That’s a rather weird thing to assume a new poster would even want to visit those two forums. I’m not sure I’ve ever even opened the Thread Games in all the time I’ve been a member because stupid stuff like that has zero interest to me. Why do you think someone new would want to even read those?
This “joke” has always sat badly with me. Sure, you may accidentally make your kid feel embarrassed. Or it may be unavoidable because you have other, more pressing concerns.
But it’s not the goal. If you love someone, you don’t deliberately try to make them feel bad unnecessarily.
As a joke, I don’t see what’s funny about it, and I see it way too often stated as if it’s actually true—usually by the type of parent I wouldn’t really want to hang around.
No no you misunderstand. A parent doesn’t mean to mortify the kid. It just happens.
Mom and Dad do regular things. Kids, teens especially, see everything a parent does as THE most embarrassing of all his peers. Because that’s how teens are.
If Mom and Dad try to fit in the worse it is. So they stop and kid grows up.
It’s perfectly normal.
I’m feeling mortified from BigT.
BigT, why are you trying to make us feel bad unnecessarily? Don’t you love us?
We’re up to 7 responses in the puberty thread and if the OP was expecting a Penthouse Forum-esque tale of sexual blooming he sure ain’t gettin’ it. It’s as dryly FQ as can be.
The point is, if you hadn’t bothered to selectively edit my post and strawmanned said point, is that an actual long time lurker (another detail you edited out and ignored) would just quietly join in participating on the board somewhere innocuous, and NOT have made an OP like that. We’ve seen this kind of 1st post stuff before, many times, and 99% of the time they end up in the cornfield within a few days. Care to lay odds?
Yeah, we need to be more welcoming to newbs, because certainly we have been severely lacking in such lately. Dismissing a likely trock thinking they will soon become a regular non-disruptive poster is pretty naive, however.
Can we save this thread for discussion of actual trolling behavior instead of gate keeping?
This is not good. Yes, new posters appear that are obvious trolls. Let them show themselves to be such and then we can discuss them here.
Maybe isnt good enough.
Obviously someone visits those forums. Why wouldn’t it be a newbie specifically?
When this board finally fizzles away (and I hope it’s not for a long time) shit like this is going to be a big part of why.
“Oh, this newbie’a first post doesn’t raise any specific red flags but it’s not in the right forum or isn’t on the approved first post topics list, they’re clearly a troll and should be publicly castigated for it.”
But if the poster does somehow turn out to be a troll, at least John_DiFool will be able to brag that he was the first one to call it. And that’s what’s really important, right?
Eh, its a hobby. Sometimes it is actually pretty helpful. A few of our trocks are often noticed here before we (the moderators) notice them.
As long as it is here and not linked back, it does a little harm overall.
Now some people have gotten confrontational in non-Pit threads, that we can’t abide. But here in this thread? The last few times a new poster visited here to complain, they were Trocks realizing the gig was almost up.
I agree with you to a point, but of course it’s a continuum. I think we could do a little better about being so quick on the draw. “This post seems a bit trolling” is fine. “This post is ok but sometimes trolls post stuff like this to appear normal before they start trolling” bothers me more.
We have posters who get called out here and never post again - is it because they knew they were caught? Because they saw the post here and decided the place was unwelcoming? Or they always were going to be one-and-done? Who knows, but I don’t think the benefit of early detection is worth it. Does it really matter that much if we catch them after 2 posts instead of 3?
For as long as this board has existed, the median number of posts for a user has been 1, and the mode has been 0. Lots and lots of folks post once and once only, for whatever their reasons are, and lots and lots of folks register and then never post at all (and that one, I really can’t understand).
It might be that some of them are for using when they get outed as trolls-some of getting used, but a lot of them forgotten.
Some of them, sure. But I have a hard time believing that accounts for a third of all registered users.
There’s absolutely no way to know that. Discourse recommends threads that are active. You don’t have to run a vanity search and then knock out the secret passcode to find this thread.
I don’t doubt that, but if I were a new poster and found people talking shit about me here I wouldn’t complain. I’d just leave. If I were a new poster and found a thread dedicated to talking shit about new posters in general, even if not about me specifically, I still might leave.
Years and years ago we used to complain that this board wasn’t very welcoming to newbies because we’d often snark at them in the threads they’d post in. I remember disagreeing because I felt that we were just treating them like one of our own right out of the gate.
Nowadays it feels like new posters are put under microscopes and patted down to ensure their first interactions are the right combination of curious and humble.
Concur.
If somebody’s trolldar/sockdar is tingling about some newbie, report it. Don’t post about it anywhere.
If they turn out to be an actual problem poster they’ll be gone soon enough and any discussion in a thread such as this one will prove to be moot. And if they turn out not to be a problem, all we’ll have done is left a timebomb for them to discover later as they become more familiar with this place and eventually vanity search.
It depends on the circumstances.
If you have someone with just a couple of posts then agreed.
But what if they’ve only been here a week, but in that time there is a clear pattern of trolling behavior that’s only obvious when you put together their whole posting history? Or doing so shows them to be a return of a banned user? That’s hard to present in a report. Or maybe it’s not 100% clear and you want to consult with other posters?
I agree with the idea that an instant suspicion of every new poster is unhealthy and you don’t need to bring them up in a post. But I don’t think all discussion of newbies is harmful.
A report is just a PM/DM/message from you to the group named “moderators” and containing a quote of (and hence backlink to) whichever post you’re reporting.
So if you want to report a person, not a post, go to your profile and start a new message. In the addressee box, type “moderators” with no quotes or @. Then write as much as you want about your suspicions and include cites to as many of their posts in as many threads as you think necessary to make your point.
This is well said. The @moderators goes to all of us in a PM address bar and doesn’t even work in a post.
The links and reasons are key. Just a vague User So&so is trolling is very little help and can be a fair amount of work.
You’ve seen an issue, we might not have, link to where they’re being a troll or appear to be a prior banned poster.