Almost everybody who follows the CN forums knows about the hailing done in threads. Recently, though, it seems to have spiraled out of control. Every announcement is flooded with more than a page of replies stating simply "o/ <alliance name>". Rules already prohibit one - word posts, and I think that these replies featuring just "Hail <alliance>" or "o/ alliance" or "o7 alliance" should be banned as well. They make wading through long topics take forever, and I'm sure that they use bandwidth as well.

This topic probably goes in Moderation (main forum), or the Suggestion Box.

Wherever it goes, it is a good suggestion.

It's a tradition that's been around far longer than your nation. I don't see it changing anytime soon.

I agree. The hailing is out of control and needs to stop. It's cluttering up the forum and makes reading threads a pain.

I'll move this to Moderation.

Hailing is part of NC culture, dude. You can't get rid of it, dispite how irritating it is.

I haven't noticed it any worse lately than it's been at any time in the modern era, since before GW2. If there has been an increase, it's the same thing that happens every time there's a sizable war on.

I don't have a huge problem with it.

It doesn't actually help the topic in anyway, except post count wise.

Problem is, you ban o/ comments, then people start writing hail <alliance>

You ban that, they say All hail <alliance>

People will make pointless posts whatever you do.

Agreed. It's a slippery slope, and would be extremely difficult to enforce.

Just take solace knowing that those who do it generally have nothing important or relevant to say.

There could be a word filter addition that makes it alot easier.

Hailing has been brought up in Moderation before, and the ruling was that it was allowed. Honestly, its not that hard to just scroll past a post.

some boards have a "thanks" button - maybe you could just make it a hail button and instead of actually typing in hail etc, people could just press the hail button

It's a way for people to pad their post counts without having to be creative. I've specifically avoided doing that (I'll congratulate people, but no hails) and I think all it does is serve to clog up the threads. It seems every thread an alliance makes (especially a large alliance) instantly comes with 1 full page of hails from their members before anything interesting is discussed or someone has the originality to come up with another way to congratulate, agree, etc or raises some sort of point. I'd like to see it gone, but it won't be.

Having just seen the GPA thread, we need to do something about worthless posts. I think it was page 10 before there was a response worth reading.

This is exactly the issue. If it was only a few I could scroll past, but we're talking about pages of clutter and useless posts.

This is something that is a serious problem. There are already rules about no content replies, and hails are the epitomy of no content. They're not fun or spirited, they're base and noisome.

So then Ave Legio and other allaince's slogans that are pretty much the same need to be banned too?

A simple o/ post often has far more content than a page of text, depending who is writing each, and what they are saying - both subtext and overtly. Quantity =/= Quality.

Personally, I dislike looking through paragraphs of irrelevant text more than scrolling past a few hails, which make the meaning of the post immediately clear.

An alliance leader hailing may have some relevance. A random person has no relevance if they just write o/

For a large part of these topics, its almost as if a huge number of people have done

ctrl+c
open new post
ctrl+v

10 pages of useless info is a very annoying factor for anyone trying to find out what is going on.

Your comment implies that o/ is merely an ascii endorsement, and as such is no more than writing only "this." You claim o/ speaks volumes, but in fact it is volumes of speech. If alliances wish to have their announcements endorsed by the mind-numbingly numb-minded, let them attach polls to their announcements, or, idea of the century, let them instruct their membership to rate their announcement threads; I give this suggestion 5 golden manbabies.

Ruler: CRex
Nation: Gulo Gulo
Link.

One of the issues TOP has been worked on is how do the entire Hail thing without using the o/ symbol the community either loves or hates.

Typically TOP has used Johan Vult (John Wills It) as our in character hail. It references back to Deus Vult (God Wills It, from the crusaders), only with Johan as our in character deity dating back to the Paradox Forums and our fouding. In the I know that things like Seig Heil I have been accepted for non-English catchphrases, but in general that non-English posting is banned. I was wondering if Johan Vult is an acceptable catchphrase we can append to our various announcements, stick in our signatures, use in in game bios etc?

Thank you for the time. Also if those goes in Forum Abuse rather than the root forum my apologies.

This is the correct forum but I believe your suggestion should be merged with the ongoing discussion here, do you agree or do you see it as an entirely separate issue?

I have no issues at all with this. It just got brought up internally and we wanted to ask before someone ran afoul of the Forum TOS.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Certainly. I think it is relevant to the ongoing discussion so I'll merge it now.

May I be so bold to ask if this is ok for us to use? If not then I apologize.

I personally don't see it changing, because everyone will post stupid posts. Its just going to happen. So like previously mentioned in this thread. If you block o/ <Alliance> then it will be Hail<Alliance> then All hail, etc etc. It will not stop. So I personally don't think they are going to go through all that trouble just to ban o/ or "Hail!"

Then change the rule to, "your post must add something to the thread, this is left to the mods interpretation" So long as the mods make a united front against all these stupid low-content posts then it will be fine.

Seriously, that GPA thread is almost impossible to read, we shouldn't have to skip 10 pages just because some people want to go POSTCOUNT+1 in a legal way.

I will throw myself under the bus and devote myself to enforcing any no-hail/no non-content post rule, Mod willing.
The general counter-argument seems to be "Woe is Admin, this would be too hard to implement" - not really. The proposition isn't about practicablity, it's about neccessity.

They aren't just about post counts. It's a significant part of good propaganda. By hailing your alliance or friends or hurling a snide remark about an opponent, you are contributing to a bandwagon in either direction and possibly drowning out opposing views.

For example, there are a couple of people who like to troll Mushroom Kingdom announcements. If all you had was the announcements and thentrolling comments, it would make it look like everyone is against Mushroom Kingdom and make MK look unpopular and bad. But with MK and its friends posting hails and such, it makes MK look good and will present a more positive image to someone reading the thread, and therefore by extension, a more positive image of MK.

Except that the "trolls" don't post an ascii downward thumb or five lines of frowny faces; they have to come up with something clever/snarky/relevent and put it into a sentence form. By your arguement, if I didn't like an announcement in a world where "o/" (ad similar are allowed) I should simply be able to type "boo MK" and hit post over and over. If that were the case, the Forum Abuse thread would be overflowing with spam reports.
Additionally, "o/" can't be defined as a propaganda tool or propaganda because it has no value in changing peoples' minds, because it has no value of expressing any real idea - there is no spark of thought in o/ (or ave legio, hail, heil, johan vult, MHAil) just as there would be no spark of thought in booing.

Mod enforcement of such a rule wouldn't be an issue, but it would need to be a cut-and-dry rule, not one subjectively enforced by the mods. If contentless "hail" posts of any type were to be disallowed, so too would all other contentless "hail" posts. This would just be contingent on making clear what a contentless "hail" post is, exactly.

So how about this:

1) All posts must be over three words (seriously, that should be a rule).
2) "o/ <alliance / person" is not allowed.
3) "hail <alliance / person" is not allowed.

But then, would posts like "I agree with the content of this post, such and such alliance is a menace" or whatever, be allowed?

Fact is, 90% of posts add nothing to any particular thread, >3 words or not.

this is a great point. personally i see nothing wrong with hails, i just scroll right on by them

*wonders why this post was ignored*

Seems people can block out what they don't want to see. "o/"'s shouldn't be a problem then.

Because the thread was left open, indicating we'd like to hear the opinions of the player base and/or that the topic is now up for re-examination.

Like others have said, I just scroll past them doesn't bother me any.

http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=13387

Link me the first 5 posts of relevance in that thread, and time how long it took you to find them. Then you may see the problem.


Note: don't post in that thread, it would be a gravedig.

There aren't any hails, just useless comments. I mean I didn't see any "o/"

Thats not the point. The point is that the majority of the topic has nothing but the equivalent of GPA posts.

If it had been something good it would have had o/ posts for 10 pages instead.

I was using it to highlight the fact that you can't just scroll past the spammers.

Smallfrog.

I suppose so, but again its not like you're reading the GPA posts or o/ posts.

But your not reading anything of value. I asked you to find the first 5 relevant posts. I'll give you a hint, they start with the GPA response on page 10.

Its the internet, when do you expect to read something of value?

compare the posts in the Alliance politics forum to those in the boiler room.

Ugh, stop poking holes into my arguement.

A question to the people debating here, I didn't really see a clear reply to it earlier.

What is the difference between "Hail-posts" and just typing "Congratulations". In my mind they have the same meaning, and they take up the same amount of space (one post). If we would enforce a "no-hail"-rule would we have to remove posts only saying "grats/congrats/congratulations" and so forth?

I suppose mods would have to considering that would also be "contentless".


P.S Atlas: Check your comments xD

Atlas raises the key point here: where do you draw the line? There are obvious limitations to either track (being specific and detailed vs. being general and broad) and I'm curious to hear some ideas on how to enforce this without constant screaming about inconsistency and all that.

I think no matter what you do, people will find a way to make a meaningless post to get around it.

For example, posting with "this" or "QFT" and a quote is not acceptable. So what do people do now? "I agree with this post, and have therefore quoted it". Just as pointless.

I think it might be okay to ban posts that are only "o/ <whatever>" or "Ave Legio", but I really don't see it as much of a problem to be worth it, especially in an in-character context where that would be reasonable to assume that people would be actually doing that.