“…checking each thread for trolls, sock puppets, and wrongly-posted threads…”
Okay, I’ll admit to my ignorance…what, in this context, is a “sock puppet?”
Scratching My Head,
Patty
what’s the deal with you guys anyway? are you all in an underfround bunker in the sierra nevadas, sitting around banks of computers, while the Grand Pooba Himself looks and monitors the world situation? Have you ever gotten to DopeCon 1?
Or are none of you even in the same room? You could very well be networked around the country, so that in the event of an ‘incident’, there would still some of you left to moderate.
Or maybe you guys are ol’ members like us who have transcended to the realm of angel?
jb
p.s.- i too must admit ignorance about sock puppets. i could do a search, but i am remarkably lazy. ass8uming it’s somebody pretending to be somebody else?
“Sock puppet” – Usually that’s when someone invents another screen name to be used to support a (generally losing) argument on the board.
It’s sort of like having an imaginary friend, only that “friend” makes posts on the board. In some cases, no fooling, it’s a sign of mental illness; in the past we’ve had people that actually got into arguments with their alternate screen name/personas. Very weird to see.
It’s also been applied to some of the problem children we’ve had of late; people who got screen names in imitation of established posters and then used those look-alike screen names to harass the board and other people with the idea of getting the legitimate poster in trouble for violation of board rules and etc. They’ve exploited a security bug in our new board software that has allowed them to do that; we expect system upgrades in the very near future to eliminate this problem.
See also “troll:” someone who comes to the board or to chat simply to be a pain in the ass to other people.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
People who make sock puppets take advantage of a little-known fact. Normally, it’s one IP address = one nickname. However, if the IP address is recycled at the ISP’s end (common in various services), no such luck for the board, making human moderation and administration needed. Clones (know you didn’t ask, someone else might), however, take advantage of a glitch in the board software. The board does not react well when it encounters ‘white space’ (characters that don’t do anything but make a space in text) in usernames. The board tends to allow those nicknames to exist, even if the nicknames (without the whitespace) already exist. Ferexample, if someone was to create an account here and choose ’ Derleth’ as their nickname (notice the initial white space), the board would allow it, even though ’ Derleth’ looks the same as ‘Dereth’ on the board itself. The higher-ups are working on fixing this. For a primer in how much fun it is to be cloned by an insufferable troll, get in touch with Osip. He got burned by a bad one.
techchick68 is attempting to convene DopeCon1 in Las Vegas this year. The thread is in MPSIMS, you should be able to find it via a search. (in re the bunkers: see below)
We are all around the country. It is SDMB policy that no two moderators can fly in the same place at the same time. It is discouraged (but sometimes impossible to avoid) that a moderator take a trip in a commercial flight when the flight path is over the home city of another moderator, increasing the risk that the plane holding one moderator fall on the house of another moderator, thus killing two birds with one stone, to the great detriment of the SDMB. In a similar vein, if one moderator has just engaged in a “eat the biggest steak in the world and get it free!” contest, another moderator, to compensate, will be put on bread, vegetables and water for two days, to maintain a consistent overall health index for the staff. There are many other such rules but I fear that you may be wearied by a lengthier discussion of our policies and procedures.
This is what happened in my case. There was an opening, I applied for it, and the rest is history, and, may I add, a glorious and exciting history, that I hope some bard may one day find fit to commemorate in rhyme and song. I believe the position of “poet laureate to the SDMB” is still open. Contact an administrator for more details.
"Have you ever gotten to DopeCon 1?
techchick68 is attempting to convene DopeCon1 in Las Vegas this year. The thread is in MPSIMS, you should be able to find it via a search. (in re the bunkers: see below) "
doh! DopeCon was a pretty lame defcon pun. but interesting nonetheless!