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Well, it looks to me like we should implement one or more the following:
1) A 30-day probation period for posting articles. People with less than 30-days of membership under their belt should not be permitted to post an article - at all. It seems that a lot of the new crap articles are being posted by brand new members. To what end, we can only guess.
2) Disallow the use of gmail, hotmail, and other free email domains for new members. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to use such a domain when dealing with CodeProject. As an alternative, anyone that uses a gmail or hotmail account should not be permitted to vote on anything until they change it to a valid domain name.
3) Only allow silver and up to vote on forum messages.
4) Give us a "Reject" button on the article approval.
5) Make article approval/rejection based on majority vote (if it isn't already) with HEAVY weighting for platinum members. Of course, this may still fail us given the ability to register multiple accounts.
6) If you can, it might be a good idea to try to weed out the non-articles by checking their contents against the template. Many of the crap articles we're seeing are simply click-throughs in the wizard.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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Hi John,
I agree, a couple of things need to be done.
Here is my order of decreasing preference: 1, 7, 6, 8, 5, 4, 3
where 7 and 8 are my contribution:
7) check article length exceeds 1.5 times template length (counting
all source characters including HTML tags, comments, everything)
8) ban authors with fewer than 3 published CP articles from the publishing wizard, send
them through the editors instead (that will make the CP staff solve the problem soon).
However I don't agree with 2 at all; although I have a real domain name (just recently),
I have been using gmail and yahoo for years, and plan on continue doing that. Having a domain
is no guarantee any longer, there are many free domains nowadays (often free for the
first year only, so people are going to switch a lot).
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
This month's tips:
- before you ask a question here, search CodeProject, then Google;
- the quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get;
- use PRE tags to preserve formatting when showing multi-line code snippets.
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Luc Pattyn wrote: However I don't agree with 2 at all; although I have a real domain name (just recently), I have been using gmail and yahoo for years, and plan on continue doing that.
But you fail to see that I'm not concerned with the reasons people use gmail or hotmail. In fact, you have to have a real email account to even sign up with hotmail (I'm not sure if the same holds true for gmail). Besides, I was talking more about about *new* users rather than existing ones.
Luc Pattyn wrote: Having a domain is no guarantee any longer, there are many free domains nowadays (often free for the first year only, so people are going to switch a lot).
You're right. In fact I have a domain of my own, but I don't use it for my CodeProject account.
Many of the people that argue aginst disallowing gmail/hotmail/whatever claim it's a spam-fighting tool. I say bullshit as far as CP is concerned. I've never gotten a single spam email as a result of using CP.
Don't have an ISP-based email account? Tough tacos. In the pursuit to clean up the very few shortcomings CP has, I'm willing to sacrifice a handful of users that are only signing up to abuse the system. I realize that CP's existence and viability is based solely on its subscriber count, and that Chris doesn't want to take overt steps to reduce that number if he can avoid it, but at some time, he's got to consider and demonstrate concern for the satisfaction of his existing (and oldest) users, and place that concern at a level higher than the desire for new users. He has proven his acceptance of this fact by implementing the article approval system. I just think he needs to go further.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
-----
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I'm not sure if the same holds true for gmail
it does not for gmail nor yahoo.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Chris doesn't want to take overt steps to reduce that number
I see no difference between 4 million and 5 million users. If the numbers are that important,
we can easily double them in a matter of a few weeks...
I too would favor the satisfaction of the oldest and the most active members. Newer users should try and fit in; and when they don't we must help them a bit.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
This month's tips:
- before you ask a question here, search CodeProject, then Google;
- the quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get;
- use PRE tags to preserve formatting when showing multi-line code snippets.
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There are some people who pay for Gmail or a Yahoo account you know!
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What do you get extra for the paid versions? I know yahoo used to offer a larger cap, but both gmail and yahoo now have caps high enough that it's an essentially meaningless feature now.
You know, every time I tried to win a bar-bet about being able to count to 1000 using my fingers I always get punched out when I reach 4....
-- El Corazon
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Well at Yahoo you get larger message and attachment size, personalized spam filtering (whatever that is), pop3 access and no ads.
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1. Unfortunately no. Many excellent articles come from members who have been using the site for less than 30 days. This is a shotgun solution. I do, hoever, know exactly what you mean though.
2. Again no. Members simply are not willing to use work email accounts because they move jobs, they don't want the company seeing them post, because they don't want notifications of messages sent to work, because they don't want to advertise which company they are from, or because of a million other reasons. I can promise you that there is zero correlation between abusive behaviour and the use of free email.
3. This removes any motivation for members to stick around and feel they can contribute. Voting is weighted on a Log_2 sliding scale so while bronze/silver can vote, Gold/Platinum will rapidly outvote them. Let everyone participate, but give more experienced members more of a say.
4. I'm still of two minds on this. I want the system to settle down for a bit longer before I make changes.
Overall nothing will be 100%. My overwhelming philosophy is that anyone and everyone should have the chance to post an article, and the membership should be encouraged to moderate and teach new members in a constrcutive way. You need to be extremely careful in implementing restrictions because it can be a slippery slope and you will end up making it more and more frustrating for legitimate users.
The trick is to ensure rules to reduce the effect of the 1% of miscreants do not affect the 99% of good members. Policy by lowest-common-denominator is a terrible, terrible way to do things.
One thing I did do is change the definition of Gold members so that merely posting a single message and waiting will no longer get you gold. For Gold you need participation.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: If you can, it might be a good idea to try to weed out the non-articles by checking their contents against the template. Many of the crap articles we're seeing are simply click-throughs in the wizard.
I'm glad I read this, I was just about to start a thread suggesting the same thing.
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In order to block articles from click-through wizard, it can be just checked if the article contains phrases from the template such as: "Any source code blocks look like this", " Use the "var" button to to wrap Variable or class names", etc.
Giorgi Dalakishvili
#region signature
my articles
#endregion
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[moved from general discussion]
Would it be a problem if I included google analytics scripts in my articles? They aren't their at the moment, but the idea just popped in my head as I was googling my name and stumbled upon a Coding4Fun webpage about one of my articles: Coding4Fun Link[^]
Regards,
Thomas Stockwell
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Visit my homepage Oracle Studios[ ^]
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Unfortunately we can't allow any script or analytics in articles because doing so exposes our visitors IP addresses to a third party not covered by our privacy agreement.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Good thing I checked first then, thanks for the quick response .
Regards,
Thomas Stockwell
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Visit my homepage Oracle Studios[ ^]
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Chris,
could we get a histogram page on the users: bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc. (adding up
to over 5M).
also how many "Member xxxxxxx" are there?
TIA
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
This month's tips:
- before you ask a question here, search CodeProject, then Google;
- the quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get;
- use PRE tags to preserve formatting when showing multi-line code snippets.
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Interesting idea but not convinced how useful it would be.
For trivia we have around 900 members who have the ability to approve articles.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: Interesting idea but not convinced how useful it would be.
Many great things start that way 
Information about our community should be available to the community and the world.
You might even add a graph representing members over time.
And articles, messages, page hits (show us the dip and the recovery of the big quake), etc.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]
This month's tips:
- before you ask a question here, search CodeProject, then Google;
- the quality and detail of your question reflects on the effectiveness of the help you are likely to get;
- use PRE tags to preserve formatting when showing multi-line code snippets.
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It would be better if a number of posts would be showed by page, instead of showing a number of posts and answers
I just posted something yesterday at night, and 8 hours later, it is on the 3rd page, if there was a chance that someone knew the answer, that chance is gone, since not many people will go page after page reading
Alexei Rodriguez
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Change the 'Per Page' value at the top right of each forum
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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I commented an (crappy) article that has been deleted shortly afterwards. When I use the "messages posted"-link in my profile to show my comment, I still have access to that article:
This is the link to my comment:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/FormatColorDialog.aspx?msg=2503697[^]
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (DNA)
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If I remember correctly, it's marked for deletion but not physically deleted in case it needs to be restored. Not sure what the policy for it is, though.
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You can see it, but no one else can
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Chris,
I am still able to see that gentleman's article. I am having a similar issue with my own article.
- Pero Matic -
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Hmm, are you sure? I signed out, but when trying to access my comment to this article via my profile, the article is still displayed . Norm.net did answer to my comment at this article and via his profile I have access on that article too.
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (DNA)
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Pretty sure. Your "deleted" article has 6 screen shots and a lot of oriental symbols, correct?
- Pero Matic -
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