Let’s say you have a poster who strolls into a thread and posts something that is 100% incorrect, thereby forcing other Dopers to chime in and correct said poster. Let’s go on and say this poster does this several thousand times, posting nothing of factual basis, causing untold stress on the server as other Dopers are forced to negate these erroneous posts, again and again and again and again, ad infinitum.
Would there be a point where this poster should be banned, seeing as how he/she brings nothing to the table, and in fact causes more harm than good based on the fact that an untold thousands of posts are wasted in an effort to mop up after him/her?
I say let this hypothetical poster come here and be educated. We’re supposed to be fighting ignorance, after all, and Gawd knows there’s a lot of it out there.
But if said poster persisted in making the same discredited and disproven assertion over and over again, then they should be politely shown the door and told to go play at message boards where the tinfoil hats are required attire.
Point taken, but I am not simply trying to incite a pile-on here.
I honestly want to know what the Mods think about someone who replies to a varying array of subjects, and is always either totally wrong, or partially wrong. In small doses it would be considered honest mistakes, and would point towards fighting ignorance. But in light of the slowness of the boards due to the stress placed on the server, doesn’t it reach a point where the sheer volume of posts spent correcting this poster becomes a problem?
Aw I thought I was so smart figuring out the italics and who it was and looked back at his posts searching and searching for erroneous info but it was so boring!
All I could come up with (before preview) was, “You mean you can’t use a program that makes CDs, and it converts to the right format to make a DVD?”
It would be a problem if said poster continually makes the same inaccurate posts on the same subject, but for someone just to be wrong (and corrected) once on every topic may not indicate anything more than a very sheltered upbringing.
Kids, this has been done. Many, many, many times. I will not do a search right now as the server seems to be uppity, but search for handy in the Pit and see for yourselves - it’s been covered and he is not going to go away.
The thing is gato, that Handy posts volumes of wrong answers in General Questions. Other posters are constantly having to correct him for the benefit of new members who aren’t aware of his habits and may be impressed by his post count. Otherwise, I’d agree with you.
I’ve managed to survive incorrect statements from both myself and others on the board. While entertaining and often intelligent, the SDMB is not the last word in anything that I need serious information about.
And as for the whole eradicating ignorance thing, I agree that that’s the motivations sometimes, but only sometimes.
I think banning someone for something other than purposely being a jerk is a too-serious reaction to a minor annoyance. But then again, what do I know?
You’re right, gato, in MPSIMS, IMHO and the Pit, it really doesn’t matter if somebody is talking out their ass. The trouble occurs when said poster posts misinformation in a factual forum - GQ, Comments or GD - which must then be corrected. If not corrected, somebody (won’t someone think of the lurkers?) may believe the incorrect material. This is what flies in the face of the Board’s stated purpose.
actually, I disagree - misinformation (factually incorrect) doesn’t belong in any forum. You’ve a right to your opinion, however, if you go on from that to post incorrect factual stuff, I’d expect you to be called on it.
Although I am just as sick of reading / correcting his errata as everyone else, and I wholeheartedly agree with LunaSea and Kamandi, I did not start this thread solely to Pit Handy. I know that it has been done before.
What I want to know is: Is there a point from a BANDWIDTH perspective where the Mods should ban a poster for creating extra traffic by posting incorrect info thousands of times, resulting in thousands more posts from other Dopers that have to correct him? I think at some point you have to consider what effect it has on the server. What if there were 100 posters that continually did this sort of thing?
well, if you’re worried about the ‘bandwidth’ it takes to have a poster post something bad, and a couple more to correct him, then I suggest a better target would be post count parties.
