• Hi, I am the owner and main administrator of Styleforum. If you find the forum useful and fun, please help support it by buying through the posted links on the forum. Our main, very popular sales thread, where the latest and best sales are listed, are posted HERE

    Purchases made through some of our links earns a commission for the forum and allows us to do the work of maintaining and improving it. Finally, thanks for being a part of this community. We realize that there are many choices today on the internet, and we have all of you to thank for making Styleforum the foremost destination for discussions of menswear.
  • This site contains affiliate links for which Styleforum may be compensated.
  • We would like to welcome House of Huntington as an official Affiliate Vendor. Shop past season Drake's, Nigel Cabourn, Private White V.C. and other menswear luxury brands at exceptional prices below retail. Please visit the Houise of Huntington thread and welcome them to the forum.

  • STYLE. COMMUNITY. GREAT CLOTHING.

    Bored of counting likes on social networks? At Styleforum, you’ll find rousing discussions that go beyond strings of emojis.

    Click Here to join Styleforum's thousands of style enthusiasts today!

    Styleforum is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Citizens On Patrol Thread...forum rules you would like to see

F. Corbera

Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined
Sep 30, 2010
Messages
4,906
Reaction score
1,169
Originally Posted by Matt
interesting points. I will read them later with my thesaurus. Thanks.

laugh.gif


I'll offer one practical suggestion, again from the Mens Clothing perspective.

There is really good content locked into past SF threads and posts. The Glossary of terms/ Best posts/ FAQ/ Links is a completely inadequate mechanism to summarize this material for new members.

If this material was more readily available and obvious, it might do much to be a friendly and useful gateway for your precious new members.

Someone would have to select, organize, curate, and update this material, and it should be knowledgable mods. This means more work for you.
 

Matt

ex-m@Triate
Joined
Jan 14, 2005
Messages
10,765
Reaction score
275
I received the following thoughts by PM:

1. re handling n00b questions, my impression is that members rather than mods handle such questions on all clothing boards I've read. Of course, some boards have heavier mod involvement or mods who are deeply involved in the subject (such as Alden or Kabbaz). With respect to medwards, I don't know if there's anyone else left on AAAC with both the knowledge and the social skills to answer questions.

2. re abolishing CE/DT, my feeling is that not having them just makes the political and antisocial bad blood boil up in the rest of the forum. With CE, one can say, "I don't like snakes, but I stay away from the zoo" and not have to deal with people saying appalling things.

3. With DT, I think the issue is more tangled. It does seem to me that there is a coterie of people who don't really care about/post on much except DT, and for every brilliant "Ask Professor Fab" thread there are about 100 stupid threads mocking other thread titles, talking about gross sexual or bathroom habits, none of which the world needs. If we did abolish DT I'd think more mod vigilance would be needed on the GC/Entertainment forums to keep it from taking those over. Maybe if it didn't exist certain posters would move on.

4. re your useful suggestion to revisit and organize the wiki, I think we should deputize a senior member, maybe under a new ID, to curate them...

5. re forum focus... I think a lot of senior members ended up sticking with SF and drifting away from LL and AAAC because the environment was more irreverent and more diverse here -- there were more subfora of topics and a broader audience of people whose involvement made posting more interesting. We came for the clothes talk but we stayed, to some extent, for the "low rent social club" (in Teger's words) that allowed us to snark each other, talk about cooking, Anne Hathaway. I can't imagine the RLPL thong saga happening on London Lounge, unless it was made by a certified artisan.

i tend to agree with a lot of that, indeed would count myself among the people who stuck with SF over AAAC for the general tone and wider subject matter than Andy's site was offering at the time. LL banned me, I'm a hellraiser goddammit...but anyhow no opinions there.

I would note one thing re point 3. DT was born because Gen and E&C were getting clogged up with **** (IIRC it was "things ____ like" threads going all over the place and getting mad annoying that finally prompted J to start a dumb crap haven). Removing the haven won't remove the threads....
 

Jekyll

Distinguished Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2008
Messages
6,166
Reaction score
21
Originally Posted by Matt
3. no socks. The only reason people start socks is to say crap they aren't man enough to say under their own name.

That may be the reason the majority of them are created, but idk if it's the only one. There've been a few really funny ones: vaclav (unless he's actually real as some have claimed), the falafel/camel dude, the marroquian dude, etc. Spalla is occasionally funny.
 

Rambo

Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined
Oct 3, 2007
Messages
24,706
Reaction score
1,347
To add to what Freddy Cobra is getting at I think we need a few permanent additions:

Someone who's job it is to update the Wiki and inforum info threads on a consistent basis. The in-thread Wiki I already mentioned in TransMod but the forum Wiki is hopelessly outdated

A noob post ban. Only searching for a (X) amount of time. If they really want to know so bad, let em dig it up like the rest of us schmucks. This will cut down on some of the spam as well, or, at least slow it down quite a bit.

A 100 post entrance fee for DT

Lastly, we need a few more mods. There just seems to be too much bullshit for you guys to handle, not that you're not trying your best, and a few of our mods don't really seem to enforce much. Also, someone who enforces some sort of newb/snark behavior would go a long way. If someone keeps being an asshole to the new guys then they get timed out.
 

Matt

ex-m@Triate
Joined
Jan 14, 2005
Messages
10,765
Reaction score
275
Originally Posted by Rambo
Someone who's job it is to update the Wiki and inforum info threads on a consistent basis. The in-thread Wiki I already mentioned in TransMod but the forum Wiki is hopelessly outdated
that'd be cute in principle, but it's a lot to ask in practise...
A noob post ban. Only searching for a (X) amount of time. If they really want to know so bad, let em dig it up like the rest of us schmucks. This will cut down on some of the spam as well, or, at least slow it down quite a bit.
People have been saying that for years, I've never been a fan. Spam benefits notwithstanding, I just tend to err on the side of human nature. IIRC correctly, my first post here would have been something to the effect of 'hello, i live in a place with cheap tailors, what should i ask them to do for me'...if I had've signed up and gotten a notice saying 'you can't ask your cheap tailor question for a week', in all honesty, i would have gotten a little annoyed that i went through the registration process, returned to whatever DVD I was watching at the time, forgotten the site existed, and never have signed in again.
Lastly, we need a few more mods. There just seems to be too much bullshit for you guys to handle, not that you're not trying your best, and a few of our mods don't really seem to enforce much. Also, someone who enforces some sort of newb/snark behavior would go a long way. If someone keeps being an asshole to the new guys then they get timed out.
Fok and I were just chatting about that actually. A couple of the guys aren't here as much as they would like to be any more, careers and families and lives and wives and all that stuff. As you know Kyle has been added to the ranks, he has a good temperament for it, and we are discussing the site's requirements at the moment.
 

Rambo

Timed Out
Timed Out
Joined
Oct 3, 2007
Messages
24,706
Reaction score
1,347
Originally Posted by Matt
that'd be cute in principle, but it's a lot to ask in practise... People have been saying that for years, I've never been a fan. Spam benefits notwithstanding, I just tend to err on the side of human nature. IIRC correctly, my first post here would have been something to the effect of 'hello, i live in a place with cheap tailors, what should i ask them to do for me'...if I had've signed up and gotten a notice saying 'you can't ask your cheap tailor question for a week', in all honesty, i would have gotten a little annoyed that i went through the registration process, returned to whatever DVD I was watching at the time, forgotten the site existed, and never have signed in again. Fok and I were just chatting about that actually. A couple of the guys aren't here as much as they would like to be any more, careers and families and lives and wives and all that stuff. As you know Kyle has been added to the ranks, he has a good temperament for it, and we are discussing the site's requirements at the moment.
It is a lot to ask but it will definitely solve a lot of the problems. Maybe the mods could rotate the job? Good point about possibly driving people away. I think the key there will be finding the middle ground to this problem. Maybe a noob sub-forum? First 10 posts or something of the sort and they'd be able to access all other areas of the forum + search. That's pretty much why I mentioned it. Like I said before, if you need someone to pitch in I'd be glad to give back a bit of my time.
 

Prada_Ferragamo

Distinguished Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2008
Messages
5,602
Reaction score
93
Originally Posted by Matt
IIRC correctly, my first post here would have been something to the effect of 'hello, i live in a place with cheap tailors, what should i ask them to do for me'...if I had've signed up and gotten a notice saying 'you can't ask your cheap tailor question for a week', in all honesty, i would have gotten a little annoyed that i went through the registration process, returned to whatever DVD I was watching at the time, forgotten the site existed, and never have signed in again.

The site has grown so much in the past year or so. I doubt any noob will have a question so sophisticated that a simple search wouldn't do. Just too lazy. I don't venture into MC that often, but the number of noob threads is enormous.
 

BDC2823

Distinguished Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2007
Messages
4,263
Reaction score
44
Originally Posted by Prada_Ferragamo
The site has grown so much in the past year or so. I doubt any noob will have a question so sophisticated that a simple search wouldn't do. Just too lazy. I don't venture into MC that often, but the number of noob threads is enormous.

I agree and they should search, but I also agree that the noob bashing is pretty lame and a detriment to the site. When I first joined I didn't know **** about clothes. That's why I came here because I wanted to learn. I didn't just start posting noob threads but spent about 6 months reading threads and going through past threads before making a post. That was my way but others have theirs. I just don't think that if a noob posts and asks a question, even if covered ad nauseum, the next 15 posts should be needless ridicule.

Plus I stayed for the other forums. I rarely venture into MC now. One because my income took a nosedive so I can't afford to buy the stuff I did via the B/S forums a couple years ago, and two, because I find more value out of the other subforums. So I guess this goes back to value of the other forums as noted in previous replies. I find them really valuable. I don't post much in MC anymore but in the other subforums and without those ones and if this was only about clothing, I probably wouldn't have interacted with some great people. I consider KWilkinson a friend and talk with him regularly outside of SF and without the other subforums, I doubt he or I would've stayed. That goes with guys like Thomas as well. I even play video games online just about daily with a handful of members from SF like Mauro, bdeuce, John Galt, John, etc. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think everything is going well even if some refinement is needed, but the site evolving to what it has become, and not just clothing only, has been a good thing.
 

Journeyman

Distinguished Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2005
Messages
7,963
Reaction score
3,435
Originally Posted by F. Corbera
I do not see any indication that interesting new posters have been chased away. Where would they go?

Originally Posted by Matt
they are chased away before they get to become interesting posters.

It used to be, say, a kid shows up with a question about altering a suit his dad had given him, and we would give him useful advice, and sometimes he'd stick around, and sometimes he wouldn't.

These days the useful advice is replaced with snark, he figures the site is full of assholes, and generally, doesn't stick around.

I prefer the old way. Judging by the feedback I hear from a lot of the guys who have been here a while, they do too.


+1.

Sure, it can be a little bit boring when someone posts a "Please help me, how does my new suit look?" thread, but in all seriousness, if you can't be bothered giving good feedback then don't say anything at all.

It's quite depressing to read what I assume is a genuine thread by someone asking for advice and to read responses that are sarcastic and full of SF in-jokes that the original poster won't understand. It must be discouraging for them and it's not a good look.
 

Douglas

Stupid ass member
Spamminator Moderator
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
Messages
14,243
Reaction score
2,166
I'd be sad if the CE and DT fora were gone. I came for the clothes, but now I rarely venture into MC, for a whole variety of reasons both forum-related and otherwise. Just my $.02.

I agree though that it is extremely difficult to get to the best clothing information out there, which contributes to the noob issue in MC. Perhaps if there were a "Hall of Fame" independently searchable microsite (or subforum), with the best threads (e.g. Manton's Business Casual masterpiece) posted there, it would be a good place for noobs to start. Then you'd just have to come up with good criteria for nominating and electing HOF threads.

One thing I wouldn't mind seeing - some sort of punishment level that allowed a member to stay and post but no longer start threads. I doubt this is possible, but if, say, 5 members have you on ignore you automatically lose new thread-making abilities.
 

Piobaire

Not left of center?
Joined
Dec 5, 2006
Messages
81,724
Reaction score
63,071
Originally Posted by Douglas
One thing I wouldn't mind seeing - some sort of punishment level that allowed a member to stay and post but no longer start threads. I doubt this is possible, but if, say, 5 members have you on ignore you automatically lose new thread-making abilities.

Doug, great idea, but how hard would it be to get five members to collude for a joke or spite?

I think the solution, if there is one (which presupposes there's actually a problem), would be both member driven and mod driven. For instance, the socks. I have to say the increased socks has made me snarkier. As I said in trans-mod, I feel like I'm answering the same questions (which will get argued with), from the same guy(s) a million times. Could be just my innate
tinfoil.gif
but we all know socks/trolls have done this repeatedly to most of us.

So member and mod driven. Mods set the priority, i.e. eliminate/minimize harmful socks, members pitch in and just report a suspected sock vs. reacting to it (yes, I'm guilty of this).
 

Manton

RINO
Joined
Apr 20, 2002
Messages
41,314
Reaction score
2,879
I may have more thoughts later, but I don't think getting rid of CE is the answer. I think it is actually an asset to the site. OK, that may be too far. But I know that it is one of the reasons why I came and hung out. Yes, it can be really, really snarky and obnoxious. But it can also be very well informed and lots of fun.

As much anger and angst as I experienced in there, my travails in CE never tempted me to leave the site. It was more like a boxing gym. You go in, get the hell beat out of you, maybe beat the hell out of somebody else, shower, get bandaged, rest, and start over. And when it was "peaceful" you could learn something.

For reasons discussed in this thread, MC is less interesting for many old-timers than it used to be. But they haven't abandoned it completely. They just go in there less. What I fear is that if you shut down a place like CE, some people who read CE a lot and MC occasionally won't respond by going back into MC with gusto. Rather they will just drift further away from the site.

Again, for me personally, CE + food (+ e-friends) were the reasons I stayed even after MC ceased to be my primary hang-out. Had they not been there, I might have bugged out a long time ago.

DT is a problem I don't know how to solve. I will think about that some more.
 

Douglas

Stupid ass member
Spamminator Moderator
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
Messages
14,243
Reaction score
2,166
Originally Posted by Piobaire
Doug, great idea, but how hard would it be to get five members to collude for a joke or spite?

We are talking about this as though it were technically feasible, which I am certain it is not.

But I'll play just because it's fun. Sure it's a possibility that a clique could gang up on someone but I was just trying to come up with a way for this not to take up more mod attention. If the rules were very firm on this sort of collusion (and could result in a ban) I think ppl would take the responsibility seriously enough. Still, it's probably true we would never again see an AF thread.

[cue Louis Armstrong]
 

Featured Sponsor

How important is full vs half canvas to you for heavier sport jackets?

  • Definitely full canvas only

    Votes: 55 35.3%
  • Half canvas is fine

    Votes: 61 39.1%
  • Really don't care

    Votes: 17 10.9%
  • Depends on fabric

    Votes: 27 17.3%
  • Depends on price

    Votes: 28 17.9%

Forum statistics

Threads
505,204
Messages
10,579,261
Members
223,891
Latest member
dfkoknee
Top