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

[WildCowboy]

Our moderator staff is actually quite small and relies heavily on post reports to alert them to issues, so even they are not reading everything being posted in the forums.

While there is some communication between mods and editorial staff, it's not a lot as the two sides of the operation have very different roles. If a news tip is explicitly brought to the moderators' attention, they can and will pass it along to the editorial staff, but they don't have the bandwidth to proactively monitor the forums for story ideas.

This feedback is forum is obviously where you'll see the most public interaction with moderator and editorial staff as it's a contained area with a tiny fraction of the overall posts made on the site, so it's easy (and important) for all of us to keep tabs on.

 

[senttoschool]

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.

This isn't a good policy and I encourage the mods to get back together to make a better policy on this.

Everything you wrote tells me that it's a subjective call and if you want the Apple Silicon Mac forum to continue, this needs to be changed.

The Apple Silicon Mac forum is small relative to the iPhone forums so the replies there are slow. But it's a group of passionate posters wanting to discuss very technical details about M1, M2, and TSMC nodes. This means the threads there will most likely not have "substantial" discussions already before a news thread is created.

In the thread that was created before the news story, you can already see posters writing about frequency calculations in the test result: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-geekbench-scores-are-up-for-the-m2-max.2372961/

You won't find this kind of discussion in the news stories because most of them are just people looking to add low-quality posts as fast as humanly possible so they can be on the top 2 pages.

I suggest this policy: Allow sub-forums to discuss news stories at any time. Period. That's it.

It simplifies things and mods no longer have to make subjective calls.

The news stories and subforums have completely different audiences with different intentions for commenting. They should not be counted as duplicates.

There are posters, like myself, who have been discussing M2 for over a year. Now we can't even discuss the most exciting thing about M2 so far, which are leaks of Pro/Max benchmarks because a mod made a subjective call on how many replies were needed before the news story came out. It's truly frustrating.

 

[annk]

... Everything you wrote tells me that it's a subjective call ...

There are some things that that will necessarily have a certain level of subjectivity because they aren't black and white. There are situations where we have to discuss and come to what we believe is the best solution in a given situation for the greatest number of people. We need to be able to look at context and evaluate in these cases. It's simply not fair to treat all of these cases exactly the same.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

I couldn't care less about the differences between an M1 and an M2 and how that relates to performance; just give me a computer that does what I need it to. However, I completely get that the discussions that happen in a thread in the Apple Silicon subforum would be fundamentally different from a discussion about the same thing in the news forum and that the discussion that happens in the subforum simply cannot occur in the news forum. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low. It's like Mike Birbiglia's joke about tennis: it only works if you're playing with someone near your same level.

 

[bpeeps]

Our moderator staff is actually quite small and relies heavily on post reports to alert them to issues, so even they are not reading everything being posted in the forums.

You guys love using this as an excuse for poor moderation. It's obvious at this stage, admin don't care to implement the easy fix for it.

While there is some communication between mods and editorial staff, it's not a lot as the two sides of the operation have very different roles.

This is also very apparent as well. Is it that complicated for moderators and editors to communicate? For instance, it would be extremely easy to shoot mods a heads up when editors are posting a controversial topic to the main page that WILL generate toxic comments. If there's a thread about LGBT anything, maybe mods should just stick around and read through it for a bit. But instead and not getting too far off topic, the MO is to rely on user reports and let these comments sit and fester and be replied to for entirely too long before anything is done.

Communication within a company this small shouldn't be a difficult feat.

 

[Weaselboy]

If there's a thread about LGBT anything, maybe mods should just stick around and read through it for a bit.

I read the first page or two of every news thread that I think is even remotely controversial. Some threads I subscribe to so I can keep a closer eye as the thread evolves.

Even with that, it is not possible to catch all problem posts as quickly as we might prefer, so member reports are a big help in that area.

 

[bpeeps]

I read the first page or two of every news thread that I think is even remotely controversial. Some threads I subscribe to so I can keep a closer eye as the thread evolves.

Even with that, it is not possible to catch all problem posts as quickly as we might prefer, so member reports are a big help in that area.

That's good to hear.

 

[senttoschool]

So what's the conclusion?

Can we discuss the leaked benchmarks now? Or is it still banned to discuss leaked M2 Pro/Max benchmarks in Apple Silicon Mac forum forever?

@Weaselboy @annk

 

[Homy]

I agree with the policy about duplicates in the same sub-forum or where they don't belong but "Macrumors.com News Discussion" is a sub-forum separated from the rest so I don't agree that discussions about the same/similar subjects elsewhere would creat confusion as said above. You shouldn't underestimate your reader's intelligence. We're not children who would get confused shouting "OMG! Which one should I click on? Help!". As I said before the discussions in the news forum are uncategorized and disappear fast so there's very little risk for confusion.

 

[sjsharksfan12]

I've been a little confused about this policy following this thread. Are the admins saying that everything should go to the News forum because I have seen duplicates when talking about the new IOS updates or what have you. I thought the different forums here was a place to talk about the news in more detail, such as the IOS updates. As someone who finds the News forum kind of chaotic, I would love to go into the various smaller forums and talk about news stories in there where things might not be as chaotic. The news forum is it's own unique thing (And I think there is too much news on this site anyway because they spam the forum so quickly it's hard to keep up). I would like to see the other forums a little more active in the new year and not just "What should I buy" threads over and over.

 

[bunnspecial]

This seems one of those cases where discreetion would go a long way.

In a way, I do already see it not enforced on several topics. Just for example, around the same time a news story is created about a new version of macOS, within a few hours there will be active threads on installing it on unsupported hardware as well as discussions of the beta/new features/etc. That's at least 3 separate threads about a new OS.

I don't generally post on news threads(I won't say never, because I've been here close to 10 years and have made I don't know how many thousands of posts and don't remember all of them, but don't REMEMBER posting to a news thread) but have read them and find a lot of the discussion fairly low quality.

As it is, a benchmark thread in a subforum is quite a different beast than a news thread. I don't have the statistics, but I'd guess the amount of cross-posting between posters in those two places is quite low.

I realize at the end of the day, clicks pay the bills and more clicks on the highly visible news threads probably are more valuable than those in a niche subforum. At the same time, though, I'd caution the site leaders to not JUST think about money but that the people who tend to inhabit those particular subforums are what generate continued and sustained traffic to this site. I admit that a lot of the in-depth architecture discussion is over my head(I'm a chemist, not an EE or someone in a related field) but I still enjoy reading it and that's the kind of thing that keeps me coming here. I'll be perfectly honest and say that in my opinion the discussions on news stories often don't give a fair representation of the quality of content and information available here.