I believe that the Seasoned Toker's forum is getting ridiculous. I have been seeing way to many threads that do not belong there. Let me give you examples from the 1st page of the forum currently. Found my Pipe Another "You know your a pothead when..." Someone asking about a strain which any seasoned toker should know... Completely irrelevant forum post... General or Pandora's box for sure. Mushrooms I love GrassCity to death, but surely this cannot remain trashed like it is. When new accounts are created, they usually post in the "Smoking and Usage" forums. This causes these forums to be spammed with threads that shouldn't be there. I'm finding myself more and more staying away from these forums because the content is irrelevant and the threads have no sense of progression. Most have horrid grammar and other problems with them. I know you've made a stickied post which tells people to only post legitimate "Seasoned Toker" threads, but that hasn't helped too much. I'm not angry... Its just sad to see forums with such great potential filled with garbage. (No offense to the posters of the mentioned threads; There are much better examples, I just picked yours because I saw them on my first page.) Suggestions to fix this?
yeah man.. there's stuff being discussed... it's a tough forum to mod. You can literally spend an hour in there moving thrrads around and when your done.. 10 new threads pop up lol. it seems to me that anyone who has tried weed more than once feels the need to post in "seasoned tokers"
Like A_W said, The discussion has been going on, And we're throwing ideas out there to figrue out what we're going to do, But trust we're going to do something. I rarley post there myself because of all the non-sense, I go in there and i can spend hours moving threads and deff dont feel like posting in there after that.
The best suggest I have is to change it yourself. Inspire intelligent conversation, create stimulating threads, and hope others follow in your path.
I'd say with the sheer number of users and user:mod ratio, the simplest, most effective solution would be to make it a restricted (i.e. by permission only) subforum. It might stir up a little controversy, but it should clean that subforum up a lot.
best advice i can give to you is to donate and get access to the private section. believe it or not, but it's worth it.
I don't want or need access to them at this time; I've never posted in that subforum and I don't read it, outside of whatever "most recently active topic" is displayed on the subforum list. As someone who has been a member of many different forums for years and a moderator at more than one forum, I'm just saying what I think the solution to the problem is. Sorry, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to opine.
It's hard to just inspire intelligent conversation with so many users. I stay away from Seasoned Tokers for this exact reason, I don't feel it's very seasoned in there. A lot of Apprentices go in there and ask, Question for Seasoned Tokers, as if no one ever visits Apprentice Tokers. It's a problem that people don't read the rules and it takes us back to this issue... http://forum.grasscity.com/general-feedback/374049-noob-suggestion.html#post4406722 We NEED to find a way to get new users to abide by the rules. It will be hard to do but it can be done, it will just take time. The whole thing about it is you have to enforce the rules very strictly to get the point across (not saying you Mods and Admins don't do your best), but there are a lot of users and a lot of threads created each day.
Why not just eliminate the seasoned tokers section? Since the majority are apperentice smokers. You guys did an awesome job splitting up the tools/edibles/stash, but I don't think it'll be feasible when it comes to the seasoned tokers section. Even though it's a section for people who are quite familiar with bud, the majority of those same people avoid it like a plague. So what harm would come if it's eliminated? Less headache for for the mods, and all questions/pointless threads would be in one place, as opposed to be scattered acrosss two sections.
Why delete it just because you can't fix it immediately? All that is going to do is clog up other sections like crazy, and it's not like there is not GREAT CONTENT posted in Seasoned Tokers daily.
Yeah I'm sure there is great content posted there, I do check it out and occasionally post there. It just seems like a practical solution, lumping both the Apprentice and Seasoned tokers into one section, as opposed to having two seperate sections. That's how I see it happening now, people generally seem confused where to put there thread, or if it qualafies for the seasoned toker section. So I don't know dude, merging both of them, seems like the practical solution. Or having one section, and then subsections kind of like recreational marijuana use (edibles/stash/tools), there could be the tokers section with specific subtopics (questions, faqs, experiences, etc).
We're not going to delete Seasoned Tokers. It's very frustrating. People who have toked for a year or so think they are seasoned tokers and feel that Seasoned Tokers is the place to post. It's just not so. I don't care who you are, you have to have some years behind you to be seasoned, no matter what you're talking about. We've discussed permission only but, if we go that route, some people are going to be pissed off for not being allowed in that forum. We've talked about cracking down on it and we've been doing that but with the amount of users, it's hard...especially when so many of those users don't give a damn and continue to post in the wrong forums. I think that what it's going to come down to is that we're going to become more strict when it comes to the rules and more strict about posting where you should post. I think we're strict now but we're going to have to become almost intolerant when it comes to the rules, posting in the wrong forums, signatures and everything else. We'll get it figured out and do what we can to fix things. I'm going to hunt down a few more Moderators but need to make sure our current Mods are all on the same page first. Just bear with us.
I think the "years behind you" ought to be a key here. Make it age restricted to 25 and up upon registration, and don't publicize it at all. Create a new user group that auto-populates all users over 25. Otherwise, simply report bad topics and simply deal.
Not everyone posts their birth date upon registration. I don't even have mine listed in the system...
That's actually a pretty solid idea for new members, and you can filter out the current members with the odd posts. Maybe on the registration the birthdate can be mandatory? Brain-storming sessions are a guilty pleasure of mine haha..
The only thing is anyone can state that they are 25 simply by putting that as their birth date. Just because you are 25 does not mean you are Seasoned either. Age has nothing to do with, it's more experience. Not everyone started smoking at the same age, nor has everyone been around the block just because they are older.
Agreed on both points. Faking one's age is incredibly easy on a forum, and age and experience don't necessarily correlate, either. Take me for example: I had my first experience about four years ago, but didn't continue to use MJ regularly after that, so I wouldn't say I really started getting into it until this year. When I'm 25 I will only have been "toking" for about four years, and I wouldn't really consider that "seasoned". I know people who don't pick it up until their early to mid 20s- 25y/o's may be more mature and intellectually stimulating than younger people, but a 25y/o who has smoked pot for four years isn't more "seasoned" than a 21 year old who has smoked for eight.