You see a post with a topic of interest. You are tempted to reply. But you are wise, and do a little analysis first, because you don’t want to appear a fool. Is this a zombie thread? Is this a serious poster? Is this a drive-by spammer? Is this a one-trick pony? Join date, number of posts, maybe even location, email addy and web site are all tools that can be used to make the determination.
Like this:
Newbie. Can’t trust 'em. 
Waiting for Czarcasm to bump me…
Then keep your own blog. This isn’t the venue.
You’re saying you don’t give a damn about other people, except as a dumping ground for your own needs. Well, that’s being a jerk. And since this particular forum isn’t run by you, what other people think about that actually matters.
Yet that’s precisely what you did here.
So, the rules only apply to others when it’s to your benefit?
You really need me to explain why I posted this:
and explain to you that it’s not a meme of me being an oldfag dismissing the newb for being a newb? The thread in question was one of at least 3 threads started by newly joined members this month spouting pro-Russian propaganda about the Ukrainian situation that has been spammed to message boards across the internet.
No, that is not what I am saying. I am saying that I follow the rules, that is what I care about. Then other people are adding rules on top of those rules and making judgements about who should and should not speak, whose opinion has more value etc. To me, giving a damn about other people means allowing them the freedom to speak freely within those guidelines. I agree with the way the sight is set up and have a lot of respect for the way the moderators allow people to express themselves within those guidelines.
Obviously we have a very different opinion about what caring about people is. Of course, if the rules change and this is not an appropriate venue to speak freely, then I would not have any interest. But the rules are pretty clear to me about what is and is not acceptable, so if you are now saying that the venue is something different than it is then you are the one being self-centered in trying to limit the freedom of others.
Bull.
“Don’t be a jerk” is one of those rules. While the mods arbitrate that, board culture and expectations are a part of not being a jerk.
But once you get beyond the general rules and moderator actions, who’s to say what is appropriate? And if there are more rules than those stated then why not add them? Also, right now you are saying one of the rules is don’t be a jerk, but AFAIK In the BBQ pit it is acceptable to throw personal insults around.
So this all gets very confusing very quickly. And who is to say what board culture is? If board culture is you wait your turn to speak, you ain’t been round here long enough know your place boy; then you you don’t have to worry about my jerky face coming here. I have no interest in that sort of environment. As far as I can tell from this thread thuogh, there is no clear consensus among long time users on this topic.
This isn’t really all that difficult, and it is why we strongly recommend that people lurk for a while to suss out the board culture and what you can say where before they dive in assuming this is just another Yahoo! comments or YouTube site.
We don’t expect you to wait your turn. We just expect that you’ll have some minimal level of understanding of how this party works before assuming it is an asshole’s rave.
Aha! A rational post…look at the join date…it’s clearly a sock account!
As I said, I follow the rules and understand them, and I respect that, and what you are asking for is reasonable and I agree with.
What the OP is talking about, and what I am saying is a turn off for me is when people start mentioning join dates and establishing a hierarchy based upon that, I originally was interested in the board because of the level of discourse and the general open nature and diversity of subjects and people who commented. I find the sort of join date cliquishness mentioned and displayed previously in this thread tedious. And, if the rules are to keep personal attacks out of the discussion I think it makes sense not to look at join date and make inferences based upon that and instead just ignore the comments you don’t like, or let the mods do there job, or make clear counterpoints. It is just my opinion FWIW.
Greetings Mr. Nylock and welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board!
Well, yes, establishing a hierarchy based on join dates or post counts is both cliquish and asinine. I believe it was done in jest upthread. That said, there’s a tendency for one post wonders to initiate threads that aren’t particularly fruitful.
Personally, I think that this board is right for many people but not right for most people. That’s ok, those in the 2nd group can and do self-select themselves and go elsewhere. The internet is a big place.
That’s a problematic stance. The best way to fight ignorance is to take the time to really construct your argument, filtering out things that don’t pass casual scrutiny. Even then, most arguments will have plenty of holes.
This board rarely settles anything, btw. But it is useful for identifying, listing and elaborating upon the main lines of argument. If you just emote though, you aren’t really upping your game: you’re just indulging your desire for attention. Hey we all have such inclinations, but again, it’s better to reflect on what you’re saying and apply a filter ahead of time. Otherwise, you tend to get zapped - and we end up discussing superficialities rather moderately tricky differences in perspective.
There is no hierarchy based on join dates.
We do however, experience an influx of people every time this board is mentioned on another site, and it is unpleasantly common for many of those people to act, as I said above, like this is another Yahoo! comments site. So yes, very much yes, people point at the person’s join date as a reference that this person is new, this person hasn’t bothered to learn the board culture, and most likely, this person isn’t long for the board. That is as much to warn other people not to waste their time and energy trying to engage the troll/asshole/idiot as it is to alert the person that they’re new here and should step back and figure out how what their doing doesn’t work here.
If someone walked into a dojo, school, workplace, etc, and acted in a manner contrary to the existing culture, some people would simply smile, say “You must be new here” and wander away, right?
Gotta ask, and this has been on my mind a lot since I joined 9 mos ago. Yeah, a newbie, so sue me:)
What do trolls get out of trolling? Seriously, with the communication barriers between us all on SD, what level of reaction do you truly have to show, if you’re going to satisfy a troll’s requirement? I assume it’s purely reaction a troll is looking for. But a troll isn’t getting the emotional face-to-face, smell of ones heated breath reaction, is he/she? So what drives a troll? And I deserve a shitty pun for that question, ok.
But really, spending time on this board is fun, but I don’t do it a lot, so you can lambaste me for being fickle. I imagine trolls have to be here A LOT in order to derive their dubious pleasures.
What say you?
PS Apologies to the OP in case this reply hijacks the thread. Didn’t mean to put a MH370 in the mix.
Trolls have a low set of standards for their jollies. My guess is because they can’t get anyone to acknowledge their existance in Meat World, they resort to trolldom in the anonymity of cyberspace.
That and they are basically fuckwads.
^^ Merci
De nada.
Based on his oddball answers in alcohol and religion threads, I’ve pretty much pegged him as a troll.
That’s a good question, but there’s no consensus on the matter. One aspect though is that if 1 in 10,000 have a pronounced troll temperament, there will be plenty to be encountered here and elsewhere. Less so in RL. Shortly after the umkay incident, one poster linked to an article about a similar internet troll who just happened to have a few mental health issues.
As a relative newbie myself, I find it interesting that the only people who are having difficulties with boardmembers checking join dates are the ones who are having troubles with the board culture.
To the two of you who are worried/peeved about people discounting your contributions because you’re new, you’ve got it backwards.
They’re discounting your contributions because of the content, and explaining that content via the join date.
As you can see if you look at all the other posters active here, people somehow manage to make it through their new poster phase regularly. We’ve got posters in good standing from before there was a board all the way up through 2013. If your concerns about new members always being being discounted and squelched were in fact true, that would not be the case.
No one is making you stay here. If it isn’t a good fit, there’s no shame in finding somewhere more amenable. It is rather stupid to stay and make yourself a pest railing against the prevailing culture.
You seem to identify the “prevailing culture” as the lack of manners of a few specific individuals; overall my “newbie” experience has been fine.
I did have the temerity to point out to one person that who says something is an irrelevancy, and that is obvious, but a few old timers didn’t like it. They were and are wrong.