I’d like to know what Shodan’s anti-vaccination board was. I won’t go there and flame anybody, I promise.
I know of one alt med board, very active, where official policy forbids skeptical questioning in any of the regular forums, no matter how loony (i.e. devotees of urine drinking). They do have a sort of skeptics’ forum where you could go if you felt like being piled on by the cult members.
I don’t post there but occasionally stop by to gawp at the credulousness.
I was almost banned on a miliait discussion forum. They had a bunch of people talking about “those foreigners” and how they’re “messing up our country” and things like that. So I went in and asked some questions, told them I wanted honest reactions and wanted to know how and why they felt that way and such.
One guy told me he didn’t want any “non-whites” living by him. Someone else on the board chided him, saying that’s “exactly what I wanted to hear”. I told him that i found it disgusting and reprehensible, but at least he was honest, and that’s what i was going for. I had a mod say I was trolling and threaten to kick me, so I told him that I meant no trouble, and that if he wanted to ban me, not to talk about it and to do it. I still haven’t been banned. Who knew it’d be so problematic looking for discussions and trying to understand the other half of the argument?
I should hop in there and see how things are in there. I even post there under my Dope name, so if they want to find me somewhere else, they know where to look and who to look for.
I’ll never be able to hear “Timmy’s in the well” in the same light again.
Now, I’ll snicker uncontrollably as I conjure up that … that … alternate image.
So, thaks for that! 
Er, thanks.
Why can’t I ever type that word correctly?
This is somewhat similar to an experience that I’ve had on another discussion forum. I have a question about it. I left the forum because I was beginning to be seen as a troll since I didn’t agree with the ideas that they all seem to agree with. My question is whether I should (morally, I guess) return to that forum if it could cause some strife within the ranks there. Am I doing them a service by giving opposing viewpoints or am I creating dissension by asking them to question themselves? What if they say they value opposing viewpoints, even if their behavior says otherwise?
Go until they don’t want ya. It’s a free country.
The people of the Dope haven’t kicked me out…yet.
…so there’s hope!
As a borderline Luddite whose Internet skills are only marginally better than Shaky Fluffy’s, I think I was amazingly lucky to have found the SDMB. I found it through the SD web page and didn’t even know what a message board was when I started reading and then, gingerly, posting. After sailing along a while with the SDMB, I thought “These here message boards are fun! I’m gonna see if there’s more of them!”
And then I discovered that 99.9% of them are pure crap – boring, shallow, stupid, meanspirited, downright painful to read through. If I had stumbled across any one of those lame-ass boards as my first board experience, I would have run from the virtual room and never bothered to look at a MB again. I’m not surprised SDMB members would find themselves banned from those types of Boards – certainly it appeared to me that having a functioning brain stem would harsh the mellow of many, and they probably wouldn’t like it. Not when they could be LTAO!!!
That was pretty much my experience, too, Jodi. As I spend many, many hours here, I’m not sure if that was good or bad.
Thanks for the response, but how do I know if they don’t want me? They have a policy of banning as few people as possible.
I used to post on a gaming message board (one of the VN boards for a Dark Age of Camelot server) that was notorious for people getting temp banned for just about anything. I still never quite managed it. Sigh. I feel like a failure. I even swore quite a bit on occasion which was allegedly bannable.
I thought the moderation was mostly laughable (although I was friends with one of the mods who did the best he could) but the volume of traffic was so high and the amount of off-topic and on-topic but trash-talking threads was ludicrous so it really just came down to not enough mods.
The bannage was so regular that there were kind of secondary boards where people who had been temp banned would hang out while doing their time so to speak.
Does it matter if they don’t want you, if they don’t ban you?
Regarding the ealier question of why I keep going back, I’ve figured it out - I go back there when the Straight Dope hamsters fall off the wheels and I’m sitting here, itching to read some threads, and I can’t get anywhere. I’m currently trying out another board - the Offtopic board, to see if it can fit some of my message board needs. I’m not too sure about it - apparently, you have to buy a subscription to get taken seriously. Oh well. I’ll try it for free first, and see if it is as addictive as the Dope.
Oh, apparently there is a poster there with over 138,000 posts. That’s like Guin and Handy combined! :eek:
This is a pretty open-ended question and left quite a few ways of interpreting it. I read this in a couple different ways and couldn’t decide which way you meant it, so I’ve been pondering this for a while. I decided to explain it both ways.
The first way I read it was in the sense that you were saying, if they don’t ban you, you should be able to go ahead and post because if they can’t ban you, then you can do whatever you want. So this was where the moral question was. I’ll analogize the situation to this message board. There are people here that are considered trolls. I’ve even seen someone here say that one of the people he considered a troll had the potential of doing damage to this message board. I don’t know how this would be achieved, but that was his statement. If people become so anxious that they think that one person can ruin someone else’s posting experience, it gives pause as to whether that person should post. Then again, the responsibility goes both ways, I think. . . trying to understand others and trying to be understood.
Another way I read it was, if people don’t like you, why would you want to post there even if they don’t ban you? Any time I put effort or energy into a message board, it takes effort to get to know the players and the style and I make some friends along the way. Because a few people, perhaps even the mods or the even the owners, don’t like what I have to say doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that think I’m OK. So leaving any message board for a few people that don’t like what I have to say is a loss to me.
And what if you double post by accident? Then, all of a sudden, YOU are the poster above you! Are you then required to jerk off (or abstain forever from doing so, if your answer was no)? I shudder at the thought! :eek:
Hm, I’m trying to remember how I meant it, now.
I think what I meant was, if they really don’t want you there, it’s up to them to ban you. Until then, I would just assume it was business as usual and do as I pleased (within the rules of that board, of course).
There actually was (if I have the story right) a troll who caused a massive problem with the Straight Dope boards a few years ago (four, maybe?) - we know it as the Winter of Our Missed Content. A troll hacked the server, and cut huge swaths through our archived posts and took the boards down for days (if not weeks). It was very bad, anyway. I don’t suppose you have anything like that in mind for the board where you aren’t particularly welcome.
Hehe. Yeah, sometimes it takes me a long time to ponder things. There are some message boards where I pick up threads after 6 months to a year. They’re not, however, as fast-paced as this one and don’t have rules about thread necromancy.
Thanks. That really helped.
Perhaps I was just looking for permission to do what I wanted to do anyway, but I got it, so woohoo!!
No ma’am, that’s not what I had in mind. I like a good debate and sharing my opinion, but what you’re describing goes beyond what I consider troll behavior. That seems like destruction of private property to me. That would be more illegal than immoral in my mind.
Then keep on keepin’ on, RooPoo.
Aww, thanks LOUNE. You’re such a sweetie. Your names for me are so cute!