sounds like you are trying to bridge two worlds… a world where the topic/1st post is a wiki like post but then still have discussion in the same thread.. idk sometimes can’t have your cake and eat it too.. i wouldn’t’ want to try to moderate that kind of ideology but more power to you all if you do.. it’s a cool concept in theory but with community always comes trash and somebody has to play the trash man
i do like the idea of subtopic or something of the like.. no clue how that works but again more power to you for wanting to create that kind of space… just seems like you’ll need buy in from all in the community to not clutter it up or you’ll need strong moderation to sort things, filter things, tag things, delete things, all the things that are the 4 letter word “work”
thanks again for the space to even type out my ramblings
@stickstones - My take is that the big advantage to FC was that if I was considering a new vape, I could head over to FC and see what others thought about it, and pick up details not in the manual, or maybe how to use the device to get more out of it. It’s kind of a pain having to flip through a bunch of “private” conversations to find out what the issues with the newest super vape are.
I don’t know this software, but could the mods collapse the off topic threads so those researching can scan easier, but we can still talk with others, some of whom I almost feel like I know by now. If someone wanted to read the off topic stuff, they could click it to open?
I dont think problem necessarily is the cleaning up and the intent but more the perception once something is deleted that its being intentionally hidden. Kinda why I always side with the let ride out philosophy. Same with people arguing i kind of like letting it go because you get to see a clear picture of the people and make your own judgements. Id rather you wade through some mud than think someones pulling some shit. For me these threads even cleaned are insanely long and are best navigated using searches. Where using the original post as a wiki makes the cleanup not important. When that happens some of us are like who the heck gets offended over kissing a device and trust falls. Pretty much why im against censorship in almost any form. Think of it like a gov release of documents might get a document but you always focus on why is it marked up and redacted
I think the best of both worlds could be to have the OP be as detailed as possible, edited frequently to serve as a wiki/general FAQ about the device, but then let discussion flow naturally in the rest of the thread
Another approach is to have each vape (master thread) have its own dedicated page where the info from the master thread is, maybe a community curated settings / tips etc etc …and then subtopics and discussions are organized there relevant to the vape.
Right now using a higher level of organization is helpful and necessary (portables, desktop etc)
but then to search for your vape, then search the discussion surrounding it….
On the topic of AI, can we ban copy paste AI responses? I think people put those to be authoritative without truly spending the time to vet out their sources and understand the material.
AI prompts are often iterative. They often require challenges to steer toward reality and what is truly correct.
Agreed. The topics we’re discussing are often niche enough that most LLMs just hallucinate garbage.
There’s no answer less helpful than just “idk but I asked gemini and it said:”
Asking ChatGPT a detailed question about a vape that released 2 weeks ago is not going to yield any useful results. They will spit out imaginary settings menus, features that don’t exist, parts that aren’t present, etc.
It adds massive confusion.
It’s not totally useless, but the lack of accuracy of the results is a genuine problem with this space in particular, with so many small devices and makers, discussions on small Discord servers, etc.
If I wanted an answer from a robot, I wouldn’t be on this forum for humans.
No, at least for me yours didn’t bother me. Yours clearly involved heavy effort, even if I don’t necessarily agree with every part of it It added more than I would have gotten by one query.
Mainly seen it sporadically by different people, not just here either. I see it on vaporents and discords too.
To me, that one is good, but there have been posts in the past of just “I asked [insert LLM of choice] this detailed question that requires specialist knowledge and this is what it had to say!” which imo is just a huge waste of space
This is so true. I made this mistake. This community knows so much more about vapes than AI. I found the solution to a problem I had here on the forum, the answer AI gave me was totally wrong.
Tbh yeah it was the trigger. It has bothered me when I’ve seen it in other topics.
It wasn’t that you didn’t spend time, it was more the response.
I spent hours reading one article yesterday and looking up info and educating myself and to see an AI formatted reply right after mine was unsettling.
It has great info and sources, but I didn’t see any explanation outside of that which showed you read the material and understand so as to speak with such an authoritative post.
Then the first replies are kudos for your well thought out response, but it was AI that appeared to have thought it out and largely composed and sourced it.
It bugged me, and maybe that’s because of personal stuff like my knee being fucked up and possibly requiring surgery I was more vocal about it. My apologies for that and hopefully this helps to give context to the timing of my post in here yesterday.
I think it would a bad idea to simply ban AI responses outright just because it’s AI. I think how you use a tool is far more important than passing judgment on a tool for what it is. We don’t ban knives in society just because they can both cut vegetables and also people. We add rules around their use.
AI can be incredibly useful and it will just continue to get more sophisticated and useful as time goes on. Crafting some guidelines on its use would be more appropriate I feel.
Maybe some structure such as:
Full disclosure of the AI service and prompt used.
Avoid reams of text if the answer can be more concise.
…
Pretty sure we can figure this out as a community.
No doubt! I used AI in my research as well to be clear, however I didn’t reference or use it as the core source.
I’m not against AI, but I don’t see the point in copypasta when anyone can ask the same prompt as you. If there are further challenges and other things to vet and verify that can be posted alongside then yeah.
But I am also a huge proponent of using your own voice and encourage that with my employees. I don’t like the idea of copying output even after you have challenged it and pasting it to claim as your own knowledge or to be authoritative. You should be able to use your own words if you understand something well enough to speak about it.
Good point on the AI stuff. AI really doesn’t know much about vaporizers, and will just repeat marketing claims etc. I really don’t see much lost in a complete ban, at least in the case of someone asks a question and someone says “idk but this is what AI says”. But I guess that’s not the vibe here…
Also worth thinking about is how much our responses here are training the AI machine. I know FC and other forums struggled hard with tons of bots crawling the site for info.
It added more than I would have gotten by one query.