Are you under the mistaken impression that this was his first post? Because the very next post has a long list of LAZombie posts that people considered evidence of trolling.
Great, you are entitled to that opinion, but thankfully the mods don’t moderate based on your opinion.
Nor on yours.
I think I’ve made my point, particularly with the BigT quote in this post.
The troll-hunter threads are toxic.
That’s true, otherwise there would be a handful of “toe-the-line” posters that would have been shown the door long ago.
Can you give an example of such an exchange in the Pit?
Your argument is more a reason to close GD than to fuck with the Pit.
This thread has a great example of typical newbie behavior:
They probably googled something related to the nuts and bolts holding the space needle in place, found that thread, and posted their reply, not reading the forum rules or even the date on the other replies. They seem friendly enough and one would hope they stick around, but odds are pretty damn good that this will be the only thread they ever post in. No troll accusations needed.
I’m hope I’m wrong and they stick around because new posters is always a good thing. But we’ve seen this happen time and time again. So, sorry @GreysonCarlisle, but without a comparison of your sublist of “people accused as trolls” to the general rate at which new posters leave after a handful of posts, I am not impressed.
Eta: I’m not naming the poster or linking a specific post to avoid accusations of running newbies off
Since they’ve posted over 3,000 times, I’m not too sure that holds up.
You’re not the one I’m hoping to impress.
This illustrates the point about how your side completely skews the narrative. Topix is not a “site dedicated to misinformation.” The only evidence you gave for that is that it allows users to use fake names. THIS BOARD allows you to use fake names. I will assume that your legal name is not “Babale,” correct?
Topix was popular because there was a board in each community. You could talk about local issues. The intelligence level was not as high as this board, but to say that solely because it allows a fake name (which this board does), and that because you can use a fake name it would then be open to the spread of disinformation, that a poster who enjoyed that board needed his motives questioned is absurd beyond belief.
You (the general you) want to drive away posters because they enjoyed another board, the other board disappeared, and now they want to come here? This is the hysteria that many of us are referring to. And that’s bad enough if you feel that way and have to play pretend nice, but we also allow a Pit forum where you can unfairly attack people and drive them away for something so obviously innocuous.
Did you read my post? I didn’t link directly to the newbie post so that you wouldn’t accuse me of driving off another newbie. Use your scroll wheel to find the “welcome new member” post.
For all the troll hunters, especially Big T since he claims to have “trolldar”, you could conclusively prove your point. Why don’t you add up all the people you named as trolls or suspected trolls in that thread, and show us how many got banned for trolling? Then we could have perfect understanding of how effective you are.
It seems to me, in the spirit of this message board, that an experiment (or two) could be in order. People are saying “the Pit serves this function” or “that function” or “destroys the universe.” Let’s test it, I say! Pick an adjustment and try it out for, say, 3 months. For example, we could:
- Close the Pit for 3 months. No other changes. See what happens. Or…
- Close the Pit for 3 months, but allow complaints about other posters (e.g. for lying or trolling) in ATMB, under those existing forum rules. See what happens. Or…
- Leave the Pit open, but disallow attacks on other posters for 3 months. See what happens.
I’m sure there are other variations possible. I mean, if we know it’s a time-limited adjustment that will then be evaluated, what’s the harm? It’s science, baby!
Riiiiiiight. Except that if you took 30 seconds to look into the context of what was actually “shut down” you’d have seen that it was their local news forums, which were full of misinformation which was made worse by the fact that they charged you $19 to remove a harmful post. And you could also look at that user’s very next post, where they lament Alex Jones being removed from Facebook. We certainly don’t need any of his acolytes of misinformation here.
Ah. That may be typical of new users, it may not be. But just because lots of new posters never come back is no reason to help drive more away.
Also not your call.
No, but if posters mostly post once or twice and disappear into the ether anyways, YOU HAVE SHOWN NO EVIDENCE OF POSTERS BEING DRIVEN AWAY.
I think that could be a good compromise. Many are afraid that if we do not allow pittings then “racists” and “trolls” will roam the board without recourse because the mods cannot follow them everywhere and the hapless posters are handcuffed to say anything.
Opening threads in ATMB would do the trick. You cannot call the poster a motherfucker. You simply start a thread and say “I believe Poster X is trolling” and cite several examples as to why you believe that way. Poster X is free to defend himself without getting flamed.
As far as racism, we would then finally get some clarification. First, mods have said previously that an expression of racism is a-okay on this board. They have banned scientific racism as a topic, but AFAIK as long as racial slurs are not used, you can be as racist as you want (not that I think that is appropriate). So, IF this is true, I’m not sure what the ATMB thread would accomplish. If I am mistaken, then we will at least have a good discussion about what racism actually means and maybe come up with a good board rule about what is proper for debate in the future.
I’m in favor of that.
I’ve shown the paltry, pathetic reasons people used to attack them. While nobody can prove that any of them left over that, it’s not a good look, it certainly doesn’t contribute to more new posters coming in, and I personally would have walked away and never looked back (except to tell everybody in earshot what they can expect on the Straight Dope).
So what? I’m not here to defend Topix. But it was an internet board that had discussions of the local community. Alex Jones is an asshole, but I wouldn’t approve silencing him.
Is “spreading misinformation” (misinformation being solely defined by me) the new reason to silence people? That is shocking in a society which values free speech.
Just to be clear: You want that poster tossed from here because, 1) he liked to post on Topix where others may have arguably spread what you contend is misinformation, and 2) he believes that Alex Jones, as odious as he may be, should still have a platform on common social media so that his views can be exposed, debated, and refuted.
If a poster believes those two things, you believe that poster should not be a member of this board?
You mean you didn’t personally speak with all 7.85 billion people in the world to see if they ever posted on SDMB and were driven away? Please do your research before making claims in the future.
I draw the line after the first billion.