Meta: Mods please stop locking M2 Pro/Max leaked Geekbench threads here

[senttoschool]

Yikes!

Are we simply not allowed to post about leaked M2 Pro/Max Geekbench scores here? Heck, are we never allowed to post a thread that is related to a news story here, ever??

News threads fade away. It's simply not convenient to use a news thread to discuss something like this. We will be discussing leaked scores for months until M2 Pro/Max comes out because the posters here tend to care much more about performance than your typical news thread posters. News threads last about 1-2 days before they die.

Stop locking these threads here.

 

[Boidem]

I've had 'XXXXX quoted your post in the thread 'M2 Max' Geekbench scores Leak online', without actually posting on that thread...

 

[leman]

Thanks for bringing up this issue, I also consider this frustrating. This is a focused subform where people with a special interest in ARM Macs discuss this information. Locking these threads in favour of a main thread where each post immediately goes under is counter-productive.

@MR mods, this is alienating your dedicated community. Between this, lack of action agains trolls and bad faith posters I am honestly considering moving on to somewhere else.

 

[Gudi]

Locking these threads in favour of a main thread where each post immediately goes under is counter-productive.

One main thread is always better.

 

[Pressure]

News articles comment section are ****. It seems like it is mostly an entire different user base that comment on those.

 

[maflynn]

The policy is to direct traffic and conversations to the front page stories.

It can be confusing to have two threads on the same topic.

 

[leman]

One main thread is always better.

Not if you actually want to have a discussion. People who read and post on the Apple Silicon forums are mostly interested individuals. In the news article subsection 95% of posts is random noise.

 

[leman]

The policy is to direct traffic and conversations to the front page stories.

It's not a good policy and one that's disrespectful to the active community members.

It can be confusing to have two threads on the same topic.

What's confusing is to be funnelled to a forum subsection where nobody cares about the topic and virtually all comments are random noise.

 

[maflynn]

What's confusing is to be funnelled to a forum subsection where nobody cares about the topic and virtually all comments are random noise.

It is confusing because there's two conversations on the same topic. Duplicate threads in of itself is not permitted, and these are duplicates.

 

[Boyd01]

Moderator Note: This thread (originally posted in the Apple Silicon Forum) has been moved to the site feedback forum because it's a policy discussion and is more likely to get the attention of staff here. A permanent re-direct will remain in the original forum however.

 

[Gudi]

Not if you actually want to have a discussion. People who read and post on the Apple Silicon forums are mostly interested individuals. In the news article subsection 95% of posts is random noise.

If you open multiple threads on the same issue, everything becomes random noise. Even the thread titles and forum structure. At least you only got to filter relevant information out of one thread.

 

[annk]

@maflynn is correct. Threads that duplicate what's being discussed in a news thread are always closed, because our rules don't permit duplicate threads. Having discussion of the same issue spread across threads is something we want to avoid here.

The duplicate thread rule applies to all threads, not only news threads. But news threads are the focus of the site, so the rule is especially important in regard to those threads.

No solution is ever perfect and certainly no one solution will please everyone on a site with such a large user base. This is how we do it on this site.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I can see the complaint here. News threads are full of users just posting because they can - often very anti-Apple or Facebook/Twitter like statements to get attention. There's a lot of noise.

The issue is that the CPU threads that we have here attracted some very interesting posters who contribute highly educational/informative posts that go into great depth - and have for some time. Forcing that to mix with the attention news posts attract, I can see why that caused some upset.

If there's anyway to exclude CPU threads, I think that would be in the best interest of this site because CPU threads have been an ongoing discussion in the M1 area for awhile. Obviously it's your site .

 

[icanhazmac]

I get it, MR doesn't want dueling threads and focused members don't want discussions filled with spammy n00b posts.

Could this be a potential solution: the serious and focused discussions could still happen if they are taking place in a more generically named thread, in this case perhaps "M Series Benchmarks". If all the discussion around all M series chip benchmarks happen in this thread versus a duplicate thread, that in name mirrors a current news thread, this might appease the gods? Members can reference what is happening in current news threads without copying them. Or members in the CPU discussions could create their own thread, at announcement time, like "M2 Performance Speculation" and discuss. Then when MR creates news threads about numbers or leaks I doubt your existing thread(s) would get merged into a news thread.

A past situation with pre-order threads comes to mind. Some members wanted to discuss what they wanted to buy in the next gen device, including accessories in a thread called "Device X Preorders" prior to the devices official announcement. MR does not allow pre-order threads until the device is announced. I believe it was just suggested that members can discuss the topic of what they want in the next device, just don't call it a pre-order thread. It is wordsmithing but words matter.

Hopefully this makes some sense.

Edit: for errors and to clarify thoughts.

 

[Homy]

@maflynn is correct. Threads that duplicate what's being discussed in a news thread are always closed, because our rules don't permit duplicate threads. Having discussion of the same issue spread across threads is something we want to avoid here.

The duplicate thread rule applies to all threads, not only news threads. But news threads are the focus of the site, so the rule is especially important in regard to those threads.

No solution is ever perfect and certainly no one solution will please everyone on a site with such a large user base. This is how we do it on this site.

I have to say it's remarkable that the moderators and administrators can't follow Macrumor's own rules and guidelines and seem to think the rules don't apply to themselves. It certainly hurts the credibility and creates confusion, frustration, disappointment and distrust.

By your own rules and definitions "the duplicate thread rule applies to all threads" and "Threads that duplicate what's being discussed are always closed". Since that rule seems to be strictly followed it means the news thread is the one that should be locked. The locked thread about the new leaked benchmarks was in fact created one day before the news thread, thanks to a forum member being quicker than MR staff at finding and reporting the news. The news thread is per definition a ”confusing” duplicate and "something we want to avoid here" and since the rule applies to all threads it should be locked.

Since you have to report such news after all the right solution would be to not lock an older thread about the same/similar topic/news just because you’re late to the party and show more respect and give some credit to community members who contribute to this forum in a positive way and help to create more traffic to the site. I wouldn't be surprised if the locked thread in fact was the reason MR found out about the new benchmarks. Last time MR had a tweet as the news source for the first leaked benchmarks but this time there is no source, only a direct link to Geekbench and the news was reported the day after it was posted in the discussion forum.

As it’s already been stated everyone also knows that news threads are not only often filled with shallow comments but they die out fast since the news discussion thread is filled with lots of new daily discussions and it’s harder to find a topic there. There are forum members who have turned commenting to an art form by posting one-liners only in the news discussions and never get involved in real discussions elsewhere. Real deep discussions happens in the dedicated threads. It’s pretty simple logic. If I want to discuss or read about Apple Silicon I go to ”Apple Silicon (Arm) Macs" thread, not to the News thread because the news thread is not categorized like the rest of the forum and as we all know news get old pretty fast.

Another question is what if someone creates a thread about an old news after a week or a month or even later? Are you still going to lock it and redirect everyone to an old dead news thread from several weeks or months ago? Or are you going to lock the old news thread and redirect everyone to the new active discussion? Is there a time limit for which old news threads can be revived or how long it should pass before we're allowed to create our own similar discussions about news articles? I hope in the future you follow your own rules and apply them to your own threads too but maybe as you say "This is how we do it on this site."

 

[senttoschool]

@maflynn is correct. Threads that duplicate what's being discussed in a news thread are always closed, because our rules don't permit duplicate threads. Having discussion of the same issue spread across threads is something we want to avoid here.

So could you tell us when we're allowed to discuss M2 benchmark leaks in the "Apple Silicon Macs" forum? Or are we permanently disallowed from discussing this topic there?

Is it two days after the news story? Is it 5 days? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year? Never?

How close to the topic is allowed? For example, what if I made a thread titled "Estimate the final M2 Pro/Max performance" and used the leaked benchmarks as a starting point? Is that allowed?

Also, what happens if a discussion is started in "Apple Silicon Macs" before a similar news topic? Will you close the forum thread even though it was posted before the news story?

 

[senttoschool]

I have to say it's remarkable that the moderators and administrators can't follow Macrumor's own rules and guidelines and seem to think the rules don't apply to themselves. It certainly hurts the credibility and creates confusion, frustration, disappointment and distrust.

By your own rules and definitions "the duplicate thread rule applies to all threads" and "Threads that duplicate what's being discussed are always closed". Since that rule seems to be strictly followed it means the news thread is the one that should be locked. The locked thread about the new leaked benchmarks was in fact created one day before the news thread, thanks to a forum member being quicker than MR staff at finding and reporting the news. The news thread is per definition a ”confusing” duplicate and "something we want to avoid here" and since the rule applies to all threads it should be locked.

Since you have to report such news after all the right solution would be to not lock an older thread about the same/similar topic/news just because you’re late to the party and show more respect and give some credit to community members who contribute to this forum in a positive way and help to create more traffic to the site. I wouldn't be surprised if the locked thread in fact was the reason MR found out about the new benchmarks. Last time MR had a tweet as the news source for the first leaked benchmarks but this time there is no source, only a direct link to Geekbench and the news was reported the day after it was posted in the discussion forum.

As it’s already been stated everyone also knows that news threads are not only often filled with shallow comments but they die out fast since the news discussion thread is filled with lots of new daily discussions and it’s harder to find a topic there. There are forum members who have turned commenting to an art form by posting one-liners only in the news discussions and never get involved in real discussions elsewhere. Real deep discussions happens in the dedicated threads. It’s pretty simple logic. If I want to discuss or read about Apple Silicon I go to ”Apple Silicon (Arm) Macs" thread, not to the News thread because the news thread is not categorized like the rest of the forum and as we all know news get old pretty fast.

Another question is what if someone creates a thread about an old news after a week or a month or even later? Are you still going to lock it and redirect everyone to an old dead news thread from several weeks or months ago? Or are you going to lock the old news thread and redirect everyone to the new active discussion? Is there a time limit for which old news threads can be revived or how long it should pass before we're allowed to create our own similar discussions about news articles? I hope in the future you follow your own rules and apply them to your own threads too but maybe as you say "This is how we do it on this site."

Wow, we literally posted the same thoughts 1 minute apart.

By definition, mods should lock the news thread, and not the older one inside "Apple Silicon Macs".

Also, it sets a really bad precedence for original content posters. If I post something new, Macrumors staff creates a news story after reading my post, then my thread gets locked. How does this look good for Macrumors? I might as well just leave here and go to Reddit.

 

[senttoschool]

No solution is ever perfect and certainly no one solution will please everyone on a site with such a large user base. This is how we do it on this site.

I don't like Elon that much but I really liked this rule of his. I think Macrumors should adopt it.

 

[senttoschool]

If I want to discuss or read about Apple Silicon I go to ”Apple Silicon (Arm) Macs" thread, not to the News thread because the news thread is not categorized like the rest of the forum and as we all know news get old pretty fast.

Yep! This is the point mods don't get.

News stories are not permanent. They fade fast. Readers who want in-depth discussion and want to easily find the right audience will need to use the "Apple Silicon Macs" forum, not go searching in the news forum.

Makes zero sense.

 

[ixxx69]

@maflynn is correct. Threads that duplicate what's being discussed in a news thread are always closed, because our rules don't permit duplicate threads. Having discussion of the same issue spread across threads is something we want to avoid here.

The duplicate thread rule applies to all threads, not only news threads. But news threads are the focus of the site, so the rule is especially important in regard to those threads.

No solution is ever perfect and certainly no one solution will please everyone on a site with such a large user base. This is how we do it on this site.

Ya know, this is so typical of the mods here who seem to be primarily selected as mods because they're obtuse and seemingly misunderstand or misconstrue whatever is being said to best serve their agenda.

This has been explained every time this subject comes up, but mods and admins never seem to gain a greater comprehension of the issue. The point is that News article comments are not "discussions" as you keep referring to them - I don't think that word means what you think it means. News article comments are a series of trite remarks by generally the least informed people who want to be the first to comment, and get those "likes".

Even more exhausting than the triteness is wading through the overt (and generally misinformed or ignorant) political takes that seem to flood the comment sections of media site whenever comments are allowed these days. If MR really cared about "discussions", and it was a matter of one place or the other, you'd eliminate comments from the articles and let folks genuinely interested in the articles have their own threads in the general forums.

But this has nothing to do with "rules" or "solutions". You allude to it, but let's just be transparent about it. This is about MONEY. The news articles are what generate the most money, and that's where you want eyeballs to be focused on. The rest of the forum doesn't generate nearly the revenue. You want to steer the eyeballs from general forum discussions to the front page news articles for as long as you can.

Looking at site trends, as a reflection of user comments, your membership base is collectively less knowledgeable and informed than it used to be. There's been a brain-drain going on for years as forum policy discourages participation from the most knowledgeable users, and favors the least knowledgeable. And this sort of policy of not allowing actual discussions to occur immediately proceeding front page news articles just reinforces that.

 

[bpeeps]

Site admin do not care about anything that does not make them money. That's goal number one. News articles generate clicks, ad revenue, and attention. So yeah this policy ain't changing anytime soon. Add it to the laundry list of inconsistent moderation. Mods bend over backwards to contradict themselves and apply the rules as they see fit.

You'll see a dozen duplicated topics in the iPhone forum every single day, but those stay up unless user reported. As soon as they find a topic they can steal from the forums to post on the main page, they'll proactively track down every other iteration of it and close it. If only they actually cared about closing duplicate posts. Just be up front, the BS excuses are transparent.

 

[annk]

I tried to keep my intial post as short as possible, since I have a tendency to write some long posts and a wall of text can be exasperating for readers. But I want to post more info about how moderators are instructed to handle these cases because I can see from subsequent responses to my post that what I wrote created confusion.

Just to be clear: editors don't 'steal' member tips from threads. If editors get a tip from a member thread, they credit the member in the article.

I left out an important nuance in my post. We don't always close preexisting threads when a news story on the same topic is released. If the member thread precedes the news thread, and there is "substantial" (a page or so or more) discussion already in the member thread, the member thread is left open and a mod note is added pointing out there is now a news thread on this same topic.

The policy on duplicate threads is designed to best serve the overall membership, even if individual users would understandably prefer that their thread be the one that's active. The policy doesn't only apply to news threads and is of course something that requires quite a bit of judgement sometimes. How different do threads need to be not to be considered duplicate? It would be great if there were some hard and fast rule, but that's just not the case. There are for example cases where threads are reported as being duplicates but when we read through them, we feel that there are enough differences that it's best to leave both as they are.

Other times we might feel that threads are so similar in content that they really should be either merged or the most recent thread closed with a link to the other. If the newest thread is very new with few or no replies, then it might be deleted and the OP would get a message explaining. All of this depends on things like how similar the threads are, whether or not there is a substantial amount of responses (again, a judgement call), etc.

We know that not everyone will agree with our judgement calls. We do our best, spend quite a bit of time discussing, and are genuinely interested in making the best possible decisions for as many users as possible.

Neither moderators nor administrators are chosen "primarily ... because they're obtuse and seemingly misunderstand or misconstrue whatever is being said to best serve their agenda," as has been suggested in this thread. I think this is clear to most users (and the selection process is explained in detail here), but in fairness to all of us who volunteer our time, I think it's important to state.

And because moderators and administrators are volunteers, we simply don't have any skin in the game as to the financial aspect - at all.

Finally, users can of course discuss in news threads. Individual users might sometimes want to discuss aspects of stories that aren't allowed in the regular news threads, but on a private forum you've simply got to play by the rules. Other users might be irritated by comments that don't break any rules (and therefore aren't removed) but that they don't find relevant or even find distracting or irritating. We get that. It's one of the downsides of having such a large and diverse membership. Please feel free to discuss - within the rules - whatever YOU feel is relevant and interesting. When you do that, you're encouraging others to respond to you, and thereby influencing the level and direction of the discussion.

 

[Homy]

Just to be clear: editors don't 'steal' member tips from threads. If editors get a tip from a member thread, they credit the member in the article.

Just a curious question, you credit "Kim" for this news. Can you direct me to the post when the person have reported the news? The reason for asking is that I haven't seen any other than myself and a couple of other people to write about this and "Kim" is not one of them. If I'm not wrong Nugat Trailers was the first to notice the Mac15,4 8 days before the news and I wrote about it the next day.

 

[WildCowboy]

Just a curious question, you credit "Kim" for this news. Can you direct me to the post when the person have reported the news? The reason for asking is that I haven't seen any other than myself and a couple of other people to write about this and "Kim" is not one of them. If I'm not wrong Nugat Trailers was the first to notice the Mac15,4 8 days before the news and I wrote about it the next day.

Kim is the person who emailed to tip us about it, and so they were the person who drew our attention to it. They did not link to any discussion in our forums, so as far as I know, we were not aware of the existence of the posts you've linked until just now.

With the number of posts in our forums each day, our writers and editors can't possibly keep up with them all. If something is posted in here, there is very little chance we will see it unless somebody explicitly tips us on it. So please use the tip form or email up in the site header to give us a heads-up if there's something we should know about.

 

[Homy]

Kim is the person who emailed to tip us about it, and so they were the person who drew our attention to it. They did not link to any discussion in our forums, so as far as I know, we were not aware of the existence of the posts you've linked until just now.

With the number of posts in our forums each day, our writers and editors can't possibly keep up with them all. If something is posted in here, there is very little chance we will see it unless somebody explicitly tips us on it. So please use the tip form or email up in the site header to give us a heads-up if there's something we should know about.

No big deal, was just curious since I haven't seen any other posts about it. I posted about it again in the news thread about the new leaked benchmarks just in the beginning on the third page with a screen shot. Emailing feels a bit unnecessary with such an active forum and the large number of moderators and administrators. It feels as if you guys are everywhere, since you're pretty quick at removing posts and it's more likely you follow the news discussion. I mean you locked this discussion the same day as the news thread so I don't really agree about you not being able to keep up with the latest posts. In this thread alone there are at least 5 mods/admins.