:eek:
note to self:
Do not attend dopefest with Guinastasia.
Heh, sometimes it’s kinda lonely being the only so called ex-troll 'round these parts.
Come now, you’re in good company. Theres you, me, and… who was it? Needs2Know? Perhaps. Started alot of silly threads then acted irrationally, and at the brink of banishment, became normal? I can’t remember who that was. Sometime last spring, I think.
–Tim
I’m not a good troll spotter. I think I just have too much faith in humanity to be able to spot trolling activity, unless it’s somebody as obviously (oh what’s the word I’m trying to think of) as CDMilk. I just assume that a post that most others regard as trollish is a legitimate comment that is poorly phrased and therefore misunderstood. And this does happen more than occasionally.
I also can’t fathom how y’all manage to spot returning trolls. You expert troll spotters must have a lot more spare time than I do in order to be able to read enough posts in enough threads to spot the similarity in posting styles.
Some trolls are easy to spot. Anyone with a single digit post count and a very recent date of membership who seems to have intimate knowlege of other people on this board and how they “always” react,or takes serious issue with the mods about their banning someone or closing their threads are usually trolls. I mean, I haven’t been on this board all that long, but I am begining to recognize certian trolls about as quickly as some of the oldbees.
Couldn’t that just as easily describe a long time lurker, first time poster?
Could be. But a long time lurker probably wouldn’t start posting just to start being a jerk.
I have not been here for along time either, but I am starting to pick up on what a troll reads like.
When I first registered, Spidey didn’t think I should use the name I have now because people would think I am a troll. I didn’t even know what a troll was then, I do now.
Oh yeah, my user name stems from a childhood memory, an upset older sibling was yelling “Who’s the jackass who left the fridge open?” To which I responded “I’m the jackass”.
In theory, sure. In reality, I find it very unlikely. The reason people shift from lurk to post usually what brought them to the Dope. The pursuit of knowledge. Usually people will pop their cherry by asking or responding to an interesting thread in GQ, by posting to a Great Debate they’ve always felt passionate about, to list a favorite movie in IMHO, or share a funny personal experience in MPSIMS or even to let loose a rant in the Pit. And very often you’ll see a lot of first time posters in COCC and Staff Reports because they register just to respond to the weekly columns.
But it just seems very unusual to me that someone would lurk for a long time and pop in just to ask about (or even more strangely, to be enraged about) a specific moderator incident. Think about it. If you were a pure lurker of a MB and suddenly felt that the people who ran the MB were doing such a horrible job, wouldn’t you just stop lurking that board and go lurk somewhere else? To me, it’s more likely that a complaint would come from someone who is (or was) in the SDMB posting community than a pure observer, as they are more affected by our moderation policies.
Of course we as mods wouldn’t automatically decide to ban anyone merely because their first post is a criticism of a mod. But if we see a pattern of whiny knee-jerk complaints, we smell a rat. Or a Hatt, or a Parrot, etc.
Think of it this way. If you briefly stopped by a new bar and decided that the bartenders were assholes, the waitresses were slow, the clientelle were harrassing and the bouncers were violent, wouldn’t you just leave and find someplace else to get your drink on? Or would you go into that bar day after day to yell at the top of your lungs how much that place sucked until the bouncers dragged you out? And if you did, could you blame the clientelle for wanting to kick the shit out of you?
[Edited by Alphagene on 11-26-2000 at 01:24 PM]
Is it just me, or does Guinistasia’s story of the troll at Customers Suck sound like an epic in the making to anybody else? You know, young, bright apprentice granted great power, only to be corrupted, and become the bane of the land? Where’s George Lucas when you need him?
Great job relating the story, Guin, I was almost getting chills down my spine.
As for the trolls, I wouldn’t rate myself as an expert troll-spotter, but I have found that reincarnations are getting easier for me to pick out. Concrete, especially.
Alphagene,
Point taken, and I respect the ability of the mods to make a decision about who is and who isn’t a troll.
I was thinking though, that it it might be easily possible for a situation to develop in which someone would fit the definition of a troll posted by particlewill and yet not be a troll.
For example:
A long time lurker has read enough posts in many of the forums and feels they have an idea of long time posters personalities and general posting styles. They have a low post count. This fits the first part of particlewill’s definition (which uses the word OR and not AND). This would not be a troll.
A long time lurker has been reading the board for awhile and sees a decision made by a moderator that they believe was unfair. They have noticed that in the past moderators have been quite fair and feel strongly enough about this discrepancy that they post about it. Less likely, but still not a troll.
I just brought it up because I think that it might be easy to mistake someone as a troll by using this criteria.
If you were to add “AND routinely posts in a purposefully inflammatory manner” to either of those criteria, I would accept that as the definition of a troll.
Makes sense.
I should also add that while we do try to eliminate trolls as soon as possible, we don’t feel the need to try to identify potential trolls as soon as possible.
Sometimes screen names make it obvious (Gee, you think R_dawg2 is related to R_dawg3?) but until we see a pattern of trollish behavior, we don’t ban people just because we think they may become a troll.
Ah, but Silo, you said EX-troll. I’m nothing if not forgiving. And it’s not so much the trolls here, as the ones at Customers Suck. MOST of them are people who call themselves Customer This or Customer That, and tell us we’re lazy and rude and that the Customer pays our salary.
(BTW, are you going to the Pittsburgh Dopefest this Spring? Hehehe…:D)
Jester-Thanks. Dealing with said troll, however, really sucks. I get the feeling he isn’t 13 at all…just a damn good lying felching fuck.
You posted at Smile And Act Nice? One of the other messageboards I post at (somethingawful.com) ‘invaded’ their board a few months ago, and they did the same to us - funny thing is a lot of the posters from SAAN started posting regularly at SA after their attack.
Silo, did you ever post at http://www.mrcranky.com?
Nope.
I moonlight a small handful of other boards, but this board is where I am 99% of the time.
I’ll see if I can work it into my schedule, too it’s too far off to say at this point. 
Badtz-YES!!! In fact, today, a mod finally banned some of the worst SA posters. SOME of them, like Spank Me_Jesus is pretty kewl. However, Mr. Roboto, George, Uber Alles etc…
total fucks. Remember the stretched arsehold link? They posted that picture in several threads. I have nothing against SA…just some of the posters. The worst however, were the posters from Anti-Social. Ugh.
I have to say, that compared to the trolls on the other boards, SDMB has it pretty good. One fun thing about being a mod at CS is editing some troll’s posts-one guy did it to say-this guy is a lying stupid moron, or something like that!