posted 15-01-03 09:20        Go to the latest reply

Banning people for having multiple accounts in the forum, being offensive in the forum or chatroom, or cheating with wagers is getting very tiresome and is distracting me from trying to improve the site. If things don't improve soon I can see the forum and chatroom disappearing from DS altogether, which is not something I want to happen.

However, I did have an idea whilst I was in the shower this morning:

I want to introduce a system whereby players can not post in the forum or enter the chat room until they've made a certain number of trades. Off the top of my head I think that 1,000 would be a suitable threshold. Players could also be prevented from making wagers until this threshold is reached, which would be introduced as part of the general improvements in the wager system.

It wouldn't stop all spoof accounts, but to go to the trouble of making 1,000 trades just so you can be offensive in the forum without threatening your main account, you'd have to be pretty sad.

There's also an argument from having players' trades not affect share prices until they've reached this threshold, but that's not the main priority at the moment.

Sure, the forum and chatroom might quieten off a bit, but at least it would most of the junk that would disappear. Players would still have to be banned from time to time, but hopefully there'd be less of this.

This is quite a major step, so I'd like to hear what you think about this idea. Also, to help me get a threshold value, please estimate how many trades you make each day across all sections and put the estimation in your replies.

I look forward to your opinions.

usually i make up to ten trades per day. if i keep this rate up, i won't be able to use the forum for about three months.

I think that 1000 trades may be a little high tho as not all players play across all sections (myself included). Playing just the football section the amount of trading done obviously depends on the size of your portfolio. A player just starting up would only be able to buy max in a couple of teams, limiting them to the amount of trading they can do. I presume selling the teams would also count towards the final figure ?

As i only play the football section the amount of trades i make a day would average out at about 5.

Over the last 3 days I've had 74 trades ie an average of 25/day.

depends dureing the week i will make as many trades as i do dureing a saturday or sunday.

somewhere between 10 - 25 trades between mon-fri but could be more if internationals etc. are on.
on a sat perhaps as many as 50 at the peak of the season, same on sunday.
so on average perhaps 90 - 110 trades a week.

finnaly, i make about 10 trades (selling and buying)a day in football (approx.)

I think the number of trades should be reduced. My thinking behind this is as someone mentioned earlier that when you have a small portfolio, you may only have 4 or 5 trades a day.....if that! This is going to restrict those who are genuinely interested in joining the forum. Maybe 500 trades would be more acceptable, this will still take new players approximately 3 months before they could post in the forum.

The news thata lot of existing members won't lose out and have to start trading again also is music o my ears. As you are aware, I don't trade very often now, but do like to pop into the forum and see what's going on. Admittedly not a lot over the recent months! Therefore, your idea of a threshold of posts etc is most welcome.

I'm sure that between all of those decent members of DS can come up with more ideas to help refine the possibilities available to Mark and ourselves to come up with an urgently required solution to the increasing problem of idiots posting in the forum, which I may add (and Mark correct me if I am wrong) takes up valuable space on the servers that ensure that the game runs smoothly

Anxiously anticipating the next progression for DS,

I think that instead of a trade threshold their should be a value threshold, anyone over 5 million groats can post on the forum. The chatroom should be open to all.

Just a thought, other than e-mailing you how would new members relay and worries and questions they wish to ask fellow members, perhaps bring back messaging?

had a certain amount of trades.(as prev suggested)

a timed 'waiting' period(6 weeks?), on a regularlly used active account, regardless of trade numbers made, before they can enter forums.(any idiots should have got bored waiting 6 weeks to abuse someone)

or tie admission into chat/forums to the amount of ads 'hits' made by the player(lets face we all hit the 'sweepstakes win 10000 g' icon at least once a day)perhaps a minimum number of hits should be made before access is granted.
Would raise some funds as well.

I'd be okay on the 5 million but it sounds a bit high - maybe 2 million.

1000 trades can be done in hours if u try hard enough,
buy 1 of the cheapest teams around,
do it another 499 times, every one have ago buying 20x1 at a time see how long it takes you then multiply it,
then sell 1 at a time 500 times,thats a thousand easy if you want to that is .
It just will not work, cheats will still do it,then theres other ways to skin a cat isn't there???

Did you take that into account mafryer or not or would you place trading restrictions on the amount of trades you can have daily, then that would place favours on the big folios ,not thought proper. i reckon theres no easy solution.

It would be much more difficult if this was tied to a portfolio value, i.e 1000 trades and over 2 million groats.

This idea _is_ harsh, but there has been some pretty bad stuff in the chatroom recently. There is no automatic right to enter the chatroom, forum or even DS itself. If no-one likes the idea, I can quite easily shut down the chatroom and forum. It would be a lot easier for me.

The idea isn't foolproof, and if you read my original post you will realise that I knew that all along. Car steering wheel locks and leaving lights on when you're not at home aren't foolproof ideas either, but they're good ideas and I challenge rolandtodd to convince anyone otherwise. Sure, a determined thief _will_ steal your car, but a steering wheel lock will put off more opportunistic thiefs.

I don't like the idea of using portfolio values, except for existing members when the system starts running for the first time. At values below G5m your portfolio value doesn't give a good indication of how dedicated you are to the game, as keen but rubbish players may take ages to reach that level. Lucky or cheating players may reach it fairly quickly.

In time, rather than banning new members from the chatroom and forum, a censorship system ought to be introduced. However, this would take a bit of a while to setup and would require a lot of continual work from me and, hopefully, willing volunteers. Thus censorship can be ignored whilst we consider the merits of the initial system.

To expand on your idea, Mark (or an appointed one/few) could "police" the forum with a 3-strike ruling.

1st time someone is deliberately rascist or abusive etc they are banned from the forum AND chatroom for one week.
2nd time someone is deliberately rascist or abusive etc they are banned from the forum AND chatroom for one month.
3rd time someone is deliberately rascist or abusive etc they are banned from the forum AND chatroom indefinately.

If Mark were, for example to decide that he would rather spend his time on the game than the forum and appoint a certain few, then they should have to agree collectively 100% together to ban a member. This way no bias could come into play.

The Forum used to be brilliant. There was generally a lot of sensible discussion - not only about football or even about sport, but it was funny, irreverent, articulate and only very seldon malicious.

The decline in the standard of the Forum is largely symptomatic of the decline in respect and courtesy in modern society.

The ludicrous "text" style messages at first evoked some sympathy (are people really that ignorant that when confronted with a full keyboard without the hassle of predictive text, they have to omit vowels and replace words with numbers and symbols?) but more recently disgust. People actually seem to take pride in spelling words incorrectly - and as old-fashioned and conservative as that may sound, really astonishes me.

The fact that I guess it is mostly children who are responsible for the decline of the Forum, does leave one with some hope that they will grow up - sooner, rather than later, - when they will realise that adults don't generally speak in text littered with expletives and that smilies can't be used to convey emotions orally.

Thats an average of about 5 a day.My porfolio is around the 4 million mark, and I have been playing since late July last year.

On the basis of the 1000 trades rule, I would have to wait over 6 months to be able to use the forum.I guess 500 would be a good figure.Thats 100 days.

By matt's math, 1000 trades would be 6 months wait.

By your own wishes

10000 trades would be 60 months. But wait, he said that was half, heheheh. So 60 months multiplied by 2 (anyone seen where I'm going with this? ) would be 120 months, or 10 years! Classic I say!

I think a consensus is building that 1,000 trades is too much.

Maybe it's worth waiting a bit longer with the current system, until a censorship system can be implemented. That might take a month or two, or if I work hard it might take less time.

I think a consensus is building that 1,000 trades is too much.

Maybe it's worth waiting a bit longer with the current system, until a censorship system can be implemented. That might take a month or two, or if I work hard it might take less time.

b)only allowed in forum after 1000trades

ive shown little interest in using the forum over the past few months because of the issues you highlight - thus i would be very glad to see the back of them

a lot of the talk is of 1,000 trades being too much, i disagree - however, perhaps you could require people to have been registered on the site for a set period of time and have made a minimum number of trades (probably less than 1000) before posting on the forum

the bottom line is i dont really care what the figure is or what you decide - i'll fully support whatever it is.

Furthermore, this site has given me a lot of enjoyment over the past year and if i could give something back, eg as one of a number of forum moderators than i would gladly do so.

But look at last night's post from neela, and the ensuing diverse interpretation of what was actually being said, against what some people wanted to read, and you'll see the problem if it was left to players to police.

Sometimes in print it can be hard to understand what is really meant, or things are taken the wrong way.

One man's meat etc..........

2. I also think a 3 strikes and you're out policy is another sensible suggestion.

3. Other forums operate a moderator system. A number of high regarded members could help police the forum.

with this in mind, id gladly help out in the 'football' section of the forum, with anyone else, if mark wanted to introduce this concept

Sorry to have a bit of a change of heart, but that's what this post is all about.

can i just ask a couple of questions:

do you not like the idea of a certain number of trades to be a forum member anyomore?

I'm a little confused by what you mean when you say:

"Perhaps, apart from long-term members, players would cease to be censored after they've made, say, 100 acceptable posts with no more than one or two unacceptable ones and no really offensive ones."

Does this mean long-term members continue to be monitored?

IN FACT THAT COULD BE A GOOD THING ACROSS THE WHOLE OF DREAMSHARES,
IE; YOU GET "100" A MONTH, YOU POST,THEN 1 DEDUCTED ONCE YOU USED THEM UP YOU HAVE TO WAIT TILL NEXT MONTH FOR YOUR NEXT 100, THAT MIGHT CURTAIL THE HEAVY USERS OF FORUM,

My personal view and not that of the BBC is that Dreamshares forum should be run by a moderator (I would be glad to take up this role).

This evening another petty squabble broke out in the chatrrom and rather than let it spread to the forum (again) I stepped in to try and silence rows. So that my remarks cannot be used against me I have copied and pasted them below:

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LADS AND LADIES!!!! Can i suggest that we all just get along nicely? No rascist remarks, no petty insults or abuse directed at anyone....can you not see what Mark is trying to get rid of? Please for everyone's sakes just give it a rest. This game used to have a real community spirit.if you aren't willing to get along with people then you may as well leave because you won't be very welcome among the majority of members.........why do you think members like myself are campaigning against this???
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1. Thought of this idea in the shower lmfao!

my friend, username: Double A, got her account suspended after giving her friend 10000 groats as a cheap birthday present through the wager system.

she was not intending to cause any harm to ds and is very upset by this suspension. i would greatly appreciate it if u could let her back into the game as she was a regular trader and enthusiastic player.

my friend was not cheating, she would not do anything that would ruin this great game.

so once again, i'm asking u, Mark to give her another chance. i can't imagine starting another account and starting from stratch!

have a little empathy and consideration. i hope things can turn out good.

what is the final decision for the posting in the forum?

do i need to wait till i got 1000 trades then i can enter the forum or something else?