Are you serious? You guys just banned TLDR?

[Jayn_Newell]

@Autumn Almanac

I’ll go with “misunderstood genius.”

I’m with you at least as far as ‘misunderstood’.

I think half his problem was having trouble phrasing things well (which, to my eyes, he was getting better at after being yelled at enough times), and the other half was reputation–there were some threads which I thought could have been interesting, but quickly devolved into a mess of TLDR bashing rather than posts about the topic of the thread. That’s not to say that he didn’t earn that rep, but I still think it was hurting him more than it should have.

I’m starting to wonder if last night was a sort of drunken ‘suicide-by-mod’. It seemed a bit out-of-character compared to his recent behaviour.

(Of course, he could just be a troll, but he was too consistent for me to think that that was just it.)

As far as hish ‘why do black people do x’ threads–I often wished they’d stuck to the topic. Being a sheltered little white girl, I can imagine myself possibly asking similar questions if I were in hi8s position.

[What_Exit]

@eleanorigby

Thank you, Nzinga, for that succinct and well put summation.

long named poster never bothered me–he did write inflammatory stuff (often), but sometimes that did stimulate discussion. So hard to find a good troll these days: one who’s intelligent to know when to stir the outrage and when to do performance “art”.

Funny you should mention performance art, just last month I compared him to Andy Kaufman.

@What Exit?

That is not trolling that is a slightly self mocking joke. As are the acronyms themselves.

I think he might be the Andy Kaufman of the boards. Of course as I think about, Andy Kaufman was the comedy equivilent of a troll, wasn’t he?

Maybe we could change his title to SDPT (Straight Dope Pet Troll).

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

I help run a sports-related messageboard that gets a million hits a year, we have about 8,000 members, and we’re pretty loose with the moderation, moreso than here, and I never in a million years would have banned that guy, and I was one of the ones that actually expressed outrage at his last, fatal post!

Why can’t people just NOT read the threads started by others that they do not like? Or if they do tread into those waters, do it with a grain of salt, knowing what you’re going to be getting into?

Or use the “feature that shall remain nameless that lets you not view another poster’s writings”?

The banning seemed extreme to me, and while douchebags that have entertainment value may be worthy of keeping around, they’re still douchebags. But not worthy of banning, IMO.

But what do I know, I’m the new guy. How ya doing? I’m Steve, pleased to meetcha.

[joyfool]

I think the mods had a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” job on their hands with alphabet soup. Whether or not he was sincere in his beliefs isn’t what tripped him up, or so it seemed to me. The problem became one of whether or not he could reign himself in sufficiently to be a contributing member here. For example, everyone has probably seen a movie outtake of some judge intoning, “NOT ONE MORE WORD OR I’LL PUT YOU UNDER THE JAIL!,” only to have Joe Pesci go “Boo.”

Well, he was like that. TPTB would tell him which lines not to cross how and he’d be all right up to and over them. Constantly. He could easily have been less inflammatory and more genuinely interested in dialog (as his CS threads would indicate), but try as anyone might to get him to tone things down so his legitimate questions could be answered proved futile. At some point, it would have been prudent for him to do the necessary work to at least not always have to be monitored. He had plenty of chances for reform (as others here have done successfully) and a suspension.

And I just don’t see how any moderator would be expected to constantly hold his hand to make that transition happen. He may indeed have something akin to Aspergers, but the onus is still in his court to be able to deal with all the consequences of his hanging around the fringes. /rambling

[eleanorigby]

Hey there, Steve. Backatcha!
He had been warned and didn’t shape up. C’est la vie.

[Sarahfeena]

@Guinastasia

Look, Sarahfeena, I do like you as a poster. But I think you’re dead wrong here.

I appreciate this, Guin, but see, my point is, it’s not about who likes who as a poster. I don’t decide right and wrong based on that, and I hope you don’t as a general rule.

[jacquilynne]

I thought he was an ass. Whether he was deliberately an ass or genuinely an ass seems to be splitting hairs pretty fine to me, though I realize the rules of this board require that they be split. In this case, the fact that he could behave like a marginally socialized human being in Cafe Society suggests that it was deliberately assishness (aka trolling) in the Pit.

Speaking as a forum mod (though obviously not on this forum), the thing that makes me fine with his banning is that his behaviour got worse after multiple warnings. If you want to argue with the moderators that a warning is undeserved, sure, and maybe you can convince them. But after you’ve been warned that your behaviour is unacceptable, escalating it is totally out of line.

[bucketybuck]

I have been lurking around here for about two years now. I have always intended to subscribe, but wanted to wait until a time came when I could devote more spare time to actually participating in threads, rather than just speaking up and then disappearing for months.

Now that it comes to it, with my life a little more stable, I suddenly find myself wondering if I really still want to be part of this fight against ignorance. To my mind something is happening to this board, and it aint good.

There is diversity on this board, a range of people from the eternally cheerful to the bitingly sarcastic. The smart snarky bastards to the intelligent urbane wits. There are those who know lots about everything, and those who know more about just one brilliant area. But all those smart people are nothing without the rest of us, because we make this board something more than a bunch of science articles.

This board needs the rest of us plebs asking how turbos work, or why monkeys like bananas, or what city Altantis is twinned with. We all come together to generate discussion, to push ideas and to make sure that threads aren’t just asking how our day went, while the new post count fades away as time goes by.

But you know what else you need? You NEED controversy. You need major events in the wider world to stimulate all those great debates. You need all these personal crises to share with friends in MPSIMS; you need exciting events in media and the arts to stop the cafe society becoming just another Starbucks. This message board can only prosper so far with threads that occur, um, naturally for the want of a better word.

What is my point here? The Straight Dope message board has just banned somebody for provoking discussion. You may dispute the value of the many, many words written in response to VCO3 and his many threads, but you cannot deny that again and again he prompted people to contribute more to this board than just the equivalent of “Ho hum, can’t think of anything to say”.
Many people thought VCO3 was a jerk, but it seems to me that the so-called jerk got more people typing, indignantly or otherwise, than most of the professors around here who didn’t post because they took a step back, considered their thoughts, and realised they had answered their own questions. I know which I prefer.

I am not sure if I can communicate my thoughts very well here. As I say, this is my first post and I need a bit of practise at this, but I think deep down I am worried about subscribing, because I fear this place will become even more sanitized as the future rolls in. Do I really want to waste time with people scared of a few inflammatory comments? Who couldn’t deal with VC03?

(Btw, to my mind a troll is a numpty who logs once for a laugh to shout “youse ar all fags lol wankers wankers etc etc”, not somebody who writes controversial topics, regardless whether he believes it or not)

[Martin_Hyde]

@Sarahfeena

Martin Hyde, I think I see a big disconnect with your pub analogy, which is that it’s much, much, much easier to ignore someone you don’t want to deal with on a message board than if they are loudly in your face at a pub. Put that together with the fact that the patrons here don’t agree as to whether or not he was a disruptive influence, or whether they enjoyed his presence, and I think the mod action might be a bit out of place.

The problem with just “ignoring it” means that there are pretty much no rules. If no one could be banned for trolling then eventually there’d be an inordinate amount of trolls.

I think there are basically two types of trolls on the internet. People that do it because they can’t help themselves (like VCO3) and people who do it as opportunists, but can be reformed. Without some sort of moderation trolling soon becomes pervasive. It is hard to just “ignore it” when it is epidemic.

Eventually it would really drag down the level of discourse in the forums as a whole.

I’ll be honest, there are forums I post on that are basically “unmoderated.” The ones that work are small ones where people know each other well. Some of the larger unmoderated boards I post on, you have to sift through a lot of ignorant trolling on a regular basis. Such forums have their charms–but ultimately it is nice sometimes to have a moderated forum.

I certainly wouldn’t pay money for a completely unmoderated forum–those exist in abundance.

[Guinastasia]

@Sarahfeena

I appreciate this, Guin, but see, my point is, it’s not about who likes who as a poster. I don’t decide right and wrong based on that, and I hope you don’t as a general rule.

No, of course not. It has nothing to do with not liking TLDR/VCO3. It has to do with the fact that he repeatedly broke the rules, even after numerous warnings and being suspended. Even if NOT for the threads he started, he was always marching into non-Pit threads, insulting others, telling them to fuck off, constantly swearing at everyone.

It’s like faithfool said. He kept on acting like an ass, even after being warned, repeatedly. Yeah, he was entertaining, but so are most trolls. Doesn’t mean they have the right to post here.

The guy has only himself to blame.

ETA: someone can be entertaining without being a jackass. I’m sure there are boards out there with people like TLDR…. It’s not like we’re without interesting posters. And we’ll probably end up with people like him again.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

@eleanorigby

Hey there, Steve. Backatcha!
He had been warned and didn’t shape up. C’est la vie.

Thanks for the hello.
Well met.

[CanvasShoes]

He was (or pretended to be) somewhat bonkers, and I’ve always found these types of wackos fairly entertaining. Two of his last threads, that I read that is, were about commercials and his perception of them was really wild.

I normally TiVo shows I like, so I don’t often see commercials. I had a chance to see both commercials he was damning sometime after he’d posted. All I can say is "WOW, is his perception of reality ever skewed (or as another poster put it “skewered”!).

But at the same time, it’s fun to try and figure out what makes his sort tick. I’m kind of sorry he got banned. It’s too bad there’s not some sort of “moderated” status, where his sort of poster can post, but it doesn’t go to the board until the mods approve it. If the thread is too much for the mods, they can simply delete it before it outrages too many people, but I know, I know… that’s a slippery Big Brother-esque slope.

[Boyo_Jim]

@Sarahfeena

I appreciate this, Guin, but see, my point is, it’s not about who likes who as a poster. I don’t decide right and wrong based on that, and I hope you don’t as a general rule.

I understand what you’ve been saying, I think. So I will ask you this: should moderators be eliminated? And if they are needed, what should their powers be? Can you specify any grounds on which someone SHOULD be banned? – presumably mods would have to be the “executioners”.

Maybe I’m missing something, and if I am, I’m sure others will point it out, but I can only think of two realistic enforcements: locking threads or banning posters. I think there are appropriate circumstances for either. What do you think?

[Sarahfeena]

@Boyo Jim

I understand what you’ve been saying, I think. So I will ask you this: should moderators be eliminated? And if they are needed, what should their powers be? Can you specify any grounds on which someone SHOULD be banned? – presumably mods would have to be the “executioners”.

Maybe I’m missing something, and if I am, I’m sure others will point it out, but I can only think of two realistic enforcements: locking threads or banning posters. I think there are appropriate circumstances for either. What do you think?

Well, I don’t think mods should be eliminated…I think there has to be some authoritative presence on the boards. The thing that is bothering me about this is that the rules that he was breaking are way too vague, and every one of us could have a different interpretation of them (meaning the “don’t be a jerk” and the “no trolling” rules). The warnings he was given were mostly bogus, in my opinion, and that’s the issue I have…vague rules that are way open to interpretation are easily influenced by personal likes and dislikes…by both members and moderators. In my opinion, when you have vague rules, you need to be that much more judicious in decidng who to warn and who to ban, so it doesn’t make it look like there are vendettas against certain people just because their opinions are unpopular.

[Orual]

Frankly, I think if there really was a vendetta against TLDR, he’d have been banned back when he got suspended.

[Crocodiles_And_Boulevards]

@Guinastasia

No, just saying it was a pattern with him-post some outrageously stupid question, then get offended when people say it’s outrageously stupid.

Or his total, foaming at the mouth, Pit threads about nothing in particular, getting pissed at the drop of a hat, starting said Pit threads and never returning, etc.

Basically, the textbook definition of Being a Jerk.

Good riddens.

@Wee Bairn

I have had my doubts as to the sincerity of several of VCO3’s posts here (like does he really think Orange Juice is the best musical group ever?), but none more blatant than the last- I cannot fathom anyone becoming outraged at a woman for trying to rescue her daughters from a fire. No way any reasonable person would read that article and have that reaction. Woman ABANDONS husband to try and save child? Puh-lease.

This isn’t necessarily a direct response to the quote above; rather, this is a response to the general position that his posts were inflammatory and based on obviously outrageous opinions (that are therefore considered ridiculous).

As I said before, I didn’t find TLDR’s posts (beyond the racist ones) to be necessarily more than his off-center opinion. While it may be unbelievable to certain posters here that a person could read said article and be outraged by the sacrifice that the mother showed in the article, I find it entirely plausible that someone firmly against personal sacrifice for children would see it so.

I remember on another board years ago when someone started a thread asking how many people were planning on never having children. For some reason, that thread sparked an incredible amount of outrage from people who simply could not believe that anyone would not want a precious little mini-me of their own. At first, I hadn’t considered the possibility either, but after reading the arguments the proponents offered, I decided that it was an entirely valid personal conclusion.

And, in fact, I agreed to some extent. There is, in fact, a “Cult of the Child” in our way of thinking that slips past our normal, rational-radar. (Not that I don’t want kids myself, I’m just saying I understand that this is how society is.)

**TLDR’**s banning over the thread about the mother is the disturbing part for me. It does reek of a banning over a controversial issue. While 99% of people may not consider it an active controversy, that might just mean that the 1% who believe otherwise are just a minority opinion.

Many of the religious debates that are allowed in GD, for example, purposefully bait both the religious and atheists for argument when there’s no possibility for resolution. How many threads have we read that started out basically as:

“Hey Atheists/Theists, Explain This Clearly Idiotic Aspect of Your Stance”

Someone above said that one quality of a troll is that they often won’t return to their threads beyond a token post. They also said that a troll won’t change their opinions even when presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Need I drag this into the Atheist/Theist debate? Or the Global Warming debate?

All of these issues seem like icing on the cake. The real issue seems more to do with TLDR’s inflammatory style. With the exceptions of the race baiting, I did not find his posts to be specifically trollish… just “out there”.

EDIT: I wanted to also say that my opinion is heavily influenced by the fact that those last two threads were in the Pit anyway. This seemed important to me.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@bucketybuck

To my mind something is happening to this board, and it aint good.

I agree! In fact, this banning makes me so mad that through tears of horror at the dying soul of what once had been a great message board, I put a fresh AAA battery in my Gilette Fusion razor and swallowed it. Then I smashed myself in the chest with a ball-peen hammer until a shard from one of my broken ribs activated the razor and I could laugh only at the macabre misery of what existence has become as the vibrating razor sliced my duodenum to shreds, letting blood bubble forth from my mouth, which started me weeping again at the tragic mendacity of life (don’t talk to me about life) and a thin red flow of blood and tears flowed over my keyboard, making my cccccccccccccccccc key sticccccccck… will it never end?

…whither, SDMB… whither?

[Sarahfeena]

@Bryan Ekers

I agree! In fact, this banning makes me so mad that through tears of horror at the dying soul of what once had been a great message board, I put a fresh AAA battery in my Gilette Fusion razor and swallowed it. Then I smashed myself in the chest with a ball-peen hammer until a shard from one of my broken ribs activated the razor and I could laugh only at the macabre misery of what existence has become as the vibrating razor sliced my duodenum to shreds, letting blood bubble forth from my mouth, which started me weeping again at the tragic mendacity of life (don’t talk to me about life) and a thin red flow of blood and tears flowed over my keyboard, making my cccccccccccccccccc key sticccccccck… will it never end?

…whither, SDMB… whither?

Bryan, these crack me up.

[joyfool]

Sarahfeena, one question if you don’t mind… what is expected of a poster in response to specific instructions? Say, as in my example of not saying another word, if that person intentionally goes against that edict, then what? I realize that the straw that breaks the camel’s back can indeed end up looking bogus, but I don’t feel that when you’ve had repeated warnings on top of a suspension that the member apparently could take away constructive criticisms from but doesn’t, then the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere.

Or is that person just allowed to completely disregard any attempts to prevent them from disrupting the board?
[And in the interest of disclosure, he didn’t bother me. But that can’t be the issue, at least not in my humble opinion.]

[Nzinga_Seated]

@Bryan Ekers

I agree! In fact, this banning makes me so mad that through tears of horror at the dying soul of what once had been a great message board, I put a fresh AAA battery in my Gilette Fusion razor and swallowed it. Then I smashed myself in the chest with a ball-peen hammer until a shard from one of my broken ribs activated the razor and I could laugh only at the macabre misery of what existence has become as the vibrating razor sliced my duodenum to shreds, letting blood bubble forth from my mouth, which started me weeping again at the tragic mendacity of life (don’t talk to me about life) and a thin red flow of blood and tears flowed over my keyboard, making my cccccccccccccccccc key sticccccccck… will it never end?

…whither, SDMB… whither?

Heeheehee!