[JaredL]

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i have stated many times how dumb i feel these threads are, but people bring them on themselves. we pretty much know what the savages of OOT will do at this point.

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This is exactly what I believe Matt was referring to when he wrote "How many of these before you stop playing to the ignorant [censored] masses and actually do something about this stupidity?"

It's total [censored] that you are basically saying "yeah, it sucks but with a lot of posters way out of line, what can you do?" Here's the problem as I see it:

- people often post in OOT looking for advice about a number of things

- a number of people, those posting and those reading, benefit from these posts

- such "trainwreck" [censored] punishes people for making these posts.

- that makes the forum worse off and increases the noise to signal ratio.

This thread was not the greatest, but dealt with a situation many deal with (partner cheating on them, breaking up with them). There was some quality discussion in it. Beyond this specific thread, there is a lot of good content that doesn't get posted for this reason.

The problem here is that there is no disincentive to do this crap, only to make valid posts. The solution to this problem is simple:

1. Edit any posts with personal information (this was done well in the thread, by Daryn I believe)
2. If anybody posts personal information about anyone involved in the thread that was gotten from outside (including AIM conversations etc.), this information is deleted as well. The person doing so should be banned for a minimum of two weeks, a month might be better. Anyone posting a request for such information is also banned (a shorter period perhaps but at least a week), and their post deleted.
3. If under 2 there are more than a couple people banned, the entire thread is deleted. By deleted I do not mean sent here to be edited to be brought back or deleted and brought back by an admin, but permanently deleted never to be seen again. Perhaps as an example, the thread is locked and every single post in it is deleted.

With this in place, and followed through, it would take about two times for the "savages of OOT" to change their behavior and the forum will drastically improve as a result.