Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

Exactly what the title says. There are too many "I created a meme" posts here, and I think we need to give the new members some time to examine the site and see how it's run.

Brand New Members create some bad entries and some awesome ones.
By restricting BNMs, we might loose good entries just because of this.

I remember someone (staff) saying there isnt that many bad entries that we need to restrict BNMs from creating them. (i.e we can deal with bad entries on a case-by-case basis and it doesn't take a lot of time)

I'd actually agree, but as you can tell by amanda's image (it has been used in several other threads asking the same thing,) BNM's can make some great entries.

In theory…

You have to wonder how much work a BNM can do on an entry. It probably looks like crap and has very little substance in the article. But the fact that they aren't in the KYM "know" and community makes it more likely that they'll bring an otherwise unconsidered phenomenon to our attention.

From there, an Entry Mod will hop on, and if they think "Huh. Of course that's a meme," then they make the entry suitable.
 
In practicality, the Entry Moderators are busy, as are the administrators. They're working on other entries and trying to get them to Confirm quality articles. That requires a lot of editing and a lot of research. It's part of the administrators' job, but there are only a few administrators (and it's only part of their jobs.) Entry Moderators actually moderate the site in addition to handling entries (not to mention that they do this on volunteer hours. Community service because they are likely on probation for doing something illegal.)

Forum Moderators usually don't know much about entry making. We just talk good, mostly.

The more experienced userbase are more concerned with helping out in the forum or in present entries. They are a part of the current community.

And those non-mod users who are bringing new phenomena to the attention of the site and do good work in entries will probably become mods soon and therefore will get all uppity and useless too busy to go out and find new phenomena that go under or over KYM's radar.
 
 
And the harm is that there are entries that get the immediate DP. Entry Moderators get great joy from this. Often times, it's their only reason for living (like locking threads is the only reason I get up in the morning.) So if a crap entry is made, then it will be deadpooled or hidden.

And who knows, maybe that entry was just so far ahead of the curve and then it gets some legitimate spread and becomes notable.

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It's annoying to see bad entries made, but the good outweighs the bad. Just try to not let it get to you.

@ amandab

however,
half of those BNMs in that list don't even use kym anymore, they just started the entry….look at the edits they've made, they barely even contributed, you guys (mods and frequent editors) did ALL the work

we didn't need to wait for someone to sign up for kym just for those entries to exist

when a meme is ready, most of us here that use the internet frequently WILL KNOW that it's ready for an entry…and will do it properly

so the following argument should no longer be used:
IvanP91v: "By restricting, we might loose good entries just because of this."

because I think (>assume) most of us rather agree with the statement
"By restricting, we might see less garbage entries just because of this"

…but then at the same time, I love seeing garbage entries because of the hilarious comment responses

I facepalm every time I see a thread with this topic. It might as well read:
"I don't like to see a bad entry so lets blame the BNM's for this, since I am not a BNM myself."

Instead of restricting Brand New Members, I think we should be giving tools in order to help them create their entries.

Though their number of excuses has dramatically decreased due to the "warning/rules/helpful tips" page they have to pass on their way to getting to the Entry Editor, I will once again suggest the auto-generated template for them to fill out. (h2. About. h2.Origin h2.Spread. h2. Notable Examples. h2. Search Interest, etc already placed in the field)

True, but some of them might have been over a week old. Im pretty sure you can be a "Brand New Member" while being over a week old.

So what would happen if I made a new account, and made an entry right now that was decent, and a possible meme?

Well, I guess you would have to wait a bit.

While there may be some bad sides to it, the fact that people cant just go "I INVENTD A NEW MEEM" anymore would be great.

It would be a sacrifice, but it would be worth it in my opinion.

They created an entry we didn't think of, and by making it brought it to our attention. Shouldn't they be credited for at least that, the idea to give that an entry, an idea none of the mods or staff got?

A better question would be how to deal with insta-deadpools. Now, we just deadpool them, but there's also the option of hiding them. Not only would hiding them avoid them to ever get trending again, it would also simply remove them for users to see.

But that's also where the issue lies. Deadpools are simply our failsafe. It happens at times that mods deadpool entries that don't deserve it. And even after a very long time we still might pull them back into submissions. If I hide them, they might lose all hope of being saved.

But entries that just read "Lel I made this", I can understand the reason for wanting those hidden.

But stopping to allow BNMs to make entries, fuck no. Besides, we rejected that idea way too often already (did you really think you're the first?), I don't see how that would suddenly change.

And if he has to wait a week, would he still make it when the week passed? I can understand why a visitor would lose interest to make it, waiting a week is just not worth it. Not to forget the risk that he might forget. We lose a potentially good entry with this, there is no winning route. And even though most are crap, it has happened plenty of times that a BNM delivers quality.

Now you can say "Let him request it to the userbase then", but you and I both know that won't happen in those cases.

Oh look it's this thread again.
Essentially, a week delay does nothing except scare off people who just want to contribute to this site.
Currently we get several entries a day. We have enough mods that we can actually deadpool forced memes or poorly written articles the day they're submitted. There is no need to penalize BNMs, many of which offer quality, just because of a few who don't.
Tl;dr: The requested feature is never going to be implemented. We've had this threads many times before. You should probably read them before taking another swing at this dead horse.

In all seriousness, though, the answer has been and always will be no. Do we want to be a site that discourages new members from contributing, or do we want to be a site that welcomes all and strives to improve itself? We can deal with the crappy entries as long as good ones continue to get made.

Also, as RM said, members might not want to wait. Many entries are spur-of-the-moment things, so they may lose their motivation to make it, and then we'd be late to the party when the meme got bigger.

Questions Answered, and most of us have the same opinion.
Also this thread is extremely redundant so I request lock.

We don't lock threads as long as there's discussion value. I choose to leave this thread open in case people wish to continue debate.
Not going to change anything though.

You know, if people would calm down and give the entry mods more than 30 seconds do their jobs, we wouldn't have to have this discussion all the time.

Seriously, these entries show up for everyone at the same time. That's why they're submissions. The mods don't see them until they're submitted, and they take just as long to read them as the rest of us, plus I would assume they search for it online, search for a duplicate entry, judge whether it's worth leaving in submissions, etc. They can't afford to just decide to deadpool an entry spur of the moment, let alone go "Another advice animal? Deadpool" (because honestly, if you even say that new advice animals can't be memes, you're retarded. We have no control over what becomes a meme, we just confirm the things that do).The original idea for displaying them, though, was for constructive criticism. Back in the day, we would actually use the comments to suggest changes beyond just saying "+1 work". Yes, there was +1 deadpool, but not because it was a BNM or it just showed up that day. It was usually for things that legitimately were not, or did not have a chance of becoming, memes.

Something happened with the commenters in the 2 years I was gone, though. They became an elitist group that decided that if an article was an advice animal or started by a user they didn't recognize (heaven forbid they should even be a user who's been around for years, but rarely makes articles) it had to be deadpooled, because nothing that started in the last week has a chance of becoming a meme later on. Is there a reason that it was decided that BNMs or forum users are too stupid to make a legitimate, well organized article? There is a reason that users put "work in progress" at the top of articles, but even those ones have comments like "not enough info, deadpool now".

We used to be ok with BNMs making entries. Amanda's are just the tip of the iceberg. Many old articles were by BNMs or users without experience at writing articles (then again those articles wouldn't stand up to today's quality standards, but we're talking about meme legitimacy here, the mods often will clean those articles up). We just didn't look at the title and looked instead at the relevance and spread of the meme. Just because they're new to the site doesn't mean they don't know anything about memes and the Internet.

Sorry about the rant. This subject just really pisses me off these days.

Hmm…may I suggest having this.

Any member on the site rather than create a meme page, they can create an application page for a new meme. They provide the usuals….an entry, some images, some links and signs of proof, etc.. . Instead of being created by a meme, it goes to another place where mods can either approve or disapprove the memes. These mods can also utilize the abuse ability to shoot down memes that are poorly developed or random junk that has no place on KYM. Those that are approved…they become memes and people can go from there.

The users on the other hand can comment on these as well, determining whether it has spread, if it is a legitimate meme, if it is trending/becoming noteworthy, or deserves more research!!

This entries are not allowed to trend. Once the OK has been issued, it becomes a new meme page on KYM where the usual happens.

Also, some meme ideas can actually still get disapproved yet still be created as a meme as the mods may want to hold off on deletion in anticipation if it becomes full-blown later. These fads can get deadpool'd, but kept just in case something happens.

@amanda b.

The thing that kinda bugs me about people posting that pic to present an argument for BNMs in these kinds of threads is that there are 200 something pages of deadpooled articles – articles that still show up in and clutter general search results – and most of them were also created by BNMs. I understand why they're not deleted, but if they're not going to be I kinda think something should be done that discourages BNMs from making more of those kinds of articles and I do think it's possible that a lot of them would loose interest if they had to wait a week unless it was something that they really thought belonged on this site.

Maybe they can after they post around the forums for a bit… You never know what kind of person a new member might be.

Iamslow wrote:

The thing that kinda bugs me about people posting that pic to present an argument for BNMs in these kinds of threads is that there are 200 something pages of deadpooled articles – articles that still show up in and clutter general search results – and most of them were also created by BNMs.

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Good, unconsidered point.

I'm positive that won't change anything in regards to putting restrictions on creating articles, but the search function (as odd as it is, especially in regards to its suggestions) should be changed to address that somehow.

Not only does the search suggestions present deadpooled entries, the main problem with it is that it suggests entries that aren't nearly as popular (or even new, it seems) as other ones that aren't deadpooled or confirmed. It makes the suggestions more of a hassle than a help.

For example, type in "My Little." You should get the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" article as the first suggestion. It's too big for it not to be. There's a very small likelihood that the entry a person would be looking for would be something other than the FiM entry if they put in "My Little."

However, the first suggestion is "Cupcakes (My Little Pony fanfiction."
The second is "My Little Pony Character Fandom." That entry is deadpooled.

That is not just annoying to older users. In fact, that's probably extremely annoying to a user who isn't a part of the KYM community and doesn't know the site as well as we do.
 
 
As for changing the BNM entry creation criteria, I don't think that will happen, but it did remind me of how useless the suggestions for the search bar are.

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@Sir-ful Turtle

You should read the rest of the points in the thread first. There hasn't been a strong point in favor of limiting BNMs, so suggesting how to limit them is premature.

Suggestion I believe will fix a lot of issues with this while not being too site-changing: Deadpooled entries can't get trending. We had this for a few months in the past and everyone was happy with it.

And based on Verbose's comment, also remove them from the direct search suggestions that pop-up.

The benefits of brand new members being able to create entries outweigh any negative effects, so BNMs will be able to create entries.

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MDFification wrote:

Essentially, a week delay does nothing except scare off people who just want to contribute to this site.
Currently we get several entries a day. We have enough mods that we can actually deadpool forced memes or poorly written articles the day they’re submitted. There is no need to penalize BNMs, many of which offer quality, just because of a few who don’t.
Tl;dr: The requested feature is never going to be implemented. We’ve had this threads many times before. You should probably read them before taking another swing at this dead horse.

That is absolutely true. We have enough mods to deadpool unnecessary entries. And we had this discussion many times before, so I don't think its gonna result in any changes at all.

We don't want to stop new members from creating entries.

Having to wait a week is more than enough deterrent to stop somebody from creating an entry.

No it wouldn't. The waiting period would deter many "one submission oneders" that are super excited about something new that has come in and want to rush in immediately and write about it. We lose a lot of substance from these in and out users.

Now, I've been here for a very very long time and I'll say that we had this debate before. In fact, I was the first person to suggest submissions throttling, I believed that there should be a contribution requirement first.

Sure, we'll get spam but the mods can deal with it. We've talked about this before, but we won't do it now for the same reason as before, setting a spam throttle isn't worth losing all the good stuff by one submission oneders.

Seriously, this is brilliant. Why are we not doing this?

This is a pretty explicit description of the submission page without trending abilities.

You know, the thing we already have.

Sorry, I wasn't going to say anything but then this thread got bumped to complement it.

Seeing how others are suddenly replying to this, guess I will as well. Here's a past discussion about it.

It's simply better to ask the majority if they’ve heard of it or if they have no idea what it is. If for example 40-50 people go to a new entry and comment on it, you can get a better idea of what it is instead of just asking 5-10 people (mods) in private. Even though we are KYM mods, our area of knowledge is still very limited. We don't know about everything that goes around online (an impossible task), and plenty of stuff submitted doesn't ring a bell at first glance.

If a new entry is made public, more people can review it and judge its notability (if it has any). And if it's a legit entry, someone is bound to say something important and constructive on public entries, as more people get to see it. That's what the submission section is for, and why it's in chronological order by default starting with the newest entry.

Not to forget that the mods actually have lives. We don't spend 24/7 of our time on this site. And hardly all the mods check their mail daily. Such a system would cause delays in approving the entries.

And we don't force users to check out the new submissions. Anything that is obviously bad is taken care of within the day. You're only hurting yourself by bothering with their short presence in submission. We don’t get entry submissions fast enough for this to be a problem, and deadpooling them is a 10 second job.

RandomMan wrote:

And we don’t force users to check out the new submissions. Anything that is obviously bad is taken care of within the day. You’re only hurting yourself by bothering with their short presence in submission. We don’t get entry submissions fast enough for this to be a problem, and deadpooling them is a 10 second job.

quoted. for. truth.

I would like to reemphasize that the current set-up isn't without some major flaws though.

Why is Yaplap the first suggestion under the "Relevance" sorting option? Never is a parody more relevant to the search term "My Little Pony" than My Little Pony. Both the Magneto and Yaplap entries are deadpooled to boot.

There are other examples that are even more problematic, especially when the entry that is actually more relevant isn't on the first page or when the other sorting options aren't likely to get you the specific entry you want. Especially especially when many of those are deadpooled. I don't think you should have to filter out all entries except for those that are confirmed to get to the Friendship is Magic entry as the first entry.
 
I do not want people suggesting fixes to think that they don't have any point at all. I truly believe that there are significant problems, but the general tone here downplays them.

However, there are different ways to address them than limiting the submissions. A lot of harm does come by restricting new articles. It seems like deadpooling entries or having them in the database isn't the problem. Heck, I like a well-written and researched deadpooled entry. There are some phenomena that aren't notable enough to be a confirmed meme, but they do have some presence online. People can still come to KYM to view information on it and see instances of it (it just shouldn't be the first thing people see in search suggestions.)

The problems come from the clutter the deadpooled entries make on the trending bar (for entries that aren't actually trending) or suggestions/search results.

So perhaps other suggestions (i.e., removing deadpooled articles from trending bar/search suggestions/reordering search results) should be discussed instead and then discussed by admins and moderators to see if those can be implemented.

inb4 coding/we only have one coder/it's not that important.

inb4 coding/we only have one coder/it’s not that important.

Actually, I do find this important, and fully agree with your post Verbose. Not that I disrespect James, but certain issues do have priority over others. Our search results are kinda broken, and the huge clusterfuck of deadpooled entries surely doesn't make it a better system.

BUT this is a thread about new entries and whether or not BNMs should be able to make them, not about the searching system and its (many) issues. I would love to discuss this issue further, but this is not the place. So I suggest you either bring this up in the mod mail, or make a seperate thread, I leave that choice to you. Just please don't derail this thread. Either way, you have my support.

Our search system used to have a specific section for confirmed memes, submissions, and deadpooled entries when searching a term, separated by section.

Looked like:

Confirmed Entries:
----------
Submissions:
------------
Deadpool:

Not really sure what happened to that.

A lot of old great systems were suddenly gone at a certain point. Deadpooled entries didn't trend for a couple of months. I also don't know what happened to that NSFW warning system you could enable/disable in your profile edit options, which would give you a pop-up whenever you clicked on a NSFW entry. It would also be great to implant that with the new NSFW tagging system on images, that is if we still had it.

We really need to run over some of these sometimes. And I definitely don't advice the Suggestion thread. No offense, but I feel the ideas in that thread just get ignored.

Now that you mention it, those features did suddenly disappear… I wonder why?

Well, James hasn't been seen around the site in months, and he doesn't use the IRC.

A good sysop has to communicate with the site, that's most important, because the users need to be able to inform the sysop of site issues.

Here's another case of abuse of page creation:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/carter

Literally abusive. It will probably be deadpool'd, but why should it remain on the site when it's literally not a meme?

If we really have a deadpool problem, you can always help out the mods by reviving the Duplicate Entry finding thread. When that was at its most active the Deadpool section actually shrunk by about a page a day.
We do ban people who repeatedly make ridiculously irrelevant entries or troll entries. We haven't had much of an opportunity to use this in the past because we accidentally sent the guy more warnings than he deserved and he went inactive before we could crack down. Those kinds of cases are rare anyway.
Finally, if bad entries distress you so, help out. Request editorship. Improve the article, research its relevancy. If there was no possibility of it being a meme then it'll stay deadpooled. The worst that could happen is you get a few new edits to your name and the site looks a bit nicer.

Foremost, do something with RandomMan’s idea (concerning deadpooled entries and the trending bar). If somebody has something valuable to say about an entry that has been deadpooled, I trust that the walls users have subsist for a specific cause. A user could write on the wall of an entry moderator without quandaries on the rare occasion that there is something helpful to be said regarding a deadpooled entry. Users can see the moderator that deadpooled the entry anyway on the Editors list, so I don’t believe uniformed users’ troubles to be a setback, in that respect.

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Now then, I don’t consider it just to punish Brand New Members as a group for the actions of some, or even most, as in this state of affairs. I myself was a Brand New Member just a couple of days ago, and I would likely not have been happy to have privileges less than those of a “regular” user (with the exception of respect). I think each legitimate entry created by a Brand New Member is worth 10 deadpooled entries that Brand New Members create.

There are some (like myself) that actually make an effort to fit into the community. I took time to lurk and attempt to gain knowledge of the regulations and methodical tendencies of the site, because I knew I would be singled out as a Brand New Member. Every community works that way, fresh new members are observed vigilantly. I think that I, along with those who bother to try to learn how things work, should be envisioned as providing a levelheaded enough argument for how not all Brand New Members are like this.

If we take away a user’s right to contribute, we are being unfair. It is exceedingly unreasonable to make blanket suppositions about people based upon the number of contributions to the site they have. All that does is generate an atmosphere of hostility for the newer users. It’s just unfriendly Worst of all, it makes those who have been around for a long time or made a sizable amount of contributions appear to be elitist and discriminatory. If I’m not mistaken, this is the exact opposite of what we desire, or what we should desire, for the new users of this site.

I have a simple suggestion: maybe people could impede turning the comments section of deadpooled entries into aggression in opposition to the OP, and not get so frustrated about atrocious entries? I think it’s sufficient to say that a tenet of this site, one that is essential to this community, is to be welcoming and pleasant. So being needlessly antagonistic in the comments section of entries, throwing around words like “faggot” and insulting the mental state of the OP…I think people should abstain from that. It also defies the site rule to stay pertinent to a topic.