I hope I’ve put this in the right category, lest I meet the IFC henchmen in charge of breaking kneecaps should anyone dare to destroy, with a single stray post, the entire infrastructure of the Forum.
Let’s sit down and chat, shall we? You see, this is a forum intended for open and cordial discussion about Infinite Flight in particular and Aviation in general. But lately, I can’t even make it to the second half of a thread.
Why, you ask? Well, because after the original post, the next, say, 10 to 15 posts are non-moderators racing with glee, giddy about the opportunity that has just presented itself.
They get to flex their Category-Cop muscles. No matter that they can’t even agree, there’s off-topic work to be done! “This belongs in RWA.” “No, it should be in Support!” “I think it should be in General!”
15 posts later, no one knows where it should be, but we do know one thing: the topic is completely unbearable to read and the OP has not had a single person actually address their post. All because the forum would collapse if one post finds itself in the wrong category.
Then we’ve got the Format Cops: “Nice post you got there, but please make sure you use exactly three paragraphs and include this bulleted list of info.”
The Trust Level Cops: “You have to be TL2 to even broach the subject of something you’d like to see added.” So, even though the user may have 300 hours of flight, they’ve gotta go through the process of reading the Keystone Cops’ greatest hits to get their Trust Level up to offer a suggestion.
The Duplicate Cops: “Erm, this is vaguely similar to a post made in July of 2015, try using the search bar, even though I could only find it by digging though hundreds of posts and trying innumerable different keywords to come across the vague duplicate, but it’s what I do…it brings me such joy to find that a post is somewhat similar to a post from 3 years ago.”
Beware though, if you do find that your post will be a duplicate, posting on the original post so as to avoid creating a duplicate will bring you in contact with the Necroposting Cops.
So, make sure you don’t create a duplicate, but don’t post on the original because that’s necroposting. Just sit at the fork waiting for a third option to present itself, I guess.
The point is this:
The forum has moderators. We all know who they are, and more importantly, we know who they aren’t.
I saw a post today with 11 posts, 10 of which were saying “flag this for moderation”. Why not just not post that and…flag it? Then the moderator, the actual moderator, can take care of it, and it doesn’t keep getting bumped.
Overall, I just find it nearly impossible to make it through the majority of posts because the percentage that stay on topic is probably less than 10, and I don’t think that’s hyperbole. The rest of them are just an unbearable avalanche of Keystone Cops arguing about where it belongs, whether it’s the right format or whether it was once asked 3 years ago. It’s insufferable.
People come here to read about IF and Aviation. There’s a saying in sports that the crowd doesn’t show up to watch the officials. Well, that applies here, too. We’re not here to watch mall cops bicker about protocol. The forum has moderators. Let them do their job. Let a regular switch the category. Otherwise, let the topic be about the content of the post, not about who can be the first to point out the flaws. It’s becoming impossible to read.