PSA: it’s time for a heads up. Two of bmerton’s threads have succeeded in attracting 500+ hits.
He inspired a troll discussion in his thread entitled *Is it true that you can make a million dollars by spilling coffee in the US? *, which begins with the OP:
Perhaps it is just the transatlantic grapevine, but I heard that you can make a fortune by going to a Macdonald’s in the US and pouring hot coffee over yourself. And you are trying to prevent illegal immigrants from coming across the border??? *
TomH puts it best:
[bmerton’s] record so far: 12 posts, of which 8 are new threads, of which 3 are identical (Why are Americans ruining our language?) and cross-posted to different forums. Of the 6 (different) OPs, two are more or less explicitly tweaking American tails, one is about why the French are so grumpy and one is a dumb question about pygmies not being able to reproduce with other people. That leaves three OPs which are more or less sensible and four straight responses to other threads. By any standards, that is a pretty low signal to noise ratio. *
BTW there’s another Doper out there named bnorton. No relation; just a similar nic. Bnorton has been around since January.
Hey, hey - easy on scampering gremlin. He/she’s a relative newby who was trying to be of assistance. He/she went about it in the wrong way (FYI, gremlin, about a year ago, the mods instituted a policy that threads like this shouldn’t be started, but you should instead email a mod when you suspect trolling. [gentle swipe at mods] Not that this is noted in the New and Improved FAQ. [/gentle swipe at mods]), but his/her soul is as pure as the driven snow.
Thanks Sua. Actually I came here because the mods already took down the cross posted threads with an admonition to bmerton. They’re aware, but with 800+ posts accumulating to one thread, a lot of Dopers don’t appear to be.
You’re right. I’m still sorta new to this. My reckoning was that a straightforward here’s what this person is up to. It isn’t worth a response would steer others away without giving the troll much fodder. It’s an approach that has worked before on other sites.
If that goes against SDMB rules (public or not) then I won’t repeat it. It has gotten some strange reactions here.
What reactions did you find strange? This looks like a perfectly normal thread, to me. (Particularly considering the folks who have actually posted, here.)
Dopers are a strange and fascinating bunch of folks. Oddly enough, they can take an obvious trolling OP and chip away at it and ulitmately have an interesting discussion happen.
Sometimes an outlandish thread is shut down, but hell, look at pretty much any OP started by say, Wildest Bill in Great Debates and watch in awe and wonderment how we can start off with some reference to "ain’t it ok now to call 'em all towelheads and nuke em so they don’t have abortions while I carry my guns and use Mexican Fat burners and smoke grass 'cause ya’ll know that a little grass never hurt nobody as long as those damned cops don’t stop me for just ‘gettin on it alittle’, but then those good for nuthin lawsuit happy plantiff lawyers and the evil ACLU will try to teach my daughters to have unnatur’l sex ’ (whew) and turn it into an intersting discussion.
(note that I am not saying the Bill was being a troll in any particular thread, etc, point being that from some bizarre beginnings some pretty intersting things have sprouted. This is not due to either the fineness of the OP or Dopers being unaware that the OP was nonsense.)
Scampering Gremlin…
Was the 800+ looks thread closed? We dopers have a **fascination[/] with closed threads. One gets closed and the reads go way up, not for the subject matter I suppose, but for the reason it was closed.
Yessur, I’s sorry sir.