Forum Moderator WTF
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@PSWorx said:
What REALLY annoys me is that MPS and fellows are enforcing rules that they seem completely arbitrary and then expect everyone to know them.
As MPS said, we're not enforcing them, just reminding people. And the rules are self-evident.
@PSWorx said:
I'm sorry, but I've not yet seen a single forum before where people had issues about quoting the first post of a thread - or any issues about quoting at all.
It is redundant and annoying. We already read the OP, don't make us scroll through the entire thing to read "heh, good story". It's simple, sensible etiquette. If we need to refresh on the OP, we can go back to the OP and read it. If we don't, we don't have extra gunk to scroll through. This doesn't apply to quoting a small portion of a large post to provide a pointed reply. It does apply to quoting the entire OP for no reason at all. I've said it many times, but I have to wonder what kind of code is written by people who do not find this repetition obnoxious and wasteful.
@PSWorx said:
The same goes for not quoting non-OP posts.
This gives context to a reply. It makes it easier to follow the multiple branches a discussion can take and it also makes it easier to avoid following a discussion that bores us. Otherwise, I have to read half the post and/or click the "In reply to" link to find out who is being replied to. It's not the end of the world. Nobody is going to get banned or beaten up for it. However, as a matter of simple decency you should provide context with your posts. Keep in mind that some people keep up with the forum through email updates and without any context the emails themselves are largely useless. Often email users can't just figure out who you were replying to. Also be aware that I (and most likely many others) have become so tired of posts that don't quote that we ignore the whole thing. This means there is a good portion of people who are not reading your post, and these posters are most likely to be intelligent or experienced. So if you want to make posts that only newbies bother reading, be my guest. If you expect us to read it, though, please provide some fucking context.
@PSWorx said:
Also, I've not yet seen anyone else except MPS and bstorer actually caring about those rules.
And me. Don't forget about me. As soon as I joined this forum I started cursing the morons who couldn't figure out how to quote properly. This is not rocket science, people, it's not even basic programming. It's a simple, threaded web forum. These things have been around for over a decade and are easy to follow. I also get annoyed when people cram multiple replies into one post, but I guess most people aren't even aware there is threading in Community Server, so I don't say anything about it. I don't use threaded view anyway, and I don't think hardly anybody does, but it's got to be obnoxious with discussions scattered across threads. What I do flame about is when people attack me or others for making multiple replies to multiple posts. We're not doing it to drive up our post counts, guys. I seriously would prefer to sit and copy-and-paste replies to 10 people in one post, but I also know that it destroys an inherent relationship between the posts themselves, so I take the time to reply to each individually.
This is a site frequented mostly by technical people who should be familiar with the Internet. This is not a forum for a group of knitting grandmothers and I don't think we need to act like it is. If threads about a professor calling a hard drive ROM, a cashier giving incorrect change or a Comcast support representative using language that implies the Internet needs to be installed are WTFs, then truly people who can't figure out this very simple forum software are fair game as well. Otherwise you're all just a bunch of hypocrites who want to whine about other people's small mistakes but can't stand to listen to criticizms of your own.
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@tster said:
which he obviously wasn't at the beginning.
You are right. He posted a 'WTF' and I called him on it. It was a reasonable argument at first.
He then cast the first flame with his diapers comment. And even AccessGuru pointed that out.
Then, after I came back with another completely reasonable argument (containing no personal attacks besides calling him on his diapers comment) he starts crying again.
After that, basically he resorts to nothing but ad hominem attacks against my post count, etc.
After that, I am replying to rc_pinchey who attacks ME.
After I spend a few posts working on defending myself from rc_pinchey, ozPeter comes BACK to troll me. So it is hard to say I continued this.
After this, he simply resorts to the 'calling me a liar' troll. That is what it is. It is not arguing the topic, he is purposely doing puppy dog eyes to try and get people to feel sorry for him against 'big mean MPS'.
From there, he just resorts to random gibberish and blatant trolling.
You are drawing very different conclusions from this. I invite you re-read the thread.
@tster said:
And don't tell me to go to the IRC channel to tell you that you are flaming.
Yeah, sorry for trying to come up with a solution to take this back and forth that you so despise out of the thread.
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@morbiuswilters said:
This gives context to a reply. It makes it easier to follow the multiple branches a discussion can take and it also makes it easier to avoid following a discussion that bores us. Otherwise, I have to read half the post and/or click the "In reply to" link to find out who is being replied to.
While I generally tend to agree, it seems to me that this topic has been taken way too seriously, i.e. in the ISP/soup thread.
@morbiuswilters said:
I also get annoyed when people cram multiple replies into one post
Funny. When I was young and my post count was low, I got flames for posting multiple posts, where each contained an answer to another post.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
The fact that I am defending myself [in public] doesn't make me the troll or anything else you might want to believe.
Even if it doesn't look like it, I often agree with you. But this is where you're wrong. It really annoys me to see you and someone else clog up a thread I was interested in with your bickering.
Why do you have to defend yourself against trolls and flames? Don't you think any sensible person would see them as such too? I certainly do. I don't think anyone on this forum has been feeding the trolls any more than you have. Just look at SpectateSwamp; he's thriving.If you could just take it to the private messages, I'd be very grateful.
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Okay , so I said I "haven't seen much need for moderation lately". It seems it's gotten a lot worse the last few days.
I saw a thread locked by AmmoQ, couldn't agree more...
And now there's this "dude" dude just asking to be kicked. Just a few days in here and allready making himself a name:
http://forums.thedailywtf.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?u=12418&o=DateDescending
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'm getting a bit sick of all the trolling and flaming last few days.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
He posted a 'WTF' and I called him on it. It was a reasonable argument at first.
Not from where I'm sitting. Your VERY FIRST REPLY to his post was the following:
@MasterPlanSoftware said:Is this your first time developing on a Microsoft platform? This is the normal error reporting system.
There is nothing wrong here, learn to read the dialog box.
Compare that with my reworked, "I"-statement filled, less aggressive version of the same post:
@RCPlanSoftware said:I don't believe this situation is a WTF. The behaviour shown here is consistent with what my experience of the platform would have led me to expect.
In this situation, I would have anticipated the issue conveyed here- or, had I not, I believe I would have quickly come to realise what had happened by reading the information presented in the dialog box.
Do you see the difference? You accused him of being a novice programmer who couldn't read. Is it any wonder he felt the need to defend himself sarcastically?
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@Faxmachinen said:
If you could just take it to the private messages, I'd be very grateful.
Odd of you to say that considering your clogging of the ISP thread and others with YOUR bickering at me.
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@rc_pinchey said:
You accused him of being a novice programmer who couldn't read.
That is your opinion. I asked a question. His behavior would have made perfect sense if he was someone who had never programmed on a Windows platform before since his exception handling was 100% wrong.
Sometimes you might need to take a step back and realize that maybe I am asking a realistic question. And that was one of them.
I don't really care if I hurt his feelings or not. We are all adults here. If this kind question bends him out of shape, then maybe he needs to reevaluate posting such obvious non-WTFs.
Anyone else could have (and a few did until he spazzed out) argued my point and no one would think any less. A few others would have been harsher to him in this situation. Overall I stayed pretty calm, pleasant and even about the whole thing. He turned into super spazz.
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Alright, so there are a few people who want to cry and whine about me asking people to quote properly or calling someone out on FUD.
I cannot see how that needs to constantly become a flamewar, but the actual trolls on this forum seem to see the point in this.
Hopefully people here have the collective intelligence to sort the actual trolls around here out for themselves.
However, I would like to express a new theory on the supposed 'downfall' around here. The crying.
By forum regulars and everyone constantly fueling these cryfests (and flamewars) at any comment (no matter how nice or mean it happens to be) they are making it ok for newbies to come in here and immediately start crying about this. They are making it ok for people to troll using bad quoting on purpose to try and incite a flamewar.
Example? Here: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/t/8966.aspx This is not the first (and I doubt it will be the last) time that this has happened either.
I have not posted in that thread at all and yet we had a troll openly admit he was trying to provoke a flamewar for a problem he perceives (with this general cryfest fueling it) to be an issue for him.
I never said anything about it. I didn't need to. But this is very obviously exceptionally stupid behavior. How about the people around here (who want to troll and derail every thread where I try and help a newbie by asking him to use the quote button) go over to that thread and express their disdain with this kind of very obvious trolling behavior.
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I think my thoughts on this forum may be redundant with what some other people said in this thread, especially with tster. I always loved TDWTF because it was an interesting place, with informative content that was funny, satirical, and despite being aimed at pointing out and having a laugh at the horrible flaws of our peers, it was friendly. And up to some time ago, the forums were more of just the same, and it was awesome.
Lately, I just stopped bothering reading the forums, because those attributes seem to have been replaced by a giant ocean of troll piss. I've started to notice this since around the time SpectateSwamp showed up. He was amusing for a while, and I was expecting him to just get banned for the obvious trollery and everyone would get on with our lives. But instead, he was encouraged to keep his trolling, with his threads growing to gargantuan proportions, completely composed by people deliberately and admittedly "feeding the troll".
That seems to have sent out a massive signal to everyone that trolling is good and will make you popular, and that feeding trolls is also fine. And it all went downhill from there. The trolling increased like crazy, not only just in quantity, but in "quality". Right now, we get much bolder obvious trolls, and we also got trolls like MPS, who disguises as a member, and trolls by using this subtle passive-agressive approach that's just not trollish enough to label him an outright troll, but is even more unpleasant, because it's subversive, and not amusing.
I don't want to bash on you, MPS, or single you out, but you're often the most prominent example. I honestly wondered why weren't you banned still when the whole Swamp thing was at it's start. I figured you were coming from the same place as he was with the way you were sounding, as if you were laughing at all of us for putting up with you so much. I thought you would go away when Swamp did, but I guess that never hapened either. It's only later, when the Swamp thread lost steam, that I started noticing that you actually participated in topics for purposes other than trolling. This might be not like you at all, but that's the impression I got, which is hopefully unbiased since I have no grudges or anything towards you.
And all of this eventually evolved into a whole bunch more people acting in exactly the same way. And now the forum is overflowing with it so much that I can hardly find the original awesomeness of the forum amongst the people viciously pissing on eachother over arguments that are boring and unfunny to anyone else that aren't those people. Trolls are everywhere, just waiting to jump on any slightest hint of flamebait and arguing not about some interesting technological tidbit, but about like how should one treat the moron OP, how should posts be made, what style of quotation should be used, and how the other guy should STFU with their arguments about the above things. It adds a grand total of ZERO of good content to the thread, it's not amusing to anyone but the handful of people involved, and only helps to drown out the signal with more noise.
I liked it more when the arguments were about how much a language sucks, and not about how retarded the people who use the language are. When the rule wasn't "if noone tells him he's stupid, how will he know?", this forum was a lot more pleasant. As it is, having to parse through and ignore all the crapfest to find the good content has raised the level of effort for this forum too much for me to care.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
I don't really care if I hurt his feelings or not. We are all adults here.
You have a peculiar definition of maturity, little one.
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@dhromed said:
You have a peculiar definition of maturity, little one.
Please refrain from these kinds of sarcastic attacks. We are trying to keep this thread somewhat polite. These are the kinds of posts that spur more attacks.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
Well, your post certainly read to me like an attack on the original poster- which is why I joined in the thread later on. However, that's academic. The key point is that the person you were replying to ALSO thought you were attacking him, and naturally responded defensively and sarcastically. With this in mind, your earlier claim that HE was the one who started the "flame war" in that thread looks to be on pretty shaky ground... from my point of view as an observer, it was actually you that launched the first personal attack, and therefore it was you that caused the derailment and subsequent degeneration of the thread.@rc_pinchey said:
You accused him of being a novice programmer who couldn't read.
That is your opinion. I asked a question. His behavior would have made perfect sense if he was someone who had never programmed on a Windows platform before since his exception handling was 100% wrong.
My "reworking" of your comment was done purely as an example to show you that it was possible to relay exactly the same information without appearing to attack the original poster. It wasn't the content of your post that caused the problem, it was the way you wrote it. I don't think you should regard yourself as a blameless party in this situation.
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@rc_pinchey said:
it was you that caused the derailment and subsequent degeneration of the thread.
I stayed on topic, arguing the OP that is not a derailment.
Seems you have a different definition of derailment.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
@rc_pinchey said:
it was you that caused the derailment and subsequent degeneration of the thread.
I stayed on topic, arguing the OP that is not a derailment.
Seems you have a different definition of derailment.
I had considered the way the topic became a traded series of insults to be a derailment. If you disagree, fine, strike that word from my previous post- do you have any comment about the actual points I made?
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@rc_pinchey said:
do you have any comment about the actual points I made?
I see no other points that you have made other than your biased opinion. Since I am trying to stop all the 'back and forths' that people are complaining about, I see no reason to engage in discussion of these, since I am not going to change your mind.
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@Sunstorm said:
Lately, I just stopped bothering reading the forums, because those attributes seem to have been replaced by a giant ocean of troll piss. I've started to notice this since around the time SpectateSwamp showed up. He was amusing for a while, and I was expecting him to just get banned for the obvious trollery and everyone would get on with our lives. But instead, he was encouraged to keep his trolling, with his threads growing to gargantuan proportions, completely composed by people deliberately and admittedly "feeding the troll".
That seems to have sent out a massive signal to everyone that trolling is good and will make you popular, and that feeding trolls is also fine. And it all went downhill from there. The trolling increased like crazy, not only just in quantity, but in "quality". Right now, we get much bolder obvious trolls, and we also got trolls like MPS, who disguises as a member, and trolls by using this subtle passive-agressive approach that's just not trollish enough to label him an outright troll, but is even more unpleasant, because it's subversive, and not amusing.
I've give you half points on that, there is something in there I can agree with: I think its entirely possible some people found that thread, and decided to sign up because "trolling was cool here."
What they didn't get, was that the spectate thread was really an "isolation room" to let the guy burn himself out, and it was amusing to some of us but didn't spill over into other threads. We actually had some rather annoying "newb" posts in there after spectate left, who seemed to want to "get into the action" a bit late... next thing you know the thread is locked and I wouldn't doubt it if some of the new "trollers" were re-signups from that thread.
Look at that "dude" account: he has only posted flamebait, and only signed up just to give out the mug.I do not agree with calling MPS a troll - he can be a bit ornary, and can set someone sensitive off, but he's not a troll. If you read his posts, I think you'll get the impression he's happier when people don't fall apart and start making personal attacks. Trolls want people to loose their heads and start spewing garbage Its just if they do (and they often do) he'll call them on it a lot more aggressively than whatever set the guy off.
Its also worth mentioning: We had several pages of people basically saying "yeah, people can be a bit harsh here at times, but we like the local culture and don't want moderators changing it." Suddenly, immediately following that, we have people following MPS/Morb etc trying to ruin threads, and a huge increase of crying here about how everything is going down hill.Lastly, there's another facet that makes this community fairly unique: This is The Daily What The Fuck - for people who have to deal with other people's shit and suffer through piles of ignorance that make IT a lot more painful than it needs to be. Who here hasn't gotten seriously frustrated at work because of inexperienced programmers or people that just wing it and let others sort their shit out?
Its one of the things we have in common - so when someone comes here and posts how "They use XYZ and it's a total WTF" - if they are just ignorant of how XYZ works, then honestly they may very well be WTF. If they post how "The system Rand() is the WTF" and how they had to "write their own to make it randomer" then they are the WTF.
The guy who is too lazy to use the quote despite being asked to as a coutresy to others may very well be writing and documenting a third party module you'll end up using a month down the road.
So, they will likely get "WTF" responses and either they can take it and make their case or learn something new... or they can flame, whine, bitch, cry, and hopefully leave. But when you consider the very reason for this site's existance you can't blame people for calling them out on it.
I am not saying "if you don't do things my way, then you are a total wtf and probably retarded" or anything like that. You won't see MPS or Morb or any contributors that also get accused of flaming attack a guy for using a different technology stack or operating system. There are trolls that do that at times but you won't see the regulars start that BS up. (Maybe call someone out for starting it, but they aren't going to start it.)
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Oh look ... it seems like Randall hit a chord:
I find it funny that this comes out in the middle of a flamewar.
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Thread locked. Please PM me if you have any more proposals etc.
