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My experience at TFP is that "content" is not well received. In fact it is discouraged. Providing "content" is a function of passion. If you don't have it, you don't understand how to moderate it.
I was not attracted to this site by "the porn". After I was here, I came to appreciate it.
If you are serious about wanting or encouraging "content", discourage "drive by" "one liners" from being posted in select threads. My experience is that you've been doing the opposite.
To your credit, you have not banned me.
My advice is to examine posting activity that it is unique, out of the ordinary, and encourage the authors of it when you identify it. If you are not familiar enough with a forum category to do so, solicit opinions inside and outside the circle of moderators to attempt to make an accurate and informed decision as possible about what to encourage or discourage and on what forum topics or "cultures" to do it, or not do it.
When you come across unique posting style or content, and it is found to generate controversial reactions, do you react to complaints about it by looking for posts of members who seem appreciative of it, and ask them what it is that they appreciate, or do you simply consider the complaints to be the definitive signs of "a problem"?
My experience is that moderation pressures in the direction of brevity and uniformity.
Unique or unusual is going to be controversial. It is a product of passion and it summons passion from others, both pro and con.
A "general discussion" forum should have different posting guidelines than those in a "themed" forum. In a themed forum where it can easily be expected that passions will rise, why is the tendency to attempt to moderate passionate expression more aggressively than in a comparatively passionless, general discussion venue?
Whatever approach that you decide to take with any policy issue or strategy, sincerely evaluate what you think might happen if you do the opposite of what your inclined to do. If you think that eliminating porn from TFP or making it more difficult for the public who are non or recent members to access, will diminish activity, why not eliminate or further restrict it for a bit, to find out what happens.
Why not take different or opposite practices in other areas in attempts to find if your stifling or discouraging activity and content creation that it would be better to encourage, and vice-versa. I've seen no effort, comparatively to discourage "one line" posts in forums where that activity is not optimum, but plenty of effort devoted to discouraging the loooong post.
If you genuinely want "content", on some forums, you could be demanding it, but instead the priority seems to be to encourage "discussion". We already live in a text message society. There is not much "content" in "texting", is there?
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