mean, rude, simple-minded posters are ruining this board

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
The most common objection voiced by users is that the personal nature of messages on this board would make establishing the identity of a user fairly easy once a history of messages could be established. For instance, if "newmomDC" posts one message saying her son attends Lafayette Elementary School, another which mentions that her husband is a partner in a law firm, a third that describes how much she loves her Volvo S80, and a fourth describing her experiences with her brown lab retriever at the local dog park, it starts to get fairly easy for someone to figure out who she is. Then, when she posts about unusual vaginal discharges, she suddenly finds herself getting strange looks at pickup time at Lafayette.

Okay, this made me laugh out loud. Hadn't thought about it, but yes, I can see this happening...

didn't you read on the paper the family that had the house mugged after posting up to date info on twitter? they broke into their home because they knew the family was out of town through twitter.

i can't believe you people are so naive?!?!?!?

I have a problem with posters disagreeing about an opinion expressed... then making the leap to an unflattering assumption about the poster. I see this a lot, and while it can be tempting to do this, posters rarely reveal enough information to actually warrant such sweeping and personal criticism.

[Anonymous]

For what it's worth, all message boards I have ever read are just like this - whether you have a screen name or not. It's the nature of message boards.

And this one isn't nearly as bad as some others boards I've read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For what it's worth, all message boards I have ever read are just like this - whether you have a screen name or not. It's the nature of message boards. And this one isn't nearly as bad as some others boards I've read.

Totally not my experience. This one is one of the worst I've seen. I'm curious where you're hanging out.

[Anonymous]

I'd have to agree. I've only been on one board I would describe as more contentious than this, and it's since been shut down.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How can we stop it? I'm not sure. Sure we can ask people to be nicer, but that's never going to work. Even if 90% of the people are reasonable, that crazy 10% will suck up all the bandwidth and still pick fights. The only solution I can conceive is to require logins, and I know that poses problems for DCUM admin.

I am not able to read the vast majority of threads, so most of the time I have no idea when rude messages are posted. If you notice a thread being disrupted, feel free to post a message in the website feedback forum asking me to take a look. I might not always agree that the poster is out of bounds, but if I see continual patterns of disruption, I will do something about it.

For example, I recently stumbled across a very rude response in what was otherwise a pretty innocuous thread. I took a look at previous messages from that IP address and saw that almost every one of them fit the pattern of a one or two line flame that offered nothing to the discussion. As a result, I blocked that IP from posting. The user can still read, but we are free from the unwelcome posts. I'll try to help keep discussion on a reasonable level, but I can't fix what I don't know about.

Just testing to see if it was me.

[Anonymous]

I've seen on some message boards an option that a message can be reported to the administrator as inappropriate and deleted. Is this a possibility? Then the administrator would receive a notice and could delete the message. For some time, this would require a lot of work but after a while, they might decrease...

[Anonymous]

PP back, the other point is that we also have choices and if anyone is so offended by the general nature of the board, then you can choose not to use it.

If anyone is so unhappy and is willing, s/he could create a new website with better monitoring of messages to keep it clean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've seen on some message boards an option that a message can be reported to the administrator as inappropriate and deleted. Is this a possibility? Then the administrator would receive a notice and could delete the message. For some time, this would require a lot of work but after a while, they might decrease...

You can currently report messages to the admin on the Website Feedback forum. Whether he chooses to remove them is another matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How can we stop it? I'm not sure. Sure we can ask people to be nicer, but that's never going to work. Even if 90% of the people are reasonable, that crazy 10% will suck up all the bandwidth and still pick fights. The only solution I can conceive is to require logins, and I know that poses problems for DCUM admin.

I am not able to read the vast majority of threads, so most of the time I have no idea when rude messages are posted. If you notice a thread being disrupted, feel free to post a message in the website feedback forum asking me to take a look. I might not always agree that the poster is out of bounds, but if I see continual patterns of disruption, I will do something about it.

For example, I recently stumbled across a very rude response in what was otherwise a pretty innocuous thread. I took a look at previous messages from that IP address and saw that almost every one of them fit the pattern of a one or two line flame that offered nothing to the discussion. As a result, I blocked that IP from posting. The user can still read, but we are free from the unwelcome posts. I'll try to help keep discussion on a reasonable level, but I can't fix what I don't know about.

Just testing to see if it was me.

[Anonymous]

Great, you're still here and now you know you can keep posting obnoxious stuff that only you think is funny.

[Anonymous]

A few years ago, I joined a book club. We didn't read anything real heavy but no Sidney Sheldon, James Patterson, or Stephen King either. Mostly alot of Oprah picks or stuff that had been made into Merchant and Ivory films. We would all get together Thursday nights to discuss the book currently being read. There was one member that always made a comment about how the book was stupid or unbelievable without saying why. One book we read contained a passage where an abortion took place. Well, this particular person railed and ranted about how abortion was wrong, that the book was dirty and the protagonist was bound for hell. Well, a great argument insued,not only from the pro-choicers but from a lot of us trying to explain that the book was fiction, that the protagonist didn't exist in real life and the passage was an integral part of the whole story. Subsequent meeting went the same way-the angry reader making comments that were sure to inflame the others which would result in chaotic arguing, the current book we were discussing completely forgotten. A friend of mine from book club and I got together for lunch one day and after brief pleasantries and benign exchanges about one another's families, our conversation centered on this cantankerous book club member. We discussed our consternation with how this person completely disrupted the original intent of the meetings and wondered if this was done on purpose or the person was just a nut who felt his opinions passionately no matter if others considered them right or wrong. My friend said she was going to just start ignoring the person while I suggested actually agreeing with them from time to time. Others in the book club picked up on this and started doing the same-either briefly agreeing with the person or offering no opinion at all, just silence. We all considered ourselves liberal intellectuals so banning this person was out of the question, as that would be a violation of free speech. However, over a period of time, book club returned to a discussion of the book at hand. The angry member would still state their opinions, but they were met with brief faux agreement or even more often, silence. You might think that this person would quit the book club subsequently but they did not for reasons know only to them. Book club went on with a little less exitement but a lot more focus on the book and not the person.

[Anonymous]

Hmmm.... very southern of you.

[Anonymous]

I prefer to think of this solution as neither northern or southern but middle of the roaden. Whatever the case may be, we were able to get back to the business at hand even if it was superficial business to begin with.

[Anonymous]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can be a glass-is-half-empty person or a glass-is-half-full person. If you are the latter and meet up with the former, offer them some Kool Aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great, you're still here and now you know you can keep posting obnoxious stuff that only you think is funny.

I did think it was funny. Mostly because I knew it wasn't me.