I think we’re at a tipping point. I’ve already noticed a lot of long-time regulars have nearly stopped posting due to the extreme spamming by trolls that goes on here in the WC. I realize the WC is the place to “contain” borderline offensive material, but it’s not that at all. It’s a select few trolls making new accounts every week to clutter up our board. It’s time for a serious overhaul.
Possible solutions:
IP ban - not a perfect solution but it might slow them down.
MAC address ban - this would work but not sure if AF is outfitted to take that step
Moderators step up. Stop with the “board meetings” and get to the business of eliminating trolls. It doesn’t take a vote to know which idiot of the day needs to go. Just press the button and move on. If you’re not up for that solution…
Hire me (I’ll work for free). Not as a boardmember, I don’t give a crap about any of that. Hire me as an executioner. I will ban XRAY/islidurrr/RR the second they pop up along with any other obvious trolls. For the record, I wouldn’t have banned Blake until that thing with bchad. That kind of trolling is fine in my book. But this non-stop shit we’re getting from these select few individuals is really ruining the place. I wouldn’t touch anything else. Not flame wars (I’d have to ban myself), offensive content, I wouldn’t edit posts to clean anything up…I’d simply ban trolls. Anyone with over 1,000 AF points would require approval from the moderators, but otherwise if some new guy pops starting a million threads about absolutely nothing - banned.
As a general rule, anyone that asks to be a moderator (or the banhammer in this case) probably shouldn’t get the job. While I’d enthusiastically accept the role and get this ship righted in no-time, I would nominate bromion should you find me too…whatever. Bromion has a cool head and I think he’d weild the banhammer swiftly and justly.
Whatever you decide to do, do something. The only unacceptable outcome is to let the WC continue to deteriorate. Unless, of course, you want to see many of the old timers continue to lose interest in AF.
I flat out called this back when I was moderator and everyone accused my light touch as over moderating. I said it would devolve and that traffic would fall along with content and meaningful if you did not protect it. You can’t try to be reddit because there already is a reddit and the forum will just die if it doesn’t develop a content identity, which will require some regulation and banning.
While the incessant trolling is bothersome, I don’t think it is the reason that dedicated posters drop off the forum. They probably just get bored and do other things. Any website cycles through new and old users. With AF though, there is not a natural mechanism, such as new material, that keeps old users around.
^In this theory I would expect something at least approximating a one to one replacement. Also, many of these posters were active for 5+ years before all dropping off within the same 1 year time frame as trolling picked up.
I think the right response to this is to have some kind of throttle (perhaps to the head, but I really mean to limit the frequency of posts to some number per day, possibly including 0, for some period of time). I don’t know if this is possible with the underlying technology but we can ask Chad.
These wacky posts are relatively recent though (Edit, I double checked and the key offender has been a member for about 48 hours). I had hoped that the posters would just get tired of posting drivel, but it seems that hasn’t happened. I agree that it requires some kind of intervention.
It is true that we haven’t banned people for just being boring and stupid, but if the quantity of drivel gets to be so high it starts to crowd out WC classics like nofap and colon-cleansing, it may be time to consider. I suspect this can be handled with leser measures than banning.
I caught the tail end of Isildurrr’s time and it just seemed to be anti-american sentiment smatterd with truths that were ‘abrasive’ . The Abu Gharib pics served to make a point though unpleasant and a few other points like the behavior of Westerners in certain South East Asian countries were true as can be seen by the ongoing diplomatic issue b/w Indonesia and Australia.
I have no idea who Blake is but the others just seem extremely naive and innocent , while there can be frustration it seems a strange idea to ban people for posting drivel yet allowing ‘offensive’ content to stand. I’m not really bothered but a ‘report to moderator’ button with a follow up link asking the reason would be simple enough to implement and could probably help this place become cleaner.
Discriminating based on the level of grammar proficiency seems an extremely stupid idea given that as more and more people start looking at finance as a viable career route from ‘emerging’ markets and non-anglo reigons it is almost certain that English will not be their first language and perhaps early life-circumstances have not given them the opportunity to become fluent with the language.
I’ve been here 7+ years, and every year I notice 5-7 dedicated posters drop off. It’s normal. Last I checked, the late great Frankie S. Arabia didn’t leave the forum because of recent trolling.
The biggest challenge to this site was when they changed the colors and format a few years ago. That saw the greatest amount of departures and I made the wrong decision not to follow their lead.
Who are the people who have stopped posting consistently?
Other than JDV, everyone on the main leader board still posts here. I chat with numi offline sometimes and he has been busy but he’ll be back I’m sure. The rest post here daily or at least weekly.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have banned the troll(s) swiftly and without mercy long ago. No, I would have slapped them around for a while first and then banned them. But I don’t think it’s causing regulars to leave and the Dub-C will survive this.
^It may not be causing regulars to leave, but it certainly sucks for those of us who have stuck around. And it will prevent new cool posters from joining.