There have been a few cases where people have posted everything from requests for mod help, to mod ideas, to asking for people to make them a mod. Although the ability to post an article is nice, there are some who have been using it improperly. Rather than leave it open, like it is, maybe it would do better to have it limited to only people who have made more than 500 posts, That way you have fewer instances of these things since anyone who can post them has usually been around long enough to know the rules. Additional conditions could be setup for mods to allow more reputable people to post articles.

The other option would be to have some sort of moderated article posting, where articles need to be approved before anyone other than a mod sees it. Although this may seem to make more work for the moderating staff, it's fairly easy to determine what articles are there to inform the community of something, and what articles are something else entirely. Since abuse would not allow these things to be automatically posted, and give attention to whoever made them, the misuse of the system may occur less often.

In addition, it might be helpful to know who posted the article, rather than the sitebot. Most of the tutorials are made by Lhammonds anyway, so there isn't much point to it being annonymous. Leaving it without a name, can actually work against the purpose of the post. If it's a tutorial, you don't know who to ask for further information. And in the case of either of the above being put into place, posting for attention wouldn't be a possibility, unless you wanted to be banned for it.

Just saying that it's a good system, but a shame that some people choose to abuse it. Rather than lose it in the end, I would prefer some sort of filtering to be in place. Besides, the sitebot makes enough posts and earns enough kudos for all the other stuff that people do around here. It's not really fair to the rest of us egotistical bastards

Good idea, but I wouldn't base it on a post count. There are some who have practically given up gaming and instead stay on the forum 24-7 to run up a post count (maybe not here, but I've certainly seen this on other forums).

My suggestion would be perhaps to set the system up to where an article is forwarded to a "Pending" location on the website where it can only be subsequently posted by either DarkOne or one of the moderators. They can review the pending article to see if it is in keeping with the site's policies & standards.

mmh i think the post count is ok... having the staff validate each article is annoying for them aswell as those that post... and you dont get 500 posts just by writing stuff like "thx" "sucks" "im a hero"... or maybe even make it dependant on kudos
otherwise i agree with vagrant
i see no problem with people not playing... atm im not playing lol... still i dish out mods and stuff so be nice

Notice I didn't mention modders. That's common sense. Modders are busy creating-testing-and answering comments. So be nice.

Covers people who have fewer than 500 posts, and something to contribute. The post limit is more there to allow for some forced familiarity with the forums before they can make articles, rather than limit capable people from posting articles. It is simply a more general rule to use. It could also work off of time registered, provided that they posted a few times since registering. Or could have a condition allowing someone to ask a mod for permission once they have proven themselves capable.

Regardless, there probably wouldn't be anything preventing someone who was interested in posting their tutorial or whatever somewhere else, and having a mod move it if it was worthy (how many of the older articles were handled).

Essentially, just suggesting something so that the system can't be abused by people who do not understand what it is there for. Given the frequency of good articles, having a moderator approve the text before it can be seen by others probably wouldn't be much of an increase in workload.

A limit of posts would be fine, but from personal experience i can say this.

And by articles u mean tipics right? otherwise i'm officially a dunce after posting this... -->hardcore noob ftw<--

If i wasn't able to ask questions about my own mods, then i would never learn the correct answers to other mods. I mean i look at many topics and try to answer them, but sometimes i don't have any ideas. So to me if their was a limit of 500, you would see a lot more people makings reply's that they have no clue what they're talking about, until they can get to that 500 marker, ask their own questions, then be capable of making educated answers. another problem is when someone gets excited about putting their dream sword or whatever into oblivion, it seems like their's no stopping them until they get their hands dirty. the offspring of this and your 500 posts idea is that they also might try to ask questions on other people's topics, that have nothing to do with that topic and is just something that person needs to know.

On the forums, through 2 accounts, i think i had one then ended it and made this one about a week ago, anywho it's taken me probably 12 total months of watching, asking, and answering questions, to get up to the 105 posts or whatever that i have atm.

500 is just silly. The only way you'd be able to get that within a reasonable amount of time is by spamming ratings.

mmmh i got from 1 or 2 to 150 posts or so in one week... a month i see as reasonable since then youd be able to tell whats useful and whats plain spam... mind we talk about articles not threads in the forum...

I don't want there to be this (implied or unimplied) elitest feeling associated with post counts. I think the simple matter of the fact is it will be more effort to code in this restriction than it would be to moderate the very few articles that are slipping through that would be better made on the forums instead.

There is not any kind of restriction on people who contribute when uploading files other than signing up to be a member.

The same should go for posting articles and images.

Each section of the site receives a fair share of abuse.

I think I have kept the article database fairly clean and currently no "requests" exist in it.

It would be nice if the posters would actually read what an article should contain and understand that the person creating the article has information that will be helpful to others...not the other way around.

I believe the initial posting by "sitebot" is the connection between the TESNexus site and the Forum site. That is how the file upload comments are created and is probably the reason this same pattern continues with any other area where a forum topic is created via the TESNexus site.

Regarding the ability to know who wrote what, you can see this information on the TESNexus site...specifically the article database. If browsing articles from the Forums, you miss out on several key pieces of information.

Thankfully though, when updating the article, the site now updates the 1st posting in the forum as well. This did not used to happen with TESSource's Tutorials which often became outdated and did not match between the main site and the forums.

LHammonds