Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should be aware that real research goes through an IRB, right? You may not have to get IRB approval at your current level, but the actual research community does take unintended consequences into account, as well as intended ones.

You are supposed to think about how you can inflict harm with the process you pursue, and you are supposed to avoid that. No way in hell actual research would progress with posts like those described by Jeff.

It's not research at that point. It's trolling for funsies. It isn't data acquired in a rigorous, ethical, systematic way -- it's what's called "shit-kicking." Look it up. That is what you are doing, and frankly, it's nothing to be proud of.

Sorry, but this study WAS approved. It’s a very different situation when it’s an anonymous forum board like this. It was approved under the agreement that we use a fake name for DCUM and the counties/areas/schools in our actual study to protect anonymity of our subjects. This isn’t the first time a study like this has been done, and it won’t be the last. People have gone incognito and pretended to be members of a community for research all the time. We aren’t harming people by posting on an anonymous board any more than anyone else who posts here does. It isn’t our fault that many people on here are divisive in nature. If a 10 page thread started because we asked self-described liberal parents who opposed MCPS’ boundary study to explain why and that thread turned into a dumpster fire, that’s not exactly our fault. We never posted anything harmful. There’s a huge difference between controversial and harmful, and what we posted was sometimes the former.

Also, to Jeff: You don’t have to read every post or every thread to come across overt racism on DCUM. You can come across racism in seconds, especially in the MCPS or Real Estate forums. You know they exist if you know they’re “hot button topics,” and you’ve even admitted in other threads that you keep this forum anonymous because it allows many of those controversial discussions to exist.

Wait, to be absolutely clear -- you were IRB approved not just to make posts about a town (Pasadena), but to to make racially inflammatory trolling posts yourself (not just provoke them)?

They knew you were going to do this, or were you coloring outside the borders you were given?

Anonymous wrote:Also, to Jeff: You don’t have to read every post or every thread to come across overt racism on DCUM. You can come across racism in seconds, especially in the MCPS or Real Estate forums. You know they exist if you know they’re “hot button topics,” and you’ve even admitted in other threads that you keep this forum anonymous because it allows many of those controversial discussions to exist.

I have never stated that we allow anonymous posts in those terms. I notice that you are very loose with your interpretation of facts. That is not very encouraging regarding the quality of your research or the believability of anything else you claim.

I assume that you are very young and are not yet aware that your actions may have unintended consequences. While trolling DCUM is all fun and games for you, it has a real affect on our forums. It directly negatively impacts my business. Is harming a local business that is completely owned and operated by a husband and wife team a worthy educational goal? There is no denying that was something you consciously decided to do.

Moreover, people use our schools and real estate forums to make real life decisions. To the extent that your trolling impacted those decisions, you have likely negatively impacted the lives of others. You clearly have questionable judgement. It is notable that you don't appear to be the least be aware, let alone concerned, about any of this.

If you are completely legitimate as you claim to be, why not identify yourself and the school you attend? Show us your credentials. I suspect the gap between the truth and what you are claiming is sufficiently significant as to dissuade you from doing that.

Anonymous wrote:You should be aware that real research goes through an IRB, right? You may not have to get IRB approval at your current level, but the actual research community does take unintended consequences into account, as well as intended ones.

You are supposed to think about how you can inflict harm with the process you pursue, and you are supposed to avoid that. No way in hell actual research would progress with posts like those described by Jeff.

It's not research at that point. It's trolling for funsies. It isn't data acquired in a rigorous, ethical, systematic way -- it's what's called "shit-kicking." Look it up. That is what you are doing, and frankly, it's nothing to be proud of.

Sorry, but this study WAS approved. It’s a very different situation when it’s an anonymous forum board like this. It was approved under the agreement that we use a fake name for DCUM and the counties/areas/schools in our actual study to protect anonymity of our subjects. This isn’t the first time a study like this has been done, and it won’t be the last. People have gone incognito and pretended to be members of a community for research all the time. We aren’t harming people by posting on an anonymous board any more than anyone else who posts here does. It isn’t our fault that many people on here are divisive in nature. If a 10 page thread started because we asked self-described liberal parents who opposed MCPS’ boundary study to explain why and that thread turned into a dumpster fire, that’s not exactly our fault. We never posted anything harmful. There’s a huge difference between controversial and harmful, and what we posted was sometimes the former.

Also, to Jeff: You don’t have to read every post or every thread to come across overt racism on DCUM. You can come across racism in seconds, especially in the MCPS or Real Estate forums. You know they exist if you know they’re “hot button topics,” and you’ve even admitted in other threads that you keep this forum anonymous because it allows many of those controversial discussions to exist.

You should be aware that real research goes through an IRB, right? You may not have to get IRB approval at your current level, but the actual research community does take unintended consequences into account, as well as intended ones.

You are supposed to think about how you can inflict harm with the process you pursue, and you are supposed to avoid that. No way in hell actual research would progress with posts like those described by Jeff.

It's not research at that point. It's trolling for funsies. It isn't data acquired in a rigorous, ethical, systematic way -- it's what's called "shit-kicking." Look it up. That is what you are doing, and frankly, it's nothing to be proud of.

Anonymous wrote:Just to throw some additional fire on this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-news/anne-arundel-pasadena-black-lives-matter/2020/09/15/7dd0449a-d651-11ea-930e-d88518c57dcc_story.html

Yeah that article was posted several times in response to some of the “Pasadena is super, thanks for asking” comments.

Keep in mind that I stopped deleting your posts yesterday because I ran out of time. Many of your racially divisive posts are still online. Moreover, I have archived copies of many of the others. I guess you will just claim that those were posts from your partners that you didn't know about?

Given you are such an expert on this forum now, you should know that I don't have the capacity to read every thread, let alone every post. That's one reason your were able to get away with your shenanigans for as long as you did. If there are racists threads, I hope users will report them. Unfortunately, they are not as easy to find as it is for threads started from the same IP address.

It is a very strange educational project that intentionally inflicts damage on a local business. Hopefully you will be a little more considerate in the future.

Anonymous wrote:I hate racist trolls.

We never made a single post that was racist or implied anything negative about racially diverse areas. Two of us are MCPS grads from DCC schools. We were simply trying to understand how different posters on the forum decide whether an area is favorable or not.

Also, here’s the interesting and funny caveat: We mostly re-posted stuff that’s already been said on this forum, but we changed things up a little to not make it so obvious. In order to do this, we spent months researching this forum board’s older threads to see what people were saying about different areas in the counties around DC that we were targeting. Very few things we posted were original. That’s why the MCPS forum still looks like the same dumpster fire even after Jeff “cleaned” our posts. There were 4 of us doing it, and I don’t know what the others always said (in fact, some of us responded to each other not realizing one another’s posts), but nothing racist or racially steering was ever said. All we did was take the content of this forum and spit it back at you. Jeff cares about “racial divisiveness,” but he left up multiple threads and posts implying that more MCPS students in DCC/NEC go to jail than to college. He deleted our threads, but all the other divisive threads are still there and he didn’t bother deleting them. I am an MCPS grad from one of the high schools that gets trashed on this forum a lot, and we are disgusted by how racist the discussions were, just for Jeff to turn around and deny that these boards exacerbate segregation and claim that most members “value diversity.” Jeff was okay with our “divisive” posts and left them up until he discovered we were “trolls,” which means he was more upset by the latter than the former.

Anyways, our study is mostly wrapped up. We got some extensions because of virtual learning and the pandemic affecting things. Our professor gave everyone an I (incomplete) until we turn our stuff in. We will not be using the forum’s real name and will always use different names for towns and counties in order to follow IRB research guidelines.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Out of curiosity - which were their threads? Or what were the topics?

As the earlier poster said, a lot were in the Real Estate forum dealing with Pasadena, Odenton, Severna Park, etc. But, they also posted in the MCPS Forum a lot, stirring up trouble involving high schools.

Knew someone was just being an a* for fun there. Thanks for the cleanup.

Just to throw some additional fire on this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-news/anne-arundel-pasadena-black-lives-matter/2020/09/15/7dd0449a-d651-11ea-930e-d88518c57dcc_story.html

I hate racist trolls.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are not real estate agents, we are “trolls” trying to get data for a sociology capstone project. We are studying how influential discussions on mom boards are. If some of the stuff we posted sounds wonky, it’s because half our team isn’t from MD and had to ask MD natives about different areas. The person responsible for much of the Pasadena posts was actually not an MD native at all. We created hot button threads about various topics to try to understand the mindset of parents in different metropolitan areas and also estimate how influential these boards are in steering. It was very entertaining being the “trolls” who start hot button topics and watch shitstorms, but more importantly, we have valuable data archived for our capstone.

I don't buy this. University semesters ended and grades were due nearly 2 months ago. Assuming they have been posting since then, then it's not for any so-called capstone project.

It looks like they started late fall but yes, there were some posts this week. The real Icarus move was posting the $500,000 Pasadena house in the thread about an $18M house in DC.

Anonymous wrote:We are not real estate agents, we are “trolls” trying to get data for a sociology capstone project. We are studying how influential discussions on mom boards are. If some of the stuff we posted sounds wonky, it’s because half our team isn’t from MD and had to ask MD natives about different areas. The person responsible for much of the Pasadena posts was actually not an MD native at all. We created hot button threads about various topics to try to understand the mindset of parents in different metropolitan areas and also estimate how influential these boards are in steering. It was very entertaining being the “trolls” who start hot button topics and watch shitstorms, but more importantly, we have valuable data archived for our capstone.

I don't buy this. University semesters ended and grades were due nearly 2 months ago. Assuming they have been posting since then, then it's not for any so-called capstone project.

Anonymous wrote:
Out of curiosity - which were their threads? Or what were the topics?

As the earlier poster said, a lot were in the Real Estate forum dealing with Pasadena, Odenton, Severna Park, etc. But, they also posted in the MCPS Forum a lot, stirring up trouble involving high schools.

They started some threads about AA County which would ultimately end up as a rah rah Pasadena thread.

Or someone would start a thread about looking for a SFH under $1 million in NoVa and they'd chime in....wHy nOT PaSaDena?

it was super annoying. Glad Jeff smoked them out.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are not real estate agents, we are “trolls” trying to get data for a sociology capstone project. We are studying how influential discussions on mom boards are. If some of the stuff we posted sounds wonky, it’s because half our team isn’t from MD and had to ask MD natives about different areas. The person responsible for much of the Pasadena posts was actually not an MD native at all. We created hot button threads about various topics to try to understand the mindset of parents in different metropolitan areas and also estimate how influential these boards are in steering. It was very entertaining being the “trolls” who start hot button topics and watch shitstorms, but more importantly, we have valuable data archived for our capstone.

Yeah, you are a bunch of assholes. I also have a trove of archived data and I'll happily publish my own project showing how you used racial issues to create divisive threads. It takes a real genius to troll an anonymous forum. You should be really proud of yourselves. You have now reach the pinnacle of success that might have been have been expected of the average 6th grader. That's quite the "capstone".

Out of curiosity - which were their threads? Or what were the topics?