Forum Moderator WTF



  • @BeenThere said:

    Personally I really like the nature of the forums here.  It has a very distinct atmosphere and does a good job of aiding newcomers to either integrate or find communities more to their style.  As far as posting goes, I find I double check my facts before posting here a lot more than elsewhere, largely because this place is so well self regulating.  That improves the quality of this forum.

    My biggest fear for this community, is that some moderator decides to "clean it up" and enforces only the most polite conduct, making way for a very different crowd of user to feel at home here when they shouldn't unless they raise the bar.  When someone posts something that is completely retarded, you have to get a little harsh or, they will think you actually want to discuss it with them

    Example:  Mr. Lonely net hopper goes to a forum and posts some personally biased thread about a platform filled with bad information.  If you politely correct them, they actually think you want to discuss the topic.  This is a very dangerous miscommunication and invites Mr Lonely to feel rewarded for his retarded post.  You have to crank up the heat, to make it clear you have no interest in a happy little discussion with them - you just don't want to allow their completely messed up facts go unchallanged and potentially infect others.  Next time, this guy has to think a bit before posting because he remembers the exchange unpleasantly.  I hate to say it, but there are a lot of people out there that will not respond to simple 'corrections' and need to be flamed a bit to get it. 

    If a "flat earther" posts a sidebar with "the real wtf are globes and that whole fake moonlanding business" do we really want rules to force us to make that guy feel welcome?


    Just making the point because, I think the self regulation works really well here, and actually is a good part of the reason for the quality we do see.  To gut something that has worked for a long time so a Moderator can enact some rule scheme they think they can make work better that what we have is, imo, a really bad idea.

     

    <nosarcasm>

    Wow... I never quite thought of it that way... Does it mean MPS was right all along for bashing my posts?

    </nosarcasm>



  • @The Vicar said:

    Look at the SpectateSwamp thread. All the flaming does is keep away people who don't want to read flaming.
     

    The vast majority of this forum actually enjoyed flaming Spectate. Just because you didn't enjoy it, doesn't mean anyone should care.

    Just skip over stuff you don't like.



  • @dlikhten said:

    Does it mean MPS was right all along for bashing my posts?
     

    On the occasions that you made well reasoned arguments and you were not just spewing /. FUD, did I ever flame you?



  • @The Vicar said:

    The problem is that flaming doesn't work to keep loonies away either. Look at the SpectateSwamp thread. All the flaming does is keep away people who don't want to read flaming.
     

    Some loonies will cling on, and the Spectate thread really did keep that loonie pretty much confined to a single thread - a real community service act imo.  And as you said yourself, all it did was "keep people away who don't want to read flaming" so, what's the harm?  Should that thread have been "less flamey" because of the great content about Desktop Search software and curse aiding stones that others with "personal temperature intolerance issues" wanted to participate in?  Did it hurt the rest of the forums in anyway? 

    Do you have any idea how many people have either left, or cleaned up their act that would otherwise be polluting threads all over the forums?  I may not have an exact figure, but I think it has gone a long way to maintaining the quality and atmosphere of this community.  You are free to disagree with my opinion of course, but I still stand my my views on this topic.



  • Here are my .14cents (keep the change)

    We don't need no stinking moderation.

    No really, we don't. This is one of the best selfmoderating forums I've ever read. It's not perfect, but it's fun.

    Bringing the police will fuck this shit up, and push tdwtf away from the "anarchist utopia" it should be. 

    I mean the site name is "the daily what the fuck" for fuck's sake. Everyone who has a broom up their ass, should try to get it out once in a while to see how it feels.

    God I miss the good old days when nobody cried like little girls when flamed.  Please someone bring back Cpound... I really miss him.



  • @BeenThere said:

    Do you have any idea how many people have either left, or cleaned up their act that would otherwise be polluting threads all over the forums?  I may not have an exact figure, but I think it has gone a long way to maintaining the quality and atmosphere of this community.  You are free to disagree with my opinion of course, but I still stand my my views on this topic.

    Of course I don't have any idea how many people have left or cleaned up their acts. You don't either. You can't measure something that isn't there, at least not in that sense. How much rain didn't fall over your home town last month?

    It's equally valid to ask how many people don't post, or don't reply, or don't even both to read, because of all the flaming. Neither of us can measure that, either. The point is that a moderator asked us for our views, and I'm giving mine. If you don't like them -- heh -- you don't have to read them.



  • @The Vicar said:

    Of course I don't have any idea how many people have left or cleaned up their acts. You don't either. You can't measure something that isn't there, at least not in that sense. How much rain didn't fall over your home town last month?

    It's equally valid to ask how many people don't post, or don't reply, or don't even both to read, because of all the flaming. Neither of us can measure that, either. The point is that a moderator asked us for our views, and I'm giving mine. If you don't like them -- heh -- you don't have to read them.

     

    I find your opinion perfectly acceptable, even though I disagree with it.  I would contend that this community has a higher quality level based on my subjective definition of quality, and I find many (based on this thread, apparently most) users here share that subjective opinion at least loosely enough to be considered "of the same opinion" in general.  Others feel the "quality" here is low because they have a different definition of quality, but there are other communities where the majority of users share that different definition.
    I would also propose the hypothesis that the "quality" (by my definition) is higher here due to the reasons I've posted above.  The closest I could ever come to proving that of course, is if things changed and the "quality" level dropped, which I hope never happens.



  • @The Vicar said:

    Since you're asking questions on this subject:

    I stopped even bothering to reply on this forum because the regulars (morbiuswilters, MasterPlanSoftware, dlikhten, Lysis, et al) tend to tear any opening post, or any post which agrees with the opening post, or even any post which gets even slightly serious, to shreds. Then they often get into huge pointless arguments over which technicality trumps which. Often this turns into a contest to see which poster can be more condescending about the other one's choice of OS/programming language/other technology. It's really tiresome. If I wanted to read geeks trying to one-up each other to defend their nerd-cred, I'd move to Slashdot.

    I don't know how often you think this has happened.  I know a few times MPS, pstorer and myself have flamed each other in jest and had our intentions misunderstood, but after ammoQ gave us a reasonable warning to knock it off, we did.  I'm bothered that you include Lysis with me and MPS, as Lysis was a very blatant troll.  I also think it very unfair to include dlikhten, as he has almost never engaged in the sometimes-unpopular moderation that MPS and myself have.  I don't think dlikhten always makes the correct point, but he was been called out on it many times by MPS and myself and I honestly think the three of us worked it out on our own without any need for external moderation.

     

    @The Vicar said:

    And the whole "nominated for the mug" thing -- the sidebar isn't the main page, and it isn't the main page for a reason. The stuff on the sidebar is generally (with some exceptions, like snoofle's posts) not good enough for the main page. Yeah, there are a few posts which really don't belong. But at least four times as many posts get "nominated for the mug" as actually deserve it. It's shorthand for "we are the arbiters of taste on this forum, and if you can't please us, then go away." Get over yourselves, people!

    The Mug is sacred to us.  It is simply a way for a poster -- any poster -- to express discontent with a thread.  That is all.  The Mug is not a punishment and if being told your WTF isn't really all that interesting makes you leave in tears, somebody already fucked you over nice in good in real life, so don't blame me for it.  I wonder if you see the hypocrisy in complaining about someone expressing their opinion on a thread because it disagrees with your own.  Who is MorbiusWilters?  What the fuck should you care if he likes your WTF or not?  I'm just stating my opinion on it but you seem to think the only way you can safely state your own is if everyone who disagrees with you is silenced.

     

    @The Vicar said:

    (And then some of these same people who are trying to shame other posters into going away have the nerve to complain that the moderators are intimidating! What are you, twelve years old? Hooray for the schoolyard bully mentality!)

    First, I have never tried to shame or intimidate anyone into leaving for a crummy WTF.  The only people I have tried to scare off are people like JimBastard and Lysis who contribute nothing and are only here to troll.  If someone is "shamed" into leaving for being mugged, that is really sad.  Second, I am not intimidated by the mods, I am concerned that what Michael is proposing is tantamount to abuse of power.

     

    @The Vicar said:

    And about the whole "don't quote the whole post" thing? Yeah, okay, it's a little annoying when someone quotes a whole five inches of text to add a single line of commentary. But a whole post whose sole message is "don't quote a whole post" just makes the problem worse. Again: get over yourselves.

    It's annoying, we ask people not to do it.  I do not believe MPS or myself have called anyone a name for quoting the OP, we've just asked that people do not do it.  Actually, pstorer, MPS and myself are all in favor of making a sticky thread that tells new users that there is no reason to quote the entire OP.  This should cut down on the "don't quote the OP" posts.  However, since we do not have such a thread yet, we have been keeping up with it ourselves, asking people to refrain from quoting the OP and asking them to quote a post if they are replying to it so people know what the fuck they are talking about.

     

    @The Vicar said:

    (The "learn to use the forum software" thing is getting nearly as bad. The forum software sucks at the best of times. It probably sucks worse on obscure and/or old browsers than it does for me. Cut people some slack, will ya? Not everyone spends all their time on Internet forums, so there are going to be a lot of people who don't understand how to use sucky forum software. Get over yourselves one more.)

    Once again, I believe I've only told people to be a bit more careful when entering their post and to use the preview function.  I don't think this is unreasonable.  I will respond a bit harshly when people try to blame their editing mistakes on the forum software as I have found the editor to be one of the only reliable pieces of Community Server.

     

    @The Vicar said:

    As for the tag cloud: who really cares? The only case in which a tag cloud is actually useful is if you're trying to index content, and who would ever need an index to the TDWTF Forums? It's not at all hard to just ignore the tags if you don't like them.

    The tag cloud is useless, that's why we take great joy in using it to posts jokes or quips.  I'm not complaining about it being removed because I find it useful, I don't want it to be removed because I find the tag abuse to be fun, amusing and one of the unique things about this place that keeps me coming back.



  • @The Vicar said:

    The point is that a moderator asked us for our views, and I'm giving mine.
     

    That's good.  While our opinions may not agree, I respect your right to an opinion, with the caveat that I expect you to respect mine.

    Perhaps I, on occasion, go too far in my responses, but I don't feel anything remotely close to hatred for any of you.  I think people too often read more malice into my posts than I intend.  Nothing on these forums ever really riles me up; I just enjoy a good debate.

    I hope we can move forward as a community and find a happy medium that manages to maintain the unique community we have here, while taking heed of some of the frequent complaints.


  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @dlikhten said:

    Does it mean MPS was right all along for bashing my posts?
     

    On the occasions that you made well reasoned arguments and you were not just spewing /. FUD, did I ever flame you?

     

    Yea... spelling :)



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @The Vicar said:

    Since you're asking questions on this subject:

    I stopped even bothering to reply on this forum because the regulars (morbiuswilters, MasterPlanSoftware, dlikhten, Lysis, et al) tend to tear any opening post, or any post which agrees with the opening post, or even any post which gets even slightly serious, to shreds. Then they often get into huge pointless arguments over which technicality trumps which. Often this turns into a contest to see which poster can be more condescending about the other one's choice of OS/programming language/other technology. It's really tiresome. If I wanted to read geeks trying to one-up each other to defend their nerd-cred, I'd move to Slashdot.

    I don't know how often you think this has happened.  I know a few times MPS, pstorer and myself have flamed each other in jest and had our intentions misunderstood, but after ammoQ gave us a reasonable warning to knock it off, we did.  I'm bothered that you include Lysis with me and MPS, as Lysis was a very blatant troll.  I also think it very unfair to include dlikhten, as he has almost never engaged in the sometimes-unpopular moderation that MPS and myself have.  I don't think dlikhten always makes the correct point, but he was been called out on it many times by MPS and myself and I honestly think the three of us worked it out on our own without any need for external moderation.

     

    I think we already did 99% of the way... You filthy stinken dirty american pig dog!

    BTW how the heck did we get grouped with Lysis... I mean we flame but... no this is too much. You have officially CROSSED THE LINE. (when you read this, please reffer to the bauman emails for a tone of voice).



  • @dlikhten said:

    Yea... spelling :)
     

    Perhaps, but those were to make you less unbearable too. And it was only because I saw you make good posts now and then too.

    IOW, I/we wanted to read your posts, but your spelling annoyed us.

     

    Nowadays when you post you usually seem to do a good job. 



  • It's the very fact that these forums are so lightly moderated that keeps me coming back - you never know when a thread that started with a post about a CS degree program (I think) will turn into a lengthy and vibrant debate about gun control.  Even the SpectateSwamp threads threw up interesting stuff.

    As for being offended by language or being called a moron well, grow up - I've made ballsups when posting/quoting, been picked up by other users (yeah, you MPS) and I've made sure I haven't done it again.   A sticky at the top  of the forum saying "Quote properly" would have had zero effect.

    Even where those who are considered trolls are concerned, when they make a sensible post then in my experience it's given due consideration by those who some are saying are the forum bosses - MPS, MorbiusWilters etc.  in other words, there's the opposite of ad hominem attacks going on.  New members who get a rough ride either learn the culture of the forums and adapt, or take their ball home.  There have been a few ball-taking-home incidents lately to which you can only say, "welcome to the internet".

    It's not the BBC/Fox/CNN etc, it works fine as it is and it doesn't need fixing.



  • Oh, hey, here's an idea about the forum software: could someone with authority edit the posting page to actually describe some of the stuff that works and doesn't? (Say, for example, a reminder about the line breaks needing a <p> tag, a mention that the edit timeout is too short to be useful, and maybe a hint about which BBCodes work?)

    Sorry to break up a post and quote pieces, since we have a moderator complaining about it, but:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I'm bothered that you include Lysis with me and MPS, as Lysis was a very blatant troll. I also think it very unfair to include dlikhten, as he has almost never engaged in the sometimes-unpopular moderation that MPS and myself have. I don't think dlikhten always makes the correct point, but he was been called out on it many times by MPS and myself and I honestly think the three of us worked it out on our own without any need for external moderation.

    I was listing forum regulars, and I don't think you can argue that any of those aren't regulars. (Or weren't, at least.)

    If I were going to categorize, I wouldn't have put anyone in the same group as MasterPlanSoftware. I don't think I've ever seen a reply from MPS that agreed with someone, unless it was to disagree with someone else, and although it may not be intentional, MPS comes across as being dismissive. Since MPS manages to get in one of the first three replies to a majority of threads, it does make the forum feel unwelcoming -- there are so many apparently dismissive posts that MPS comes across as a Lyle/Topper type, and who wants to hang around with Lyle?

    @morbiuswilters said:

    The Mug is sacred to us. It is simply a way for a poster -- any poster -- to express discontent with a thread. That is all. The Mug is not a punishment and if being told your WTF isn't really all that interesting makes you leave in tears, somebody already fucked you over nice in good in real life, so don't blame me for it. I wonder if you see the hypocrisy in complaining about someone expressing their opinion on a thread because it disagrees with your own. Who is MorbiusWilters? What the fuck should you care if he likes your WTF or not? I'm just stating my opinion on it but you seem to think the only way you can safely state your own is if everyone who disagrees with you is silenced.

    I find it surprising that the same group of people who are telling me "if you don't like it, don't read it" are defending the mug. Like I said: there are threads which deserve the mug. But it's being over-applied, and it the effect of that is to make the forum seem unfriendly. It's like there's a competition to see who can turn up their nose at the most threads. And it's having a real-world effect: I know that I have not posted minor WTFs to the forum because I've seen others get the mug for threads where the WTF is minor.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    It's annoying, we ask people not to do it. I do not believe MPS or myself have called anyone a name for quoting the OP, we've just asked that people do not do it. Actually, pstorer, MPS and myself are all in favor of making a sticky thread that tells new users that there is no reason to quote the entire OP. This should cut down on the "don't quote the OP" posts. However, since we do not have such a thread yet, we have been keeping up with it ourselves, asking people to refrain from quoting the OP and asking them to quote a post if they are replying to it so people know what the fuck they are talking about.

    I didn't say that you had called anyone names. I just said that a reply whose sole content is "don't quote the whole post in your reply" is annoying. In fact, if there are moderators who want more to do, why not let them edit out most of the quoted material in posts which quote whole other posts, and delete posts which do nothing but point out whole quoted posts?

    (Oh, and by the way: I was actually agreeing with you about the tag cloud. It doesn't hurt anyone, and it's easy to ignore because it's always in the same place. Besides, if you're going to start doing away with everything irrelevant, why have the forum at all? If it's causing problems because the list of tags is getting too big, as I think someone suggested, maybe they could set up a script to delete the tags from old posts?)



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Who is MorbiusWilters?  What the fuck should you care if he likes your WTF or not?
     

    Hey man, I care!



  • @upsidedowncreature said:

    yeah, you MPS
     

    Heh, you wont find me denying it!

    @upsidedowncreature said:

    It's not the BBC/Fox/CNN etc, it works fine as it is and it doesn't need fixing.

    Good post, I agree completely.



  • @The Vicar said:

    I know that I have not posted minor WTFs to the forum because I've seen others get the mug for threads where the WTF is minor.
     

    That is the idea. Sounds like the mug is working.

    Really, I dont think anyone misses lame posts like a typo on a magazine article, or all about how some guy's dad miscounted his change one day.

    @The Vicar said:

    I just said that a reply whose sole content is "don't quote the whole post in your reply" is annoying.

    The idea here is to educate the person once, and hopefully if they stay and keep posting, their post quality will be that much more. Not attacking the problem at the start and then asking someone to sit there and edit posts all day is ridiculous.

     Again, really easy to skip the post that one time per noob.



  • Okay, I don't know if anyone's interested, but I'll throw in my opinion, too.

    In one way, I really love the way this forum is driven. I love the way how you can simply type anything you think, or anything you think would be funny if it was someone's opinion. You will likely get flamed if it sucked, but you will know that the flaming is just "for the lulz" in many cases, and if not, who the fuck cares about what the others think.

    Of course this forums aren't especially newcomer friendly. But if a certain newcomer is on the same wavelength as the regulars here he will be able to integrate somehow. Stricter moderation and a strict set of rules would maybe make the forum a nicer place, and more extensible (as in, friendlier to newcomers). But that would kill the complete spirit of the forum as it persists now.

    I don't think it's important to have a large user base or to have a friendly community here. But if that's really the target, okay, go ahead. But you will definitely piss of the regulars, people I really learned to like despite (or because of) their seeming rudeness.

    Then there's the other end. I'm really afraid of posting here most of the times, and I've not submitted many posts I wrote, because I considered it lame, not funny, already pointed out or similar. There's also that thread of mine if someone remembers where I requested the mug for myself, I think I wrote a reply to one of your replies there but didn't post it because I didn't want to get flamed even more. You can say I'm a pussy now, or that I don't have balls, well not so much. Maybe I respect others too much and am too honest to get into this forums' spirit too much.

    I once had a (not too active, just a tiny little) forum of my own. It was pretty similar to here, except that I as an admin flamed the users all the time, called them stupid (because they were), and so on. It was pretty much like me against 5 SpectateSwamps or so (only they weren't deluded, but plain stupid). There even were rules, originally to keep the forums a nicer place, but ultimately abused by me to suppress my users better (you know, like Hitler did. Germans do that a lot).

    I was running that forum together with someone else. He told me that the forum sucked, and that I should close it. I told him that I liked the place, but I would leave it up to you whether to close it or not. He insisted on closing it. So I did that. A huge mistake: I miss that forum until today.

    That's why I actually started posting here, I believe, because in the SpectateSwamp thread, it was all the same thing: it was all about flaming the swampthing and getting away with it. (btw, I, personally, believe that SpectateSwamp will open a third thread, and that it was necessary for that that the second one got locked. The reason why I think that: the mashup thread only popped up after the first one got locked, and in that second one he mentioned that we would now know 2/3)

    Okay I planned to sum it up here in some bullet points but realized I was writing bullshit. My fear and hope is that with rules and moderation, this forum would cease to exists in its current spirit. Fear, because all those things (and guys) I loved about this forums will be gone, and hope, because than maybe I could post more freely with perhaps mild critics instead of flames. But I don't know if I would care enough to visit this forums when there are actually rules. would be quite boring.

    I hope you care and this was helpful... I'm really not sure at the moment which form of moderation I'ld rather be in, but I definitely know I would be missing this community in the form it exists right now. Hell, I even try to read the tags of people's sentences I hear on the streets, because tags always give the extra fun... Really, Tag Abuse is one of the things I love most about TDWTF forums.



  • @derula said:

    Okay, I don't know if anyone's interested, but I'll throw in my opinion, too.

    In one way, I really love the way this forum is driven. I love the way how you can simply type anything you think, <snip>

    Of course this forums aren't especially newcomer friendly. But if a certain newcomer is on the same wavelength as the regulars here he will be able to integrate somehow. Stricter moderation and a strict set of rules would maybe make the forum a nicer place, and more extensible (as in, friendlier to newcomers). But that would kill the complete spirit of the forum as it persists now.

    I don't think it's important to have a large user base or to have a friendly community here. But if that's really the target, okay, go ahead. But you will definitely piss of the regulars, people I really learned to like despite (or because of) their seeming rudeness.

    Then there's the other end. I'm really afraid of posting here most of the times, and I've not submitted any posts I wrote, because I considered it lame, not funny, already pointed out or similar.

     

    I think you've summed up the spirit of the forum exactly, it's a great place if you're prepared to learn the, err, ethos?

    I've held back from posting stuff and then when I have posted I've been surprised when it's been well received, or at least people have taken the OP and turned it into something else. 

    Oh BTW you're a dreadful troll with nothing useful to say.  But that's OK cos so am I. 



  • Re: Forum Moderator WT

    @derula said:

    Okay, I don't know if anyone's interested, but I'll throw in my opinion, too.

    In one way, I really love the way this forum is driven. I love the way how you can simply type anything you think, or anything you think would be funny if it was someone's opinion. You will likely get flamed if it sucked, but you will know that the flaming is just "for the lulz" in many cases, and if not, who the fuck cares about what the others think.

    Of course this forums aren't especially newcomer friendly. But if a certain newcomer is on the same wavelength as the regulars here he will be able to integrate somehow. Stricter moderation and a strict set of rules would maybe make the forum a nicer place, and more extensible (as in, friendlier to newcomers). But that would kill the complete spirit of the forum as it persists now.

    I don't think it's important to have a large user base or to have a friendly community here. But if that's really the target, okay, go ahead. But you will definitely piss of the regulars, people I really learned to like despite (or because of) their seeming rudeness.

    Then there's the other end. I'm really afraid of posting here most of the times, and I've not submitted many posts I wrote, because I considered it lame, not funny, already pointed out or similar. There's also that thread of mine if someone remembers where I requested the mug for myself, I think I wrote a reply to one of your replies there but didn't post it because I didn't want to get flamed even more. You can say I'm a pussy now, or that I don't have balls, well not so much. Maybe I respect others too much and am too honest to get into this forums' spirit too much.

    I once had a (not too active, just a tiny little) forum of my own. It was pretty similar to here, except that I as an admin flamed the users all the time, called them stupid (because they were), and so on. It was pretty much like me against 5 SpectateSwamps or so (only they weren't deluded, but plain stupid). There even were rules, originally to keep the forums a nicer place, but ultimately abused by me to suppress my users better (you know, like Hitler did. Germans do that a lot).

    I was running that forum together with someone else. He told me that the forum sucked, and that I should close it. I told him that I liked the place, but I would leave it up to you whether to close it or not. He insisted on closing it. So I did that. A huge mistake: I miss that forum until today.

    That's why I actually started posting here, I believe, because in the SpectateSwamp thread, it was all the same thing: it was all about flaming the swampthing and getting away with it. (btw, I, personally, believe that SpectateSwamp will open a third thread, and that it was necessary for that that the second one got locked. The reason why I think that: the mashup thread only popped up after the first one got locked, and in that second one he mentioned that we would now know 2/3)

    Okay I planned to sum it up here in some bullet points but realized I was writing bullshit. My fear and hope is that with rules and moderation, this forum would cease to exists in its current spirit. Fear, because all those things (and guys) I loved about this forums will be gone, and hope, because than maybe I could post more freely with perhaps mild critics instead of flames. But I don't know if I would care enough to visit this forums when there are actually rules. would be quite boring.

    I hope you care and this was helpful... I'm really not sure at the moment which form of moderation I'ld rather be in, but I definitely know I would be missing this community in the form it exists right now. Hell, I even try to read the tags of people's sentences I hear on the streets, because tags always give the extra fun... Really, Tag Abuse is one of the things I love most about TDWTF forums.

    I'm very thankful you posted this.  I think you made many good points.  I agree that the atmosphere here is a lot of fun, even if it is intimidating at times.  And believe me, to this day I am still careful about what I post here because I don't want to appear stupid in front of an audience I respect.  I think that the culture here is actually helpful in maintaining itself while still allowing new people to integrate.  I'm all for new users, but I don't want new users to dramatically change the face of this place.  I hate digg, Slashdot and Reddit because the user base degenerated so quickly and the signal to noise ratio is utter crap.  Here, it seems we have managed to keep a fairly good balance of welcoming new users while still expecting them to adapt to the culture here.

     

    However, your own uncertainty also illustrates something to me.  To me it says that this place is a community and any community is going to have complex dynamics of interaction.  To think that those dynamics are always going to work smoothly is a bit naive, but I know there is learning and adaptation to do for every member.  I also think your uncertainty makes another point: that it is incredibly hard to decide what is "acceptable" in a fair manner.  You say yourself that you like the culture but are sometimes bothered and intimidated by it.  Do you honestly think you could make a decision about what constituted a troll or not?  I'm not talking about really blatant stuff, but how about posts by myself or MPS that may have bothered you?  Would you say with certainty that you could silence someone else in a fair manner?

     

    Personally, I hope you move past being intimidated by this place.  I think a little bit of self-regulation is good.  I think the fact that this place makes people think before posting is good.  But I also think that letting a vocal minority or majority scare you isn't right either.  Sometimes you just have to brave the flames and realize, it's just a bloody website.  Most of the people here are just bored and stressed out from work and none of it is personal.  The Internet makes it easy to just open your mouth and let all kinds of garbage spill out, and sometimes you just have to ignore it and push ahead.  I also hate saying this because it sounds like sucking up, but for as long as I've been a poster here, I think you've contributed quality content and have always thought of you as one of the better regulars.  I hope you stick around this place and it continues to be fun for you.  I also wouldn't mind seeing you post some more.  Thanks for the comments, though, I think they were very helpful.



  • @The Vicar said:

    I find it surprising that the same group of people who are telling me "if you don't like it, don't read it" are defending the mug. Like I said: there are threads which deserve the mug. But it's being over-applied, and it the effect of that is to make the forum seem unfriendly. It's like there's a competition to see who can turn up their nose at the most threads. And it's having a real-world effect: I know that I have not posted minor WTFs to the forum because I've seen others get the mug for threads where the WTF is minor.

    It's not the end of the world if you get mugged. You win some, you lose some. If anything it's better that they're nominating you for the mug than if they were flaming you.



  • @bstorer said:

    It's not the end of the world if you get mugged. You win some, you lose some. If anything it's better that they're nominating you for the mug than if they were flaming you.

    Yeah, well, so long as they don't get one of your crappy half-mugs.  Man those things suck so much that they should die. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @bstorer said:

    It's not the end of the world if you get mugged. You win some, you lose some. If anything it's better that they're nominating you for the mug than if they were flaming you.

    Yeah, well, so long as they don't get one of your crappy half-mugs.  Man those things suck so much that they should die. 

    Bold words from a guy who just quoted an entire post instead of the relevant portions...



  • @bstorer said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @bstorer said:

    It's not the end of the world if you get mugged. You win some, you lose some. If anything it's better that they're nominating you for the mug than if they were flaming you.

    Yeah, well, so long as they don't get one of your crappy half-mugs.  Man those things suck so much that they should die. 

    Bold words from a guy who just quoted an entire post instead of the relevant portions...

    You know, if you have a problem with my methods, I'd prefer if you would just take it up with me.  You don't like me and I don't like you, but we're partners now and we'll have to learn to work together.  Especially if we want this wacky, comedic adventure to acheive dramatic climax after one hour, forty-three minutes.  Heck, I might even learn to never touch a black man's stereo -- you never know.


  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I think you've contributed quality content and have always thought of you as one of the better regulars.  I hope you stick around this place and it continues to be fun for you.  I also wouldn't mind seeing you post some more.  Thanks for the comments, though, I think they were very helpful.

    O why thank you. It's sometimes a bit hard to decide what is being mean and what is a "friendly flame" here. I think that's the hardest thing in starting here. I never had much self-confidence, maybe this forum is actually a chance for me to learn some... and to learn what isn't fun anymore. And to train my English a bit. I hope it isn't too terrible (you can't tell such things by yourself, sadly).



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    You don't like me and I don't like you
    I like you. Well, I did.



  • @derula said:

    O why thank you. It's sometimes a bit hard to decide what is being mean and what is a "friendly flame" here. I think that's the hardest thing in starting here. I never had much self-confidence, maybe this forum is actually a chance for me to learn some... and to learn what isn't fun anymore. And to train my English a bit. I hope it isn't too terrible (you can't tell such things by yourself, sadly).

    Your English seems fine.  Better than a lot of native English speakers, at least.  And sometimes the flames are mean, but honestly it's just the Internet.  If you take it so serious you lose sleep, then the problem would seem to be you.  A lot of the recent complaints about "trolling" seem directed at MPS and myself and I can assure you that even if our flames are mean, we don't hold grudges and aren't here to upset anyone.  I flame if someone is acting stupid and arrogant and MPS seems to do the same.  I also don't believe I've ever found a reason to flame you, since you usually post funny or insightful things.

     

    Thanks for the contribution and I hope to see you around #TDWTFMafia in the future. 



  • @bstorer said:

    Fixed version of The Vicar's post:

    @The Vicar said:

    Since you're asking questions on this subject:

    I stopped even bothering to reply on this forum because the regulars (morbiuswilters, MasterPlanSoftware, dlikhten, Lysis, et al) tend to tear any opening post, or any post which agrees with the opening post, or even any post which gets even slightly serious, to shreds. Then they often get into huge pointless arguments over which technicality trumps which. Often this turns into a contest to see which poster can be more condescending about the other one's choice of OS/programming language/other technology. It's really tiresome. If I wanted to read geeks trying to one-up each other to defend their nerd-cred, I'd move to Slashdot.

    And the whole "nominated for the mug" thing -- the sidebar isn't the main page, and it isn't the main page for a reason. The stuff on the sidebar is generally (with some exceptions, like snoofle's posts) not good enough for the main page. Yeah, there are a few posts which really don't belong. But at least four times as many posts get "nominated for the mug" as actually deserve it. It's shorthand for "we are the arbiters of taste on this forum, and if you can't please us, then go away." Get over yourselves, people! (And then some of these same people who are trying to shame other posters into going away have the nerve to complain that the moderators are intimidating! What are you, twelve years old? Hooray for the schoolyard bully mentality!)

    And about the whole "don't quote the whole post" thing? Yeah, okay, it's a little annoying when someone quotes a whole five inches of text to add a single line of commentary. But a whole post whose sole message is "don't quote a whole post" just makes the problem worse. Again: get over yourselves.

    (The "learn to use the forum software" thing is getting nearly as bad. The forum software sucks at the best of times. It probably sucks worse on obscure and/or old browsers than it does for me. Cut people some slack, will ya? Not everyone spends all their time on Internet forums, so there are going to be a lot of people who don't understand how to use sucky forum software. Get over yourselves one more.)

    As for the tag cloud: who really cares? The only case in which a tag cloud is actually useful is if you're trying to index content, and who would ever need an index to the TDWTF Forums? It's not at all hard to just ignore the tags if you don't like them.


    I am so glad you fixed this post.  I initially skipped the entire post because it looked poorly written as a single huge paragraph of text.  However, now that I did read it I agree with every single word of it, and just want to say that I was going to post a long reply to this, but this post has done that for me. 

     PS.  I will continue to quote the OP when I think that it will make my post more clear, and it really pisses me off when I make a serious post and I get back 10 posts bitch at me for quoting the OP. 

     MPS,  I often agree with you and will back you up in many threads.  However, you have to realize you do post in an incidiary manner that causes people to be more defensive of their position instead of approach your ideas with an open mind.  And telling me that it's worthless to say this without wasting my time and finding specific examples is bullshit.  Most people here would conceed this point, probably even yourself. 



  • @tster said:

    However, you have to realize you do post in an incidiary manner that causes people to be more defensive of their position instead of approach your ideas with an open mind.
     

    I agree this is sometimes my approach, but I have quite a wide range of responses, and I usually have my reasons when I decide on straight flames.

    Everyone has their own style, I think people know what to expect from me, most people should not be surprised.

    @tster said:

    PS.  I will continue to quote the OP when I think that it will make my post more clear, and it really pisses me off when I make a serious post and I get back 10 posts bitch at me for quoting the OP. 

    I for one will continue to 'bitch' about this anytime quoting is used to make the post even more ridiculous to read. If a person chooses to not help us by not quoting vast passages of text (like you did above) you should expect a certain level of criticism. It would be nice if you could accept that some people might be right (or at least have valid arguments) about this, and respect their opinions on it.

    However, I do think I try and stay on the constructive side of criticism when I first mention it anyway.



  • @tster said:

     PS.  I will continue to quote the OP when I think that it will make my post more clear, and it really pisses me off when I make a serious post and I get back 10 posts bitch at me for quoting the OP. 
     

    Perhaps a compromise where you quote the first line followed by "..." or something?  I can understand a 'selective quote' of two lines in an OP when you want the context to be really apparent (so you can use less words to setup context) but to quote the whole opening post when the majority of users reiterate that it is annoying - that's kind of like ignoring the fact that locals in England drive on the other side of the road and "doing it your way" despite their protests.  (with requesite dramatic hyperbole of course)

    Btw:  What you mention about MPS:  when you say the "incidiary manner" causes people to be more "defensive" I read that as "think seriously about the quality of their statements so as to not look foolish" and I consider it a good thing.  Sometimes people are just get lazy and need to be jostled a bit to snap out of it - polite discourse doesn't often achieve this. 

    If someone finds themselves flamed, just read it as "wtf were you smoking when you wrote that??  WAKE TF UP AND THINK!" and often its good advice.  Sometimes replies have to be as obtuse as an alarm clock, or the guy never wakes up.  Please note too, this isn't regarding your standard "trollish flame" - those are just retarded, but I don't see those from people like MPS or MorbiusWriter.  When they reply in a flamish manner, I have often had the thought of doing the same until I see their post, as the Poster they are replying to has either A) crutched on a personal bias with no real backup B) completely taken something out of context C) stated completely inaccurate information they could have verified D) something like that /etc.. and when you read a post like that, it feels insulting that someone would so blatantly pollute the forum. 

    It pisses you off, so you make that clear in the tone of your reply.  

    Its not a freak'n Blood Oath to destroy them and their family - its a "check your shit if you are going to contribute here" statement and then people often do, as long as they get the wake up call.  



  •  @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @SuperousOxide said:

    I've seen a few too many promising threads devolve into MPS and company bitching at each other over something offtopic.
     

    Feel free to name some, it isn't productive to make accusations without evidence or any way for people to defend themselves.

    dude, seriously?  You know what you say and how you act on the forums, everyone knows, providing examples would be pointless and just indulge you and unlike some i don't have the time to waste.  I'll admit most of the time you are right but you do have some problems expressing it without coming of as a bit of a prick.  Now i'm sure this thread will devolve into an MPS vs. rest of the world thread now but honestly how many of your 3000+ posts were actually useful and constructive and aren't aimed purely at making yourself feel like Mr. Condescending Uber Geek.  Although poor social skills do go hand in hand with with uber geek status so maybe that's what you are going for.

    Anyway all i'm saying is, given that it seems this is becoming the topic of the thread, it's ok to be right but being right and acting like a total argumentative fuckwit is going to piss people off and eventually they will just ignore you.

    so feel free to crap on about how your dick is bigger, someone is an idiot because they said x about y in z post, or repost their post correcting the grammar if you don't have any real comeback.  whatever floats your boat but chances are i just won't read it.  



  • @element[0] said:

    dude, seriously?  You [MPS] know what yousay and how you act on the forums, everyone knows, providing examples would be pointless and just indulge you and unlike some i don't have the time to waste. 
     

    Um, "everyone knows," really?  Don't count me in that group, when someone said something similar on IRC I asked for examples, and all three of them were pretty weak.  So if you don't want to indulge mps, would you induldge me with a few examples?

    Btw, most of your post seems... rather emotional and mean spirited.  I think you may have been taking MPS's previous posts (and their sometimes flamish nature) a bit too seriously if you are this worked up.  Everyone has to vent now and then, but maybe you can use your own post as a bit of an example:  you seem to think MPS is being a douche and he should know it - and that pisses you off so you want that to be clear. 

    Hence, the tone of your reply was crafted to reflect how much his post pissed you off - not really any different (in basis) than any post the "crazy flamers" make.  Though, when I do read flamish posts, I prefer more wit and humor to keep it amusing.



  •  @BeenThere said:

    Btw, most of your post seems... rather emotional and mean spirited.  I think you may have been taking MPS's previous posts (and their sometimes flamish nature) a bit too seriously if you are this worked up.  Everyone has to vent now and then, but maybe you can use your own post as a bit of an example:  you seem to think MPS is being a douche and he should know it - and that pisses you off so you want that to be clear. 

     Fair point, but in the words of MPS

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:


    Perhaps I, on occasion, go too far in my responses, but I don't feel anything remotely close to hatred for any of you.  I think people too often read more malice into my posts than I intend

    So apologies if it seemed like i was "mean spirited" or harsh or whatever, this is an internet forum and it's kinda just a distraction from work so i certainly don't get "worked up" about it although i will admit i do enjoy pissing people of from time to time but i think we're all guilty of that occasionally.

    So no hard feelings MPS? 

     



  •  Hey BeenThere,

    lol, just noticed the tagline, thanks for the homage 



  • Most forums have rules against blatant flaming, spamming, and trolling. Apparently this site doesn't. That's fine, I've accepted that, although the sidebar is now basically unreadable without a Greasemonkey script.



    What I really don't get is the tag spamming. Not the silly tags, not people trying to get their pet tag to show up on the main page. That's stupid, but doesn't bother me. However, you have a group of people that went out of their way to write a script with the sole purpose of slowing down page loads for everyone and using up more of Alex's bandwidth. Short of hacking the site and stealing everyone's passwords, I can't really imagine anything worse you could do to a website. It's basically a very slow DOS attack.



    Did you ever have to ask the community about moderation before that certain group showed up? Maybe that should tell you something right there.



  • @Cap'n Steve said:


    Did you ever have to ask the community about moderation before that certain group showed up?

    Yes. We've had comparable discussions in the times of CPound, RichardNixon etc. For those who remember them.



  • I remember CPound, but I must have missed that discussion. I'm guessing it took place in another forum.



    Also, I'd like to add that I almost cried when I saw that the "intersection between power user and paranoia" thread had been locked. That's exactly the kind of moderation we don't need, as several people were hoping she would show up, and it had the potential to be far more entertaining than SpectateSwamp.



  •  

     @ammoQ said:

    @Cap'n Steve said:


    Did you ever have to ask the community about moderation before that certain group showed up?

    Yes. We've had comparable discussions in the times of CPound, RichardNixon etc. For those who remember them.

    don't forget tunnel rat

    Ahh those were the glory days of trolling when the trolls were sane but incredibly stupid. 

    I think we have a new SS on our hands now, remember this thread about the insane lady who's computer is always being mysteriously hacked?  I think she has just joined up today check it out (good uname too), i think someone was checking the referers on their blog.  

    Anyway i'm a little disappointed you locked the thread i thought it might get a bit interesting but hopefully she will start a new thread for our amusement.

    It's a shame she's married i think she and SS would make a lovely(if completely insane) couple, although i don't think she would install SSDS on her pc.

     



  • I know I'm one of the people on this forum who have taken MPS far too seriously. But generally I agree with most of what he says, and have decided that taking what he says in jest a correct course of action.

    Unless, of course, what I've said really was retarded, in which case I'd change it.

    Speaking as a "noob", I really enjoy browsing through threads here, and I like the self-moderation (that is, now that I've actually thought about it). It doesn't need changing.



  • @element[0] said:

    don't forget tunnel rat

    ah, tube rodent. Just like Jim Bastard, he's a borderline case in not being completely off-topic, but seems to promote his own blog nonetheless. But in my experience such people don't stay for too long.

    (good uname too), i think someone was checking the referers on their blog.  

    Anyway i'm a little disappointed you locked the thread i thought it might get a bit interesting but hopefully she will start a new thread for our amusement.

    Intersting? As in "flamefest"? 

    It's a shame she's married i think she and SS would make a lovely(if completely insane) couple, although i don't think she would install SSDS on her pc.

    What if they have children? 




  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    However, you have a group of people that went out of their way to write a script with the sole purpose of slowing down page loads for everyone and using up more of Alex's bandwidth. Short of hacking the site and stealing everyone's passwords, I can't really imagine anything worse you could do to a website. It's basically a very slow DOS attack.
    Dude, it's a site about IT WTFs and it's running on the biggest WTF ever. Why would expect anything different? In good news, we showed the problem to ammoQ yesterday, so at least the powers that be know about it.



  •  As an addendum to this thread.  I agree that communities change and grow over time, and that this one does too.  I don't know if anyone has noticed but my posting (and reading) here on the forums has been much decreased as of late.  And that is because I find these forums not as fun and interesting as I used to find them.  Other people might feel differently and that's OK.

    The reason I don't find this place as fun and interesting is much related to MPS's increased post count.   Back in the days when I loved this site he posted a little less than I did.   All of a sudden he became a huge presence in the forum.  While I'm not blaming him for ruining this forum for me, I will say that him posting so often has helped draw to the forum more people like him.  Now the forum seems to be mostly posted on by people similar to MPS, and that means that I won't enjoy it as much.   I'll continue to come here and I'm sure that down the road this forum will change again and I might start posting more often.

    What I'm trying to say is that this forum is probably fine for a majority of it's users at this point, but that it is no longer fine for me.  I'm not going to try and change the forum because I can find other places to go (topcoder.com forum is very good) and other things to do (real life ftw).  I fell in love with the forum of AmmoQ, RichardNixon, CPound, Dhromed, masklinn, CodeWhisperer.  The current crew just doesn't satisfy me as much.



  • @tster said:

    I fell in love with the forum of AmmoQ, RichardNixon, CPound, Dhromed, masklinn, CodeWhisperer.  The current crew just doesn't satisfy me as much.
     

    And you don't think it could have more to do with them not being here as opposed to the newer people that are here?



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @tster said:

    I fell in love with the forum of AmmoQ, RichardNixon, CPound, Dhromed, masklinn, CodeWhisperer.  The current crew just doesn't satisfy me as much.
     

    And you don't think it could have more to do with them not being here as opposed to the newer people that are here?

     

    you missed my point.  I'm just saying that the culture of this forum has changed over time. 



  • @tster said:

    I fell in love with the forum of AmmoQ, RichardNixon, CPound, Dhromed, masklinn, CodeWhisperer.  The current crew just doesn't satisfy me as much.

    I miss them too, but they left us long before the rise of MPS, morbuswilters, bstorer etc. A forum is, for most people, an interesting place only for some time, then they go.



  • @ammoQ said:

    @tster said:

    I fell in love with the forum of AmmoQ, RichardNixon, CPound, Dhromed, masklinn, CodeWhisperer.  The current crew just doesn't satisfy me as much.

    I miss them too, but they left us long before the rise of MPS, morbuswilters, bstorer etc. A forum is, for most people, an interesting place only for some time, then they go.

     

    it's not the specific people that I am refering to.  I understand people move one.  I'm saying that when those people were the majority influence of the forum this place felt a lot different.   I even like MPS, morbuswilters, and bstorer, it's just that I think some of them are to forceful in making others conform to their vision of this forum.  

     for instance, I quote the entire OP sometimes when a thread is off topic and I want people to know which conversation I am taking part in.  I find it useful to quote the entire thing so that people don't need to go all the way back to the top to check somethign that was posted.  it makes crossreferencing the posts against one another easier and faster.  Yet if I do it I get 3 posts with only "don't quote the whole OP."  I usually quote as much as I think useful to quote.  Before in this thread I quoted a whole post because I was refering to the structure of the post (broken in to paragraphs vs. not broken) and it took the whole post to show that.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @galgorah said:

    coming up with a few nominee's and then have a vote where the community can choose. 

    Bollocks to that.

    Any moderated forum, be it Y!Groups or some random internet message board is (usually) a benevolant dictatorship. If you want to participate, you play by the rules of the founder. You disagree? Leave. You want to be a part of it? Play by their rules.

    Democracy doesn't (generally) work on online groups. You want more moderators on here? Ask Alex directly. If you're told to fuck off, either accept it or go.

    Next you'll be wanting to demote AmmoQ for some perceived transgression.



  • @PJH said:

    @galgorah said:

    coming up with a few nominee's and then have a vote where the community can choose. 

    Bollocks to that.

    Any moderated forum, be it Y!Groups or some random internet message board is (usually) a benevolent dictatorship. If you want to participate, you play by the rules of the founder. You disagree? Leave. You want to be a part of it? Play by their rules.

    Democracy doesn't (generally) work on online groups. You want more moderators on here? Ask Alex directly. If you're told to fuck off, either accept it or go.

    For anything close to a democracy to work, there has to be a bias in favour of the established members of the forum, people like MPS, Morbuswilters, tster, snoofle, and of course AmmoQ, amongst others, who have been here a long while or are accepted as being an important part of the community. However, no democracy is needed in a site as small as this one, where the current healthy mix of anarchy and dictatorship works quite well. If the site is much larger, a semi-democratic model works OK. (The XKCD forums work like this: the admin makes moderators, who are chosen by the existing mods. These mods make the rules in consultation with the members, who can vote on things and debate them, but at the end of the day, what the moderators agree on goes.)

    AmmoQ does a good job of keeping this place almost sane, and I assume Alex or Jake reads the sidebar every few days to look for potential Best of the Sidebar articles, and I assume Alex's attention has been dawn to this thread by now, so I assume will hear some sort of official decision on this soon.

    @PJH said:

    Next you'll be wanting to demote AmmoQ for some perceived transgression.

    The day that happens will be the day that the site has been taken over by Jim Bastard sock puppets.

    I notice that Michael Thingumy has dissapeared. I he is too busy watching the IRC channel to cause us grief here. (Or he was defeated by Community Server.)

    EDIT: OMG. That last line looks like something Swampy would write. Gee-haw



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    Most forums have rules against blatant flaming, spamming, and trolling. Apparently this site doesn't.

    "Flaming" is subjective and I've heard a few vocal members accuse MPS and myself of this, but from the response to this thread thus far, they seem to be a minority.  As far as spamming goes, ammoQ promptly deletes any blatantly spam threads or posts.  I use the "Report Abuse" link as soon as I spot new spam but it can take up to 20 hours for them to be removed, mostly because ammoQ is on the other side of the world and is probably busy working on the kangaroo ranch.  I'm not fond of the trolling that takes place here, but I would say that MPS (who is often called a troll) is quick to shoot down posters who make comments like "Windows is for ignorant sheep" or "C# is an awful language" without any kind of support for those statements.  Those are the kind of posts that are just attempting to draw people into a flamefest and perhaps it is wrong to even respond to them, but more often than not the original poster gives up after a few rounds of back-and-forth.  The few times that doesn't happen, ammoQ is pretty quick to step in and lock the thread.  However, I have seen him lock very few threads in my time here so I would say the self-moderation has worked pretty well.

     

    @Cap'n Steve said:

    That's fine, I've accepted that, although the sidebar is now basically unreadable without a Greasemonkey script.

    It sounds like you haven't accepted a damn thing.  You use a script to block posters you don't like and here are you complaining about those posters.  When I first started posting here I mistook MPS for a troll because it seemed he was always engaged in an argument with someone.  After a bit, I got angry and flamed him for being such a dick.  He flamed be back and as a sort of insult/joke I told him I was going to write a GM script to remove his posts from my view.  He informed me that one already existed and I was amazed that someone could be such a milquetoast that they would have to have MPS's posts removed from view lest he upset them.  After a bit I noticed that the people MPS was arguing with were generally posting ignorant nonsense and he was simply taking them to task for it.  After the back-and-forth someone else would jump in and call him a troll and then so-on until the thread was MPS vs. The World.  Since then MPS and I reconciled our differences and I generally feel the people who accuse him of trolling or of excessive flaming are often incorrect.  I can't tell you how many threads I've seen MPS post something to the effect of "you're the only one trolling here".  Almost always if I re-read the entire thread, it is very clear to me that MPS had merely aggressively disagreed with someone's statement and the person who accused him of trolling was the first one to engage in a personal attack.

     

    @Cap'n Steve said:

    What I really don't get is the tag spamming. Not the silly tags, not people trying to get their pet tag to show up on the main page. That's stupid, but doesn't bother me. However, you have a group of people that went out of their way to write a script with the sole purpose of slowing down page loads for everyone and using up more of Alex's bandwidth. Short of hacking the site and stealing everyone's passwords, I can't really imagine anything worse you could do to a website. It's basically a very slow DOS attack.

    Sometimes I have to wonder about the crybabies who frequent this site.  That script was created by me after I noticed the pitiful way Community Server handled tag auto-complete (by embedding all tags twice in every thread and edit page).  It was an act of protest against bad software on my part, as I hoped it would attract attention to the problem and result in fix to the code.  Right now the tags add 464k to each thread page and of that 180k are from the scripts in use by myself, pstorer, AbbydonKrafts and a few others.  So even then my script is responsible for less than half of the tags that are loaded on each page.  If I hadn't written the script, who knows how big the tags would have gotten before someone noticed the problem.  When I posted the script I was concerned about Alex or ammoQ thinking I was trying to break the software and somebody pointed out that Alex had just posted a front page article on how he had discovered a security hole in some government website that gave him access to records on private citizens.  So it is my hope that my efforts would be seen more as white hat "hacking" rather than an attempt to cause harm.  I've even suggested many, many times that someone just do a "delete from tags where tag ilike '%tagexception%'" to clear out the junk tags put in there by us.  I don't mind the TagExceptions being purged (or any tags for that matter) but I intend to keep using my script until the way tags are handled is changed or until Alex basically says "hey, I can't get the problem fixed but I am aware of it, so I'd appreciate it if you'd stop."



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    Also, I'd like to add that I almost cried when I saw that the "intersection between power user and paranoia" thread had been locked. That's exactly the kind of moderation we don't need, as several people were hoping she would show up, and it had the potential to be far more entertaining than SpectateSwamp.

    It amazes and sickens me that you would love to watch a forum full of our well-educated peers mock a woman with an obvious mental illness, but you think the contributions of MPS and myself are "trolling".  What's more, how do you even know that was her and not someone who discovered the thread and resurrected it just to have some laughs?  I can't see any reason to believe it was actually the woman in question.  I'm glad ammoQ locked that thread, myself.  Personally, I think the SSDS threads are somewhat tasteless but I choose not to participate or even read them, for the most part.


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