New Guidlines for the TMF Silly Stuff Forum

[Mimi]

As many of you have probably already noticed, the TMF Humor Forum has undergone an extreme trimming. This is due to our forum size restrictions. The administration was rather limited in it's options of how to handle our over-flowing hard drive problem. Obviously the search functions and PM functions are vital to this forum, so we had to look for solutions elsewhere. Part of that solution was found in trimming our largest sub-forum, the Humor Forum.

Please understand this was NOT an easy decision for us to reach! We understand the humor forum is a very active place for interraction between forum members, and therefore did not want to remove it altogether. But some serious adjustments had to be made and will continue to be required in order to keep this sub-forum available to you all.

All threads that have had no activity for one week have been trimmed off and deleted. We are VERY sorry to those of you whose posting status will be seriously effected by this trim. As stated above, this was a last resort and one that was not easily decided upon. In the future, we will continue to sparadically trim and delete threads from this forum which have not shown activity for a period of time. We are unsure at this point how frequently such a task will be required. It will greatly depend upon how quicky this forum grows in size. If you regularly and primarily post in this forum, do NOT get too attached to your post counts, as they will be effected by each trim.

You are encouraged to once again post your jokes and funny stories/images/graphics/links in the General Discussion Forum. This sub-forum has been renamed the Silly Stuff Forum, and is to be used strictly for the purpose of all chain threads, silly threads, content free threads, off-topic threads, and interractive game threads. We do suggest you shy away from the COMPLETE nonsense threads (such as blank, color, number, symbol, and letter threads) as this will increase the size of this sun-forum rapidly, and result in more frequent trimmings.

If these new policies do not manage our size issues completely enough, please be aware we may possibly add the future policy of locking threads once they reach 1000 replies. The excessively large threads in this forum consume very large quantities of space. For now we are hoping to let the current ones stand, but it is another step we may have to take in the future to manage our size restrictions.

Again, we apologize for the neccessity of these new policies regarding this forum. We are sure most of you will understand and not concern yourselves with it too much. For those of you who may disagree with these recent decisions, we're sorry, but the TMF is a free forum and service to you all, and certain restrictions may need to be placed now and then to KEEP the TMF free for all.

Thank you all for understanding!

Mimi

[chrisheaven]

I quite understand what you have had to do.
May I take this opportunity of appologising for the fact that lots of my silly threads have not helped.
With best wishes, Chris.

[TklDuo-Ann]

I'd just like to toss out another suggestion that may help in this section. That is this... When two members are online at the same time and want to carry on a conversation/have a tickle fight/whatever, it might be good to consider taking that to instant messenger or the chat room. Doing these things in regular threads builds up space very quickly if done on a regular basis...which some folks do. It's another way to avoid having to trim things too often.

Another thing to look at is for those who use PMs a lot to clear their PM boxes of old material on a regular basis. This way, they don't build up to an unmanagable level on you and don't take up a lot of storage space for us as a forum.

Ann

[venray]

Couldnt agree more Ann.....


Ray :D

[BigJim]

This is the second "Great Post Holocaust" that I can remember, and it was definately needed, moreso than the first. I get the sense that the first was done for cosmetic reasons, but this one was for truly important ones.

I got nixed for about seventeen hundred posts and I really don't give a shit as most of them were probably garbage anyway. (Well let's be honest, all of my posts are garbage. :dogpile: )

The TMF will go on and that's the important thing. We have something incredibly valuable in a community that's enabled us to interact with like-minded bods the world over, and actually meet others more locally. Something that's in the interest of it's continuity will always take precedency.

Humour however is needed, and it always will be. There's been some discussions of incredible complexity and heat here on the TMF and huge emotional tides have been the result. Having a place to come where we can laugh and take the piss mercilessly out of each other is a great thing; in fact, it's a vital thing. It greatly helps us act like adults in the "proper" discussion areas of the forum and makes things much easier for the Mod-Squad I imagine.

If I have an exchange with Tron over politics I can come here and take the piss out of his navy uniform. If I disagree with Danimal over Rosanne Barr's comedy ability I can come here and call him a long-potted tosser. (I always hate people who are bigger than me anyway; they make me feel inferior. :cry1: ) Then they can both turn round and do the same to me. I think it's like the pressure-valve on a steam cooker.

So as long as humour and stress-relief is given free reign, I don't care how many of my "Silly Stuff" posts get chopped. (Assuming there's any left.) I think having jokes and funny in stories is the way to go and might have been good that way from the start. Having a seperate place for nonsense-freaks like me to come and blat about, but get pruned now and again is equally good. Keeps us out of mischief, yanno? ;)

I just think it's amazing the "One Word Thread" is still breathing. Nix that one and Milagros and Chris go back to Registered User. :blaugh:

[tommytikl]

Ok, so the HUMOR stuff goes BACK into the "MAIN General Discussion Forum"

See you there...
:D

[TklDuo-Ann]

Thanks for being so understanding, gang. This isn't anything we took lightly. More pruning will be coming. But, we're aiming to keep it at a level that's the least disruptive as possible. Those who post in the mega-threads (the multi K post ones) may be seeing another cut. When your post count drops, it's because of that. We value you as members. We just have more housekeeping to do. We hope you'll stick around and continue to have fun. Just know that this is something done for the good of all and the continued existence of the silly stuff forum.

Ann

[HisDivineShadow]

T'was cound to happen, I suppose. What surprises me most is that I still have 9000 posts. O.o I figured the dropped number would be somewhere around 2000 or less.:D

[BigJim]

This kinda makes the "Great Post Holocaust" of 02' look like Myr trimmiing his toe-nails in comparison. :D

[Mimi]

Quick explanation of what's currently underway....

Even though we removed hundreds of pages from the humor forum last night, it was only reduced in size by approximately 35%. The reason for that is (as we have since discovered), many of the threads remaining are ones that have been in existance since the start of this sub-forum, and they have thousands upon thousands of replies. They are the biggest culprits to our size issue at this time. We will NOT be completely removing them at this time...but we ARE currently in the process of trimming them down. I am doing my best to maintain the integrity and purpose of each thread I edit by leaving the first several posts made to the threads, and leaving all activity that has occured in the past week or two. The threads will remain open and active, and you are free to continue posting in them. We're just trying to reduce the size consumption a bit more by pruning out the middles which hardly anyone ever views or concerns themselves with anyway.

The biggest downside to our current downsizing project is, of course, that many of you with high post counts in the humor forum will continue to see your posting status decline greatly. We are currently brainstorming on a little something we can do for those of you being effected by this, to recognize your level of activity on the forum, and to try to maintain some form of recognition for the number of posts you had previous to this huge size deduction. We'll inform you of what that will consist of once we get it all figured out and squared away.

In the meantime, we thank you considerably for your continued support and understanding through all of this. You guys are the best, and we sincerely appreciate the good attitude you've all maintained through this overhaul! Thanks gang!!

Mimi

[Mitchell]

Mimis, if I may make a suggestion. I do agree with what you said, and I know that the most important thing is that we dont crash again, so the mods will apparently have to keep watch to make sure we dont have threads with overbloated info.
I will say that I do agree with locking threads at 1000 posts. It might seem a bit less fun for the posters to lock threads at that level, but considering the thousands of replies we always had in the formerly humor and now silly stuff forum, that may be a way to keep the post count under control. I further agree with the idea of deleting old threads, because the situation we would encounter by locking threads at 1000 would be people creating threads on a more regular basis, instead of just having a thread that may go on for years with tens of thousands of posts, like what used to happen in the humor aka silly stuff forum.
I guess the only thing that can be done is to wait and see how things go and how fast posts build up. Some of us are heavy posters, and if things build up too rapidly, I guess we will just have to do what is best for the forum as a whole.

Mitch

Yes, Iam guilty of using PM's a lot, Ann, but I always clear out my PM's as quickly as I get them, deleting my own PM's that I send to people, and others replies. I do have one PM that Iam saving, but that one PM wont affect the forum size. Beyond that, I try to be as dilligent as possible with checking, responding to, and deleting PM's

Mitch

[TklDuo-Ann]

Originally posted by Mitchell
Yes, Iam guilty of using PM's a lot, Ann, but I always clear out my PM's as quickly as I get them, deleting my own PM's that I send to people, and others replies. I do have one PM that Iam saving, but that one PM wont affect the forum size. Beyond that, I try to be as dilligent as possible with checking, responding to, and deleting PM's

Mitch

You're one of the good ones AFA that goes, Mitch. ;) Some people don't use them and don't realize that they have full PM boxes because others don't know not to send them PMs. Add to that those who simply don't like housekeeping. We've all done that on occassion. The suggestions everyone (including you guys) are sharing are great for others to see. Keep 'em coming. We're all learning things here.

Ann

PS - For those who lots posts and haven't seen it yet, check out THIS THREAD (http://www.ticklingforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52703) for a little thank-you. ;)

[AffectionateDan]

One would think that the recent fat-trimming would have been example enough, but clearly something needs to be said before this accelerates. There are those whose contributions in threads consist merely of smilies, and while I won't speculate on the reasoning behind it, it is non-content and non-value. And while it was tolerated in the former Humor Forum for some time, it's been frowned upon outside in the threads where there is actual, meaningful content. In the spirit of understanding and support that many of you have shown in the recent adjustments, you are asked to keep your fluff threads in the Silly Section, and to a minimum, to keep our workload to a similar minimum. Come on, people... if you don't have anything to add, don't add NOTHING just to be seen. That's what caused some of this in the first place. The Mods are not your parents, we're not going to make a habit of following you around and cleaning up after you. Nobody wants posts or entire threads to vanish; it's a pain in the keester for us to do, and a disappointment for you. Think before you post outside the Silly Playpen, kids.

Danimal the Grouchy