I posted a thread today entitled(dare I say it?) Jack Dean Tyler - returned from the dead.* The first response stated it was trollspotting and the thread was closed shortly thereafter. I have two questions.
1)What is “trollspotting”?
2)Why was the thread closed? What happened there?
I posted a thread specifically to learn about a subject that seems to have had quite an impact on the SDMB readers.
I admit I am new to SDMB but why must I be left in the dark? It’s just a name for crying out loud. I cannot understand why people are trying to keep a lid on it.
Don’t take it personal. You’re new, so you can’t be expected to know.
The thing is, there are a number of banned repeat offenders who keep coming back and re-registering under different names (“sock puppets”). These beings feed on the attention they get when someone spots them and shouts “Troll!” They especially enjoy posting to threads that someone starts, fingering them. It makes a real mess.
So we have all been making a concerted effort to ignore them, which means, in actual practice, that if you ever think you’ve spotted one of our Little Friends with a new user name, the administration would like you to quietly e-mail a mod, not start a thread pointing a finger. I’m assuming that whoever locked the thread in question (I haven’t seen it) was assuming that you were shouting “Troll!”
Do a Search here in ATMB under, oh, I dunno, oh yes, I do know, look for Ed Zotti, because the last time we discussed it, I think it was in December, he was in the thread. There’s a quote in it from a Pit thread wherein he officially announced that From Now On, No More Pointing Fingers.
You can also do a Search in ATMB under words like “troll”, “banned”, “sock puppet”, and learn lots and lots of very useful stuff that a young Doper oughta know.
…and this policy extends to just generally discussing whether posters are or are not trolls and/or sock puppets, even if it’s not specifically fingerpointing. We are all preserving a tactful silence.
I appreciate you taking time to explain things. I knew it was a little racy and that people might throw on a Code Red Level 1 or 2, but I didn’t think that was a Level 5 alert. I expected the usual moans and groans that I heard any other time “that name” was mentioned. It won’t happen again.
DDG pretty much explained it. But in addition, in your thread, you were asking people to name other SDMB members who might be suspected of being JDT in disguise.
Think about how quickly that would’ve gotten ugly as poster A accuses poster B of being troll-like and poster C jumps in to defend B by attacking A. Every time it happens, it gets ugly.
FYI, that isn’t what “sock puppet” means. The term originated on Usenet, where it refers to a single person who posts from two or more different accounts, and posts replies to his own messages, in order to create the impression of more participants in a thread. Visualize someone with sock puppets on both hands, the puppets are talking to each other. The term is also occasionally used to indicate someone who trolls under the direction of another person, they’re a puppet of another person.
And FYI, Chas, the term “sock puppet” is ALSO used colloquially around these h’yar parts to mean “someone who is banned and who then comes back with a new user name”.
Also, the idea that “Jack Dean Tyler” is some sort of Name Which Must Not Be Spoken–say it three times at midnight in a dark room while looking in a mirror and touching your genitalia, and he’ll come and steal your foreskin!–is just something of a board in-joke. As everyone else has already said, publicly speculating about actual posters being trolls or sock puppets is not a joke; such things are to be handled by e-mails to the Admins, not by opening up a thread and announcing it to the world. It’s sort of obvious that things like that could get very nasty, and you can imagine a sort of Salem witch trial effect, with rival posters or cliques publicly “outing” each other as trolls, sock puppet users, or the re-incarnation of Ph**drs or PrkyD*n, people starting polls in IMHO about which posters are really trolls, and God knows what all else.
TubaDiva, what happened, did I forget to close an italic or something? I usually preview, I don’t see anything majorly wrong on that post, the italics are relatively self-contained to the quote, and it doesn’t look like any mod edited it or fixed it or anything. I must have over-edited the attribution accidentally, that’s the only spot where italics could have come from, because I sure didn’t put them in there intentionally.
DDG, I don’t understand how sock puppet came to mean what you say, the original meaning was fairly appropriate in that context, but I don’t see what it has to do with resurrected users. But hey, usage tends to drift. I was just trying to provide some etymological info, since I am an active participant in the newsgroup where the term originated (news.admin.net-abuse.email). The nanae crowd tends to come up with quite interesting jargon (like for example, “cartooney”) hell, they even coined the term Spam.
BTW, I once had a poster get angry (well, he’s an angry person anyway) when I accused him of posting bogus information from a site known for trolling. He accused me of calling him a troll, and said this was prohibited on SDMB. I’m aware of the trollspotting ban, but I’m not aware of any flat out prohibition on associating anyone with trolling, or calling them a troll (especially when they are). Perhaps a mod could clarify these troll issues for me, please?
My guess, wishbone, is that the title of your thread could have been perceived by some people as suggesting that JDT was back on the boards.
Given the history of JDT on these boards, any post which might suggest he was back would attract a lot of views, followed by a lot of speculation, and a lot of emails in the mods/admins “inboxes”.
In my experience - at least - it’s perfectly OK to refer to banned posters and their previous posts/threads in the context of an otherwise acceptable SDMB discussion. So it would be OK to link to some of the JDT threads when the circumcision debate arises, because you’re linking to a previous debate on the subject - just as we do quite frequently in terms of other GQs or GDs.
There’s certainly not any rule which I’m aware of on this MB which prevents posters linking to other posts/threads in context, whether or not now banned posters initiated or participated in those valid discussions. Putting a banned poster’s name in a thread title, though, is probably not going to be particularly well received unless that thread title is totally unambiguous, and your intentions for doing so are fairly clear.
I don’t get it, Chas.E. You’re saying that a sockpuppet is a person who uses more than one username. We, on the other hand, are saying that a sockpuppet is a person who uses more than one username.
I am saying that a sock puppet is someone who uses two usernames at the same time to chat with themselves. You’re saying a sock puppet is someone who gets banned and then comes back under a new name. Here’s the Jargon File entry:
[USENET: from the act of placing a sock over your hand and talking to it and pretending it’s talking back] In Usenet parlance, a pseudo through which the puppeteer posts follow-ups to their own original message to give the appearance that a number of people support the views held in the original message.
But usage tends to drift, you can call them anything you want, I’m just saying it’s confusing.
Actually, I’ll agree with Chas. I thought the use of the phrase here was weird too back when I started hanging out here.
Sock-puppets traditionally are used to bolster one’s own arguements like:
Fran: I think that anyone who likes the color “blue” is evil!
Kukla: ME TOO!
Ollie: I altso think that anyone who likes the color “blue” is evil!
Kukla: You are SOOOooo SMART Fran!
Fran: Thank you!
Fenris: Are you nuts? How can you say that a color preference determines moral leanings?
Fran: How can you attack me like that?
Ollie: You cannot attack my FRIEND Fran like that!
Kukla: I AGREE!
where Kukla and Ollie are actually Fran and Fenris is defender of all things good and true. Chas’s comment about “someone with sock puppets on both hands, the puppets are talking to each other.” is dead on accurate to the Usenet usage of the term.
The way term “sock puppet” is used here is closer to…I dunno: “Secret Identity”?
It’s not worth sweating, as Chas said, usage changes, but it’s an interesting discussion point.
Actually, to differentiate between ChasE’s original definition of someone posting under two usernames simultaneously and Chronos’ characterisation of a banned poster returning under a new name, we could refer to the latter as “boomerangs”, thus ending what confusion exists. Where’s Satan when we need him?
The issue is also discussed extensively in BigGirl’s The TROLL Question thread. Generally speaking, we are all contributing towards a kinder, gentler Straight Dope Message Board by refraining from name-calling, like “troll”. Consider it the SDMB’s “N” word.
