An Emphasis on Quality of Content

The internet is not always a nice place. Here at Overclock.net, we strive to provide a venue for discussion that is free of needless fighting, keeps the snarky one-liners away, and the drama out of sight and out of mind. In the past, we've used the buzzword "professional" to describe our set of goals for interactions on the site, and it is for the most part a good fit. To rephrase that goalset, we can use the phrase "quality content".

Quality content is made up of many things, but is built on top of certain levels of discourse. It is hard to have quality content, for example, if you were mixing it in with name-calling to another member. Quality content might also be hard to come by if your intent in creating content in the first place is to start a fight or get other members riled up. These type of interactions are the norm on many other parts of the internet (and its true, we all love snarky one-liners and puns every once in a while), but at Overclock.net we try to keep these to an absolute minimum.

Our core reason for existence is the discussion of 'the pursuit of performance' in computers - many different content areas have branched off of this over the years, and we support those as best we can as well. We are not here, however, to support fighting, unreasonable arguments, name calling, memes, or any other pieces of content that have become common here in recent months. The reasons for this are twofold - it is our fault as a staff for not being more clear with our expectations for content, and it is also our fault for not being vigilant enough in enforcing our rules. This thread is to serve as the first part of our efforts to clarify and communicate our rules and expectations, and the staff will begin to address issues more vigilantly.

A critical aspect of our ability to maintain high standards in our discussions is the Report Post system. Reporting a post, using the just below any post on the site, is the absolute best way available to have a moderator review a post and take the appropriate action on whatever issues may be present in it. We have several thousand active members making tens of thousands of posts on a daily basis and there is simply no way a moderation staff even a hundred times larger than our current group of volunteers could review each and every new post that is made. Your input, as a member, is highly valuable. When reporting a post, there is no need to respond to the post or quote the rules or even say that you've reported it - all documentation is sent to the moderators, multiple reports are collected together and sorted, and the whole system is designed to make it easy for a moderator to quickly take action on an issue. Stating that you've reported a post to other members is not worthwhile - this only draws further attention to the issue which is not something we want to do.

To best summarize the goal of this message, I will turn to a post that admin himself wrote several years ago:

"Every post you make, consider if it adds value to the community. Whether answering questions or asking them - talking to members you know or ones you don't - please make every post work towards this goal.Keeping Overclock.net readable (using descriptive titles, proper spelling/punctuation etc.), friendly and drama free, and last but definitely not least, factual, helpful and up-to-date will ensure we continue to be the destination for the pursuit of performance."

Please keep those words in mind as you post and discuss here with other members - and as always, we appreciate your membership as we continue to refine our community into the best possible place for overclocking and computer performance discussion. Quality content creates quality communities; please join us as we all do our part to keep Overclock.net one of the most high-quality discussion boards on the web.

Other documents for reference:
Rules/Terms of Service
The Professionalism Initiative
Keeping the Standards High and Noise Low