With my never-ending fascination for human behaviour, I’ve been thinking about message boards and posting habits.
I’ve been a registered SDMB member for a couple of years, but I rarely post – just bits here and there when my schedule allows time for me to think and type in the same fifteen-minute block. I’m a voracious reader of other people’s posts, however, and I sometimes get to wondering about the folks behind the words.
Occasionally I post in my head, but never get around to typing it out on the message board.
I’m quite uncertain about the netiquette for discussing other posters, so I won’t mention any specifics. But I’m trying to figure out what motivates serial “hit and run” posters, such as one who was recently banned. I refer to a poster who’s made no intellectual or emotionally-supportive contribution to a thread, has asked no questions, and provided no answers.
At first glance, such a personality is ostensibly seeking attention. But, seeking attention from a gathering of anonymous strangers? Seems like a mighty poor substitute for true social interaction.
Trolls – now trolls, I can at least <I>understand</I>. Stepping into a hot topic with a misguided goal of creating some controversy at least shows some eagerness to connect to the crowd – albeit on an immature, annoying level. But the poster who simply appears, adds some irritating in-text-tagline to the thread, and leaves seems more like an on-line equivalent of mooning.
What’s the motivation? Are we supposed to be impressed? Entertained? Intimidated? Perhaps this is like virtual graffiti – or like pissing on your doorstep to establish my turf. Any theories?
I’ve often wondered that myself. It takes a fair amount of time and effort to register to post – do they go through this whole process simply with the intention of posting one message?? Are they THAT board?
I think that even drive-by posters feel they are contributing something; it’s just not always something everyone else appreciates. The person who wanders into a fact-seeking discussion and can only provide a simple pithy rejoinder probably feels he or she, although not solving any problems, at least made someone laugh. Even if that someone is only the poster himself or herself. So it’s just another form of narcissism.
Please help me with the definition of “hit and run posters.” Is anyone who posts only once in a thread hit and run? Or does the single post have to be offensive in some way?
I’m solid on the definition of troll, it’s the hit and run I’m not clear on, thanks.
Big_Norse, I think the “phenomena” in question is when somebody randomly posts to a thead with nothing more to say than a stupid slogan - and continues to do so in other threads until they are finally banned.
Imagine if casdave did his “drive-by” example in every thread he could open and post to before the Mods pulled his plug…as happened today with an annoying little individual who shall go unnamed (won’t be hard to find - the affected threads are still active).
I think many of these types are previously banned members who want to tick the Mods off for having the audacity to kick their sorry butts out of the SDMB.
Not that long ago, I started a thread that ended up shifting over to a concept called the Drive By Posting Percentage. Basically, take the number of threads you’ve responded to and divide it by the number of posts you’ve made (in total). This will give you a number between 0 (you always post to the same thread) and 1 (you are a complete drive by poster). Most people who responded seemed to fall out around .7 or .4, depending primarily on which forums the poster frequented. The pit has more drive by, and great debates has much less.
Of course, this statistic doesn’t account for individuals who have stupid slogans or like to use odd markup.
Name that’s why I asked for a definition. As you see, I’m quite new, and it seems I only really get a chance to post once in a thread before it dies (Hello, my name is Big_Norse and I’m a thread-killer), or it completely veers off onto a course I have nothing to say about.
I am certainly not doing this out of malice or mischievousness (which would be required to fit into Kilt-wearin’ Man’s definition), but by your mathmatical standard I come up with a high Drive By Posting Percentage.
To get back to the OP. If we’re going by Name’s mathmatical definition of drive-bys: then the motivation is that I’d like to join the conversation, but as a newbie I don’t seem to have the clout to fully join in or to keep the momentum of a thread going.
Duke wrote:
>Some of us post from work, and have to finish our post before the boss… .walks by.
TaxGuy wrote:
>The Taxguy has taken away 27% of this post…
FranticMad wrote:
>P.S. This post has been hit and run upon by casdave.
Okay, okay. Guess I’d opened the door real wide for all that, didn’t I?
Big_Norse wrote:
>Please help me with the definition of “hit and run posters.”
>…As you see, I’m quite new, and it seems I only really get a chance to post
>once in a thread before it dies (Hello, my name is Big_Norse and I’m a thread-killer)…
Naw, Big_Norse, I didn’t mean you. Despite my own few postings, I believe I’ve killed a thread or two myself. I don’t think I’ve got any particular posting-clout, either.
I suspect Kilt-wearin’ man has made a pretty good guess at the motivation – I hadn’t thought of previously banned users. That makes perfect sense.
