About trolling in GD.

The BBQ Pit
1

I refer to this thread: Richards was called a cracker first - Why isn’t that the story?

I’m not especially interested in the question of whether the OP of the thread, Sherwin Nuland is, in general, a troll. I’m sort of taking that for granted, given his contributions to other threads, such as this one and this one.

My post relates specifically to the thread about Richards.

In the OP, Sherwin Nuland asserts that Richards was called a “cracker” before he ever called any of his hecklers a “nigger,” and goes on to accuse the media of a double standard for not covering this fact, and to say that the hecklers deserved the insults that Richards threw at them.

Despite being asked on multiple occasions to provide evidence for his primary assertion—that Richards was subjected to a racial insult before he used one about the hecklers—Sherwin Nuland made no attempt to back up that assertion, and very quickly departed the thread altogether. The thread itself has since descended into a five-page train wreck about the relative offensiveness of “cracker” and “nigger.”

My purpose in starting this thread is not to question the merits of a debate over the relative offensiveness of various racial or ethnic epithets. If Sherwin Nuland had started a GD thread entitled “Is ‘cracker’ as offensive as ‘nigger’?”, then i wouldn’t be here.

But it seems to me that, if you’re going to start a thread in Great Debates, and if the whole premise of your thread rests on a particular factual assertion, then you have an obligation to support that assertion with some evidence, especially when no fewer than 8 posts on the first page of the thread point out the lack of evidence and ask you to supply some. To do otherwise—to ignore the requests for proof of your factual assertion, and to carry on regardless or simply to leave the thread—is, in my opinion, the very definition of trolling.

I’ve never believed that every OP has an obligation to stick with his or her threads to the bitter end. Sometimes we tire of conversations, and drop out of our own threads well before they are finished. But i think the OP of any thread, and particularly one started in Great Debates, has a certain obligation to make a good faith attempt at addressing the key issues and responding to reasonable requests for evidence or clarification. Not doing this, in my opinion, constitutes trolling, and the threads where this occurs should be shut down so that the troll in question can’t just sit back and watch the resulting trainwreck.

2

In his “God approves of rape” thread, despite being told several times (at least twice by non-Christians!) that the majority of Christians don’t hold the Bible as the verbatim word of God, he persists in ranting about it has to be one or the other: Either God approves of rape, “because it says so in the word of God,” or the Bible is worthless as anything (except maybe a doorstop).

Just a petty annoyance, but if people insist on setting up strawmen and shooting at them, it would be nice if they did it in something like the general direction of what they’re upset about.

3

I’ve read a few of this Guest’s OPs, and it’s pretty obvious by now that he’s just out for a bit of attention, but ISTM he’s being given a couple of days to see if he wises up or hangs himself. The problem in this case seems to be more other posters’ inability to simply walk away and let the threads die than Sherwin’s silly wittering. Me, there’s no chance I’ll join one of his threads unless or until it looks as though he actually wants to do something other than stir up the shit.

4

Yeah. The poster has serious troll-like tendencies at this point, and I really wonder why long-timers even respond to his ridiculous OPs. I actually think I’ve participated in one of them, as the thread took on a life of his own.

5

Hmmmmm troll food. Yummie.

6

My troll’s breath smells like troll food.

7

Nuland backed up the assertion in his title wrt “cracker” in his first link.

The fact that several posters wanted a cite downthread only shows that some people fail to read links. No one rebutted the veracity of this particular claim. Furthermore, Nuland did stick with this thread for some time and more than several posts for those who were more interested in his racial pride.

Still think he was a troll though.

First he contradicts himself by saying that no one should be called a nigger. Then goes on to suggest that it should be expected in a certain situation.

Secondly, the white pride comment was totally unneccessary and clearly designed to inflame. It suggests he subscribes to white supremacy while on the otherhand he derides the bible. Given what I understand of American white supremacy which upholds Christianity as a superior white phenomenon, I find this contradictory as well.

That really makes me suspicious of his true intent which I believe is just shit disturbing.

8

No, you are incorrect.

Those two quoted sentences tell us two things:

  1. The first sentence tell us that Richards was responding to heckling.

  2. The second sentence tells us that the hecklers, at some stage, called Richards a “cracker mother fucker.”
    What they do NOT establish is that the term “cracker mother fucker” was part of the initial heckling.

If the article IS trying to say that the hecklers called Richards a cracker BEFORE he called them niggers, then the author of the article must have viewed a different video than i did.

Having watched and listened to the incident quite a few times on various web sites, i believe that the term “cracker mother fucker” was only used after Richards had begun his racist tirade. If you can show me different, i’ll happily concede the point; until then, i can only come to one of the following conclusions:

  1. The author of the article has access to a video clip or tape of the incident that has not yet been made available to the public.

  2. He knows that Richards used a racial slur first, and is deliberately misrepresenting the order of events.

  3. He knows that Richards used a racial slur first, but accidentally conflated two separate issues in that paragraph.

  4. The both you and the OP of that thread have trouble with your reading comprehension, and that you assumed from the quoted sentences that the “cracker” comment came first despite no actual evidence to that effect, and despite all the video evidence to the contrary.

For the moment, i’ll go with #4.

9

Ah. Now I get it.

10

Yeah, that guy is a troll and that thread was a trainwreck from the git-go, but are you saying we should have an actual rule that mods should close threads where the OP can’t or won’t back up his claims? I think there are too many grey areas for that to work, since there are plenty of times when posters in GD don’t agree about what facts can be concluded from a given cite.

11

You’re probably right, and i’m not sure if my suggestion for closing down such threads would work in all cases. Maybe not even most.

As with other similar moderating decisions, it would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, balancing the topic, the phrasing of the OP, and the good faith (or otherwise) participation of the OP. I think the thread in question, though, is a pretty clear example of trolling.

You are right that there are grey areas, incidents where people don’t agree regarding what conclusions can be drawn, or even what the facts are. But i stick by my assertion that the OP of a Great Debates thread has a certain obligation to answer questions and respond to requests for clarification. The OP of that thread did nothing of the sort, despite multiple requests, and quickly ducked out of the debate altogether. That, combined with the inflammatory nature of the post itself, and that poster’s overall board behaviour, makes it a no-brainer, IMO.

12

… is it still a debate when not one single poster agrees with the OP’s interpretation of his cite? I could post a link to the Declaration of Independence and say that it shows irrefutable proof of cropdusting on Mars, and ask whether or not people felt that the Martian ecosystem was truly ours to toy with in that way, and it would be just as valid a GD as the “god condones rape” thread.

13

If you’re taking suggestions for new rules, I’m all for Guests not being able to start threads anywhere but The Pit, the two Comments forums, and ATMB. With very few exceptions that I’ve seen (and please don’t point them out - I know there are some out there, just exceedingly rare) Guests opening threads are shortly banned as socks or trolls.

14

I don’t think this strategy would be good for the board.

First, i’m not as convinced as you are that guests who start threads tend to be socks or trolls. You see the good examples as an aberration; i think people like our friend Sherwin Nuland are the exception rather than the rule.

Also, even if we were going to prohibit guests from opening threads in some forums, i think one forum that should definitely remain open to guests is GQ. Many people make their first posts on this message board by asking a question in GQ, and i get the impression that the helpful and informative advice found there is a big attraction to many potential members.

15

All valid points, and I know how impractical my suggestion is. But a guy can dream.

16

I agree. But I think the best we can do is Pit the guy. I wouldn’t at all mind a policy that guests can’t start threads-- the entry fee is low enough and you only get a 30 day guest pass anyway.

17

From what I understand, some white supremacists have been adopting the old Nordic religion.

18

Interestingly, the proximate cause of this thread had posted two separate questions in GQ a day or so earlier. His actual posting included two legitimate questions in GQ followed a day and a half later with a flurry of seven threads in less than an hour. While several of those threads gave off a distinct whiff of chemical impairment or sleep deprivation, most of them appeared to be in the correct Forum and one or two even seemed to have a point. I did close his last thread that, as posted, was just too stupid for GD, but most of his threads were getting traffic, so it is not as though the Teeming Millions were regarding his posts as beneath notice.

His chronology for his first couple of days:

11-25-2006, 02:08 PM Publishing Right v. Recording Rights (GQ)
11-25-2006, 04:49 PM Why do we age? (GQ)
11-27-2006, 01:17 AM Richards was called a cracker first - Why isn’t that the story? (GD)
11-27-2006, 01:29 AM Jews and Christians - When is it Ok to rape people? (GD)
11-27-2006, 01:43 AM Can really old people get 30 year student loans? (GQ)
11-27-2006, 01:59 AM Why do some men like their nipples sucked (GQ)
11-27-2006, 02:01 AM If you knew you wouldn’t get caught… (would you rape someone?) (IMHO)
11-27-2006, 02:04 AM Pugs (IMHO)
11-27-2006, 02:09 AM Is it wrong to just ask strangers for sex? (Closed in GD)

At that time, he was still participating (if not completely coherently) in the Michael Richards thread. The question about the bible permitting rape is consistent with other threads on the topic of how people should view scripture. I closed the sex thread in GD, but the other two were appropriately placed in GQ and IMHO (and are hardly worse than some I’ve seen). The thread on pugs was appropriately placed. (He did have a few posts in other posters’ threads that seemed similarly off-kilter, but they were generally posted within that same brief period where it appeared that he may have been suffering some impairment of good sense.)

So from the perspective of a Mod looking at a prospective troll, the evidence suggested more along the lines of a somewhat clueless newbie with a bit of exuberance than a real troll.

There are a number of aspects to his posting that I find irritating or frustrating. (OTOH, you really do not want me to post a list of things other posters do that I find frustrating or irritating. For that matter, as hard as it is to believe, I am sure that some posters find some of my habits irritating or frustrating.)

I am not sure that I am excitaed at the prospect of instituting new rules or protocols to handle irritating behavior. In the case of the Michael Richards thread, I think it would be safe to say that the OP was simply talking through his hat. However, the thread moved off in a completely different direction without him, and neither imposing sanctions on the OP nor removing the earlier posts in the thread would serve much purpose.
Was his behavior irritating? Absolutely. Do we need to address “that kind” of behavior in some way? I am not persuaded.

19

The only thread started by this person that I think has merit is the one about the Bible saying rape is OK. An earlier post here states it is not a good topic, because the majority of Bible lovers agree that not everything should be taken literally and applied to present day, like rape. But I thought one of the things about believing in God is that you don’t question His Word, that man cannot understand God and should not even think he is advanced enough to try and determine which things are OK to ignore or might be wrong. One example- women preachers. The Bible IIRC forbids it, so is it not odd a woman preacher would exist, since she is delivering the word of God when God specifically forbids her from doing so? The idea that Joe Christian thinks God’s word should not be questioned in most cases, but should be questioned or ignored in some circumstances, is laughable. God is not supposed to be like an old man in the barber shop dispensing life advice, that you go along with some things he says and not others. How can a real Christian say ‘these things that God said I will do, these others I will ignore’? Man cannot make that judgement- if he does he is saying God is not all knowing and all powerful, which destroys the whole idea of God in the first place.

But all of his other threads are crap.

20

And I also note that even though I agree the Bible rape thread, or a thread on why does a loving God allow bad things to happen to good people, are valid threads, it is a given that are more often than not they brought up to piss off Christians, as these are questions without any sensible answers.