion section. There seems to be some issues with that as of late where entire episodes are getting spoiled before they even air. (I personally don't mind leaks but some users don't like it and I also feel that the leaks are going to far now).
 

TwilightBlade

Well-Known Member
I think there should be a rule forbidding leaks in the anime spoilers subforum of the Pokemon Anime Discussion section. There seems to be some issues with that as of late where entire episodes are getting spoiled before they even air. (I personally don't mind leaks but some users don't like it and I also feel that the leaks are going to far now).
You're advocating for there to be no spoiler leaks in the Anime Spoilers section? Not to be rude but isn't that an oxymoron?
 

TwilightBlade

Well-Known Member
No it's not... Try thinking about the point made for a few moments before drawing conclusions, and perhaps also check out the anime forum rules.
Please don't patronize me. I may not post there but I've read the rules in the Pokemon Anime Discussion section and rule #5 states:
5. Post spoilers in the Anime Spoilers section! If you wish to discuss events that have not occurred outside Japan, use spoiler tags for your information or keep it to the Anime Spoilers subforum
There's nothing in the rules of that section that say that anime related leaks are against the rules in Anime Spoilers however. Everyone who posts in the Anime Spoilers section should already expect spoilers and leaks because that's just common sense just by reading the name of that section.

What I found confusing about what Pokegirl Fan said is this part:
There seems to be some issues with that as of late where entire episodes are getting spoiled before they even air.
That part especially don't make sense because from what I understand episode details being spoiled are a common occurrence in the Anime Spoilers section because I've seen topics made where people discuss leaked magazine scans that reveal the major details about future anime episodes complete with their episode summaries. So I'm not seeing what the problem is?
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
Just to add my two cents, while I can somewhat understand the frustrations if entire episode details are leaked ahead of time, it's not exactly out of the ordinary for that to happen in the Anime Spoilers sub-forum. There was a time about 10 years ago when a person who had insider information posted entire episode summaries the day before certain episodes officially aired, and as far as I know they weren't breaking any rules and continued doing this for several months without facing repercussions, and I don't remember anyone being upset about it at the time.

That being said, I don't particularly care if leaks are stopped or continue, although perhaps the rules of that sub-forum should be updated to make it clearer which types of leaks are allowed and which aren't.
 

jaden767

Amphetamine
Can I ask why the forum doesn't pick more staff members? The other day Hunter Zolomon made a good point about there being too few mods who login frequently which means that there aren't enough mods around to stop the spambot plague that has been a big problem recently.

Oh and btw there's a lot of mods who either haven't logged in or been active for years like Aquarelle, Fissurous, noobiess and enchantress. Shouldn't they be de-modded and new mods chosen to keep the spambots at bay?
 

Nutter t.KK

can Mega Evolve!
Can I ask why the forum doesn't pick more staff members? The other day Hunter Zolomon made a good point about there being too few mods who login frequently which means that there aren't enough mods around to stop the spambot plague that has been a big problem recently.

Oh and btw there's a lot of mods who either haven't logged in or been active for years like Aquarelle, Fissurous, noobiess and enchantress. Shouldn't they be de-modded and new mods chosen to keep the spambots at bay?
Many staff don't have their status public, so you can't see when they where last on. So only info on when they were on last on here is their last Public Post. As Ex-staff: I should point out that there are hidden sub forums that staff uses, and you don't need to post publicly at all to do your job in Moderating the forum.

Also, many staff can't really moderate in areas they're not Moderators of. In otherwords, While I was Gen 3/4 Mod, I couldn't do much more than a user in another subforum such as Fan Fiction. Unless it was obvious Spambot or Porn, where I would ban, and ask other staff to clear up, but that was to stop it before it got worse.

I often posted when was mod, but then I was in the area keeping an eye on the situation. This has gotten me in to trouble a few times..
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
Could we get some anti-spambot measures here? They've been seriously numerous lately, and it's disruptive. Groups of bots filling multiple pages with spam threads before a mod shows up to ban them seem to be far from incidental now, and ignore list doesn't move the not-ignored threads back up, you just have to go through several empty forum pages before reaching the non-spam threads if you're ignoring the spam accounts. I was thinking you could put all posts made by new accounts in some kind of holding space before actually posting them on the forums awaiting moderator approval. And they only get standard posting privileges after at least three of their posts were approved by a moderator. And if their posts are obviously spam then the moderator simply bans the account and deletes the posts from the holding space before they ever make it to the actual forum. It might increase the workload to moderators slightly, but not by much since the vast majority of new accounts here are just spambot accounts whose posts have to get through moderators anyway when they have to ban them now.
Hopefully if their posts don't even appear on the forums at all at least some of the folks behind these spambots would give up as they can't get any exposure any more. I know there are some other forums that use this kind of system and it seems to work.
I posted this about half a year ago, and I think today really exemplifies why we do need preventive measures. It's not even noon yet and there have literally been over 1500 spam threads posted on the forum already, today. Since I posted that message in January, I estimate well over 7000 throwaway spam accounts have been banned, so this year alone. They become more aggressive and relentless every month, if we don't get pro-active means to actually stop them from posting this junk in the first place they will render the entire forum completely inoperable during the majority of the time by christmas. It only takes them a manner of minutes to fill up several forum pages with junk.
 

Hunter Zolomon

Into the Shadows
Staff member
Moderator
I'm getting tired of banning over 500+ bots a night. This crap is getting ridiculous. It's time consuming. I have a life outside of here. I can't be on all night slaving my life away banning bots. There needs to be a team effort with us mods tackling these spam accounts. I'm not trying to sound like a jerk, but this needs to be more of a team effort....

It honestly feels like there's only a handful of active mods anymore. Something really needs done about the inactive mods. Maybe mod apps need opened again. This forum needs all of the help that it can get at this point.
 

Mirai

Well-Known Member
Is Joe even aware of the spambot issue? And isn't there a reCAPTCHA checkpoint that people have to solve when they register an account? How are the spambots getting past those?
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
I don't know if there is one, I made this account 15 years ago and I honestly don't recall. But captcha's aren't really that strong of a defence. Either they just do that part manually, or they have a captcha database the bot compares it to. This is cybercrime, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if folks who specialise in this kind of spambotting have ways of circumventing such basic defences.
 

Applecorp

Well-Known Member
My post isn't about the spambots per say but more related to the shortage of moderators. How come the Pokemon anime section only has 1 active moderator even though it's the most consistently active section of the forum? There's so much spam there but Dephender hardly seems to intervene. He's more preoccupied with people posting Google translated Japanese text than he is about the other problems in that section. The other moderator who is supposed to be in charge there is someone named Sushi but they haven't posted in over a year.
 
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