Uptick in Troll Posts - Can We Please Require Registration to Post?

[PolyesterTroll]

I feel like the troll farms have found DCUM. Some of the talking points about Obama being gay and the inauguration photos being doctored sound eerily like the pushed talking points. Are these real people who actually post on other topics or do they solely comment on politics?

Would it really be so bad if the entire site required registration? We can hide the usernames so that to the readers it is still anonymous but at least there is some accountability on the admin side.

[jsteele]

Please just report the troll posts. We've gone through this sort of thing before and it will blow over.

[Anonymous]

We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

[PolyesterTroll]

jsteele wrote:Please just report the troll posts. We've gone through this sort of thing before and it will blow over.

Needing to report as much as every other post on some threads has really eroded my desire to be part of the DCUM community. In addition, these troll posts tend to happen overnight so they do stay up for a significant period of time. Why can't we just require registration and delete the usernames from the front end?

[PolyesterTroll]

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

? obviously Jeff is the only one who can require registration and change the display of the site to continue to protect privacy

[Anonymous]

When enough posts are reported in a thread, Jeff will sometimes shut down the whole thread. At the end of the day it's a bunch of loser internet trolls saying dumb things. Don't get invested in the discussion.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

[PolyesterTroll]

Anonymous wrote:When enough posts are reported in a thread, Jeff will sometimes shut down the whole thread. At the end of the day it's a bunch of loser internet trolls saying dumb things. Don't get invested in the discussion.

I think this attitude really downplays the role of troll farms in propagating fake news. It's not just random idiots - it's a centralized effort to find sites like this and use it as a platform to spread their message. Sure, it might get deleted in a few hours, but labor is cheap and they keep at it because it makes the fake news seem more mainstream.

Same with the uptick of posters who have been posting links to obvious fake news site with comments like "wow, is this really true?" A ton of posters will respond and call them idiots, but they've been successful in getting people to click.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When enough posts are reported in a thread, Jeff will sometimes shut down the whole thread. At the end of the day it's a bunch of loser internet trolls saying dumb things. Don't get invested in the discussion.

I think this attitude really downplays the role of troll farms in propagating fake news. It's not just random idiots - it's a centralized effort to find sites like this and use it as a platform to spread their message. Sure, it might get deleted in a few hours, but labor is cheap and they keep at it because it makes the fake news seem more mainstream.

Same with the uptick of posters who have been posting links to obvious fake news site with comments like "wow, is this really true?" A ton of posters will respond and call them idiots, but they've been successful in getting people to click.

So how would registration prevent this? They'll just keep creating new usernames to post.

[PolyesterTroll]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ask that registration be required, or we can just go do it. Nothing stopping anyone (except that I just tried and received a Site Administrator Error??)

This highlights one of the issues. The registration system doesn't always work correctly. People forget their passwords and usernames. They change their email address and can't get password reminders. Then they demand that we remove all of the posts linked to their username. It is often a resource challenge to manage the few registered users that we have.

This seems like a silly excuse. How much time do you spend deleting posts every day vs. the one-time investment it would take to migrate the site to a platform with a working registration system? If you change your email, just sign up for a new account. People can log in and delete their own posts if they want, just like in any other modern forum software - why would it take admin time?

Obviously you know more about this than I do so please tell me the cost, time requirement, and other ramifications of migrating the site? I've only been doing this for 10 years, so I suspect that you can teach me a lot. I'm all ears.

Oh yeah, also explain the mechanism for migrating a decade's worth of posts to the new system.

[Anonymous]

Requiring registration would significantly slow the pace of responses in the forum, lower traffic, and be bad for both people who enjoy reading/posting and the business. No registration requires is one of the really unique things about DCUM and I love it.

[PolyesterTroll]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When enough posts are reported in a thread, Jeff will sometimes shut down the whole thread. At the end of the day it's a bunch of loser internet trolls saying dumb things. Don't get invested in the discussion.

I think this attitude really downplays the role of troll farms in propagating fake news. It's not just random idiots - it's a centralized effort to find sites like this and use it as a platform to spread their message. Sure, it might get deleted in a few hours, but labor is cheap and they keep at it because it makes the fake news seem more mainstream.

Same with the uptick of posters who have been posting links to obvious fake news site with comments like "wow, is this really true?" A ton of posters will respond and call them idiots, but they've been successful in getting people to click.

So how would registration prevent this? They'll just keep creating new usernames to post.

At the moment we can't easily identify the trolls because IP addresses are very easy to change. Registration would make it easy to identify people who only post in the political forum, for example. Many forums I am part of require accounts to be X number of days old and with X number of contributing comments in other threads to post in certain forums or start new topics. You can create new usernames, but it's a lot more work to have to create new email addresses at different domains, wait X number of days, and also spend time talking about parenting topics.

[Anonymous]

^FFS, Jeff doesn't want to do it. Start your own website and require registration.

[Anonymous]

Waaahhh! This site is not reinforcing my opinions enough !! I demand an echo chamber where people only troll posts that reinforce me!!