As a longtime lurker/avid poster in the RuneScape General section, I think it's time the moderators crack down on the post+attention whoring that goes on in there. I'll break down all the problems I have with the section in bullet points, and try to find an example for it. On a side note I think that the posts that Zerkerfist makes in the section are outstanding. They should be a model for all other people offering help. I will post an example below.

[TL;DR Stop posting without reasoning + evidence + knowledge + experience and stop posting things that have already been posted.]

- On threads where members ask about the cost/time that a particular skill goal will take, many posters will just take a wild guess at the answer, rather than basing their response on evidence and/or recent experience in achieving the particular goal. In this thread: (xxxxxxx), a user enquires about the cost of turmoil. A few wild guesses are made based on either nothing at all, incorrect calculations, or past prices before a couple of actual, valid answers are made. If the actual answer hadn't arrived, the OP would have been left with a huge range in inaccurate guesses to decipher.

- On a similar note, in threads which require experience and knowledge in the fields in question to be able to post good answers, inexperienced players are once again making guesses based on little but opinion. For example, in this thread (xxxxx), multiple posts are made telling the OP to dump the item in question (the thread is about a bonus experience weekend merchant) without any sort of reasoning and/or backup information. It's stupid and could end of losing the OP tens of millions. Thankfully Tmoe offered some helpful advice, but without that advice his merchant could have gone bad.

- Both of these things annoy me, but not to the point that repeat posts do. If someone has already posted an answer and you have nothing to add to it and you are not debating another answer, don't fucking post. It took me 10 seconds to look for an example of this. In the following thread (xxxxxx), a bloke is asking the fastest way to bank in a trip to the forinthy dungeon. For the record, the answer is clearly a charged glory teleport to Edgeville bank. Anyone that had recently PK'd/PVM'd at revenants would know this. The problem is that people who haven't done this and haven't read up on it still post. Stop doing it. One person says to use a games necklace to teleport to the wilderness volcano. This teleport doesn't exist. Another suggests going to castle wars and then to edgeville with a glory. What a stupid idea. If you've ever used a glory to teleport to edgeville, you'd know it plants you right next to the bank. And then, after all this bullshit that I've been raging at, the killer arrives. After the answer has been established as an edgeville teleport, some postwhore comments 5 words; teleport to edgeville bank. No. This is spam. Stop it.

/end rant.

Some of zerkerfist's posts are below. One of the most informative Sythe users I've seen in a long time. Mod this bloke..

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That was actually me, and from the context of the OP I couldn't tell if he was looking for the easiest way to bank, or the easiest way to have a round trip. For all I knew, he might have some secret way of teleporting back to the Forinthry dungeon. In addition, Glory had already been said, so I just offered other possibilities.

I hear where you're coming from, but part of the great thing about the internet is freedom of speech. I know you didn't directly suggest this, but we don't plan to start infracting posts for being incorrect. If they're plain irrelevant or repeating what's already been said, you can go ahead and report them to be dealt with by staff (just make sure you provide a decent reason so it can be dealt with more efficiently).

If you think a post is being misleading to a point where it's malicious, you can just report it the same way you would any other post.

On another note, please drop me a PM if you think there's any sensible adjustments we could make to the forum rules (that don't take away any freedom of speech) to help make Sythe a more enjoyable and informative experience for everyone. I read every PM I receive, so I'm all ears!

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Some people simply have less knowledge about RuneScape and you can't really blame them for that. Some are genuinely trying to help but aren't realising that there answers are actually not helpful at all. I try to make some helpful posts at RS2 General myself some times and even though I've only spend a couple hours at that subforum in total I've seen a lot of similiar example of the first post. I don't think it's possible to control the section, because it's simply too active and you can't really blame someone for giving wrong advice I guess.

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I'm sorry for singling you out, my aim was not to target specific people. The thing is, there is no secret teleport to the Forinthy Dungeon. A quick check on RuneScape Wiki would confirm this. Anyway, in the big scheme of things this is not an issue.
Thanks for the reply Verts, it's good to see a staff member taking the time to write out a paragraph reply. Yes, freedom of speech is one of the things that makes the internet great, but it also allows for the spread of vast amounts of what I can only describe as bullshit (e.g. lluminati). I just am of the opinion that most people are too lazy to actually check their answers against the plethora of RuneScape databases which they have free access too: RuneScape Wiki, Runescape Item Database, RuneHQ, Tip It XP Table. I think that warnings should be used when someone continues to make inaccurate guesses because they didn't research the answer. Maybe I'm just being a tad idealistic

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Denied for Verts' reasoning.

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