I have noticed a rash of accusations of trolling in this forum lately. My comments in the threads in question don’t seem to be doing the trick, so I’m saying it here: Cut it out. If you want to take someone to the BBQ Pit, then you can do that. What we really prefer is that you e-mail your concerns to us. The “Report this post to a moderator” function works particularly well for that.
Andygrrl, I can’t speak for the moderators but if you read MEBuckner’s post in that thread you’ll see why he closed it. I’m sure no offense was intended but this board is a bit of a stickler for posting threads in the appropriate forum. Your thread was a “getting to know you” type thread that more belongs in the MPSIMS forum. The “General Questions” forum is more for threads looking for specific (hopefully factual) answers.
Andygrrl, for obvious reasons you can only have one poster with a given name – as you of course discovered when you found Andygirl already used here, and used the -grrl variant for yourself.
Andygirl is a very well loved young woman here who attends Dartmouth, does extensive and important volunteer work, and is a real sweetheart to a lot of people in this online community. Why you may have thought she was a boy is that she is lesbian, and has a girlfriend.
As MEB and Carnal pointed out, with a very active board and a lot of posters, there is a strong tendency on the part of the moderators to insist that a thread go into the “proper” forum. MPSIMS is specifically set up for casual sharing of life stories, including the “I’m new – who is this person who uses my standard online name?” sort of thread you opened. GQ is focused on factual questions with definite answers, such as “What evidence is there that the chupacabra is extinct?” Great Debates is for arguing about the Big Questions that people tend never to agree about the answers to: “Why are we here? What would have happened if God were female? Who really won the 2000 Presidential election?” IMHO is a bit harder to describe, but it’s for opinion polls and debates about Not-So-Big Questions. ATMB is specifically devoted to questions and discussions about the board itself, as an entity. The two comments forums relate to the weekly Straight Dope column and the Staff Reports that supplement them. And the BBQ Pit is the place for getting rants, whether about another poster or about life in general, off your chest – it’s the only place where one may directly criticize another poster or the board as a whole, as opposed to disagreeing with what he/she has to say.
It’s really a pretty free and open place, where you can be yourself and express your own point of view – although you need to be able to back up what you say with logical reasons in many cases. The rules are pretty few, and are covered in the membership agreement – many of them are there for “worst case” scenarios (which have happened).
My favorite poster type/insult is an “albatross.” Like a troll that starts a thread, only they don’t stick around to respond to anything: just they just plop and go.
You are right Apos and there is a whole flock of “albatross” around these parts. Merriam-Webster gives this definition of “albatross”: 2 a : something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety. As to the birds they are known as “looney birds” because of their clumsiness on or near the ground.
Andygrrl asked to have her username changed, because it was too similar to andygirl, another poster. When your username is changed, it changes in the headers of all your posts, but any references to the old name in the body of posts stay as is.
Great Debates is for arguing about the Big Questions that people tend never to agree about the answers to: “Why are we here? What would have happened if God were female? Who really won the 2000 Presidential election?” IMHO is a bit harder to describe, but it’s for opinion polls and debates about Not-So-Big Questions. ATMB is specifically devoted to questions and discussions about the board itself, as an entity. The two comments forums relate to the weekly Straight Dope column and the Staff Reports that supplement them. And the BBQ Pit is the place for getting rants, whether about another poster or about life in general, off your chest – it’s the only place where one may directly criticize another poster or the board as a whole, as opposed to disagreeing with what he/she has to say.