Hi,
I have been an avid reader of this forum for the past seven years. One important factor that has kept me coming back to this forum is the abundance in high quality posts. Yet, in the past couple of years or so, I have noticed a significant drop in quality. Flaming, baiting and even abuse of each other's nationality/race/religion have become quite common recently. In spite of this, there is still hope towards resolving this issues. I shall highlight the difficulties followed by solutions and my personal thoughts on it.
Difficulties
1)Inviting Flame Threads:
Threads posted which somehow invites fury.
1) Threads that incites chest pounding. E.g. Testing/Buying of military equipment, Strategic deals.
2) Threads involves massive criticism of a certain group of nationality/race/religion.
3) Heavily sensitive threads E.g. Kashmir conflict.
4) Threads that are analysis posted by our very own PDF members (Usually bias in nature).
5) Threads that are not even militaristic/nationalistic in nature E.g. Cricket/Hockey matches.
2) Flame Bait:
Replies that serve no purpose except to invite a fury of internet warriors. It has been mentioned by moderators countless of times to avoid baits. Yet, emotions gets the better of them. This sparks an internet food-fight, completely derailing the thread. Some good discussion threads have been destroyed because of this. From my observation, such threads are usually centered around:
a) India vs Pakistan
b) China vs India.
It's up to anyone's guess how this thread finally ends up.
2) Flaming posts
Pretty straightforward. Involves endless mud-throwing at each other. Three major culprits involved here are the Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis. Quoting each other's weaknesses and then name-calling. It has gone to the point where I have cringed/face-palmed. Most of us here are guilty of doing this.
1) Member/Full members: Most likely the first to trigger a flame bait and flame posts
2) Senior members: Experienced, yet somehow falling to flame baits and at time posting flame threads.
3) Think Tanks: Decent yet some have proven to post excessive sarcasm/criticism leading to a flame-war.
4) Moderators: No complaints and fair throughout, though some have been over-critical/bias in their analysis.
Solutions
1) Flaming threads
My simple suggestion would be to make posters who have achieved more than 500 posts, to be allowed to create a thread. Creating a thread, should be made a privilege, not a right. Members who is guilty of posting low quality and flaming threads should be banned for a month from posting a thread. Repeated offenders, should be banned from creating a thread e.g. One year to permanent.
2) Creating an account
A) My personal suggestion would be to limit the amount of accounts created in a day for a period of time E.g. 10 accounts a day. My suggestions is based on the observation that temporarily/permanently banning an account is not effective enough. Individuals can still create multiple-accounts.When the quality of posts have been improved, then we can remove this barrier. If it is possible, we can look at the notion of banning IP addresses from viewing this site on individuals who has been engaged in creating multiple accounts.
B) In addition, as suggested by some of the posters above, various mechanisms can be put in placed to ensure that they do not engage in multiple accounts E.g. E-mail verification system.
C) Members who do not login into their account for a period over a year, should be phased out as well.
D) New members, should not be allowed to post in the other forums other than the Members Introduction/Members Club. They are also under probation. Flouting any forum rules should result in a permanent ban. Once they have reached a certain amount of posts, then should they be allowed to post on the other sections
3) Friendship Forum
Personally, I admire posts by analysts and posters from around the world giving their valuable insights on military/strategic/economic affairs. But what I feel we are lacking is compassion to understand each other's problems.
IMHO, the purpose of a forum is to promote a sense of belonging and understanding in the community without room for animosity/hatred. For us to co-exist in the first place, we need to change the way we view each other and promote peace. Additionally, we can develop a deeper respect for each other.
Thus, I suggest opening up a Friendship forum. This should be placed in the Special section, so as to highlight the importance of it. The forum should include only positive posts/news that involves acts of kindness/friendship, specifically between these two major countries (India and Pakistan) for obvious reasons. This way, it slowly changes the mindset on how nations view each other. Even if it doesn't change in our lifetime, such forum shows a positive intent in the right direction towards teaching tolerance and respect.
Conclusion
Pakistan Defence Forum prides itself on being one of the few, that caters a lot of discussion/posts to many countries. This is a unique selling point and is what attract analysts/think-tanks/posters all around the globe. As far as I have observed, we have been the only forum that has allowed rivalry nations to share their thoughts, and even possess their very own defence section. This shows a positive mindset towards tolerance and we can work towards improving this forum further. Each of us, regardless of nationality, share a small responsibility towards upholding the forum's integrity. I hope many of you reading this shall play your role and abide by the forum rules. Remember, that respect and tolerance goes a longer way than hatred. After all, we are all part of the same species. Thank you for reading this.
Regards
Ameer
, and those of the mods as well.
