All right. Everyone’s got a Status below their username. I am a “member,” some folks are "moderator"s, some are "administrator"s, some unfortunates have been “BANNED.” Good so far.
What’s up with other designations, such as the one I just saw, “Just Another Serlin”?
I know who Serlin is/was. I know what a sockpuppet is. But what’s going on here - if the poster in question is, in fact, Serlin, why not ban him, instead of identifying him as “just another Serlin”?
Am I correct in thinking only a mod or admin can assign these designations?
Another question: A poster said “Hi Serlin” to the Serlin poster above, and was told by a Mod to take it to email. Is this a violation of the “Don’t accuse anybody of being a sockpuppet” rule? If so, didn’t the Admins do it first by assigning the designation “Just another Serlin”?
‘Hi Serlin’ predated ‘Just Another Serlin’ (It came between his 2 posts - in other words he wasn’t banned until later.), and therefore violated the rule about outing suspected Socks - rule being do not accuse another active poster of being a Sock - they might not be, and if they’re cleared it’s best not to have the accusation out there to haunt them. ‘Just Another Serlin’ on the other hand, is just a note to indicate why Ol’ Mark was banned this time around (being a Sock.)
What is a Serlin? I did a search on it, and still haven’t figured out what it is. My guess is something like a person who has another account that uses it to stimulate the conversation. Is this correct? Where does it originate at?
Does this question belong in GQ?
Mark Serlin was an infamous troll who apparently led people down quite a few garden paths, as did his legions of sockpuppets. If you did a search on username Serlin, and nothing came up, does that mean his posts have been deleted?
I put this question in ATMB because it is of specific SDMB interest, not really general interest. I figured the thread would die instantly, anyway.
You should have noticed by now that lots of banned posters still have “member” as their status. Posting privileges are independent of the title, which as masonite guessed is just made up by the admin. Lynn has said that since there are several steps involved (there’s also the ability to update the sig) sometimes steps are missed when the system is slow.
Besides “member”, you might also see some old banned posters listed as “guest”. This dates back to the UBB to vB software changeover, but old raised threads bring the term to confuse someone new.
Ahh, thanks for the info, I tried a search on him, I’ll have to give it a try again. And I was not questioning your post being in the right are, just if my inquiry should be in GQ. Sorry
The difficulty in searching for Serlin’s ‘contribution’ is that, IIRC, he’s up to about 25 different user names (over time) and a lot of the more interesting stuff isn’t easily found unless you know the name he used at any given point or the thread title.
For example, I’ve looked a couple of times for what I call the ‘sex workers’ thread – it’s an absolute roller coaster of a ride with a truly sublime twist towards the end – and haven’t found it.
Maybe we need a ‘Link of Links’ page to stick in the archive as we did for JDR ?
Oh, I remember that thread! LOL
That was right after I joined the SDMB, and one of the very first threads I posted to-I was like, huh, this guy seems okay, but they banned him…then I heard he had other names.
You will notice that many of the regular non-banned posters also have “Guest” as their user status in many old threads which predate the UBB=>vB changeover.
