What to do? Both of these users have been IP banned several times. As of now, I don’t think The_Edge is back, but I’d put good money that he will be. challa is Monkey.d.luffy plus at least two other accounts that have been banned. He doesn’t waste much time creating a new account.
Problem: IP banning doesn’t work and anyone can make a new account with an anonymous email address. Those that continue to come back after being repeatedly banned are highly toxic to the community and need to be permanently lanced from AF like the boils they are.
Possible solutions:
New users must register with a valid work or student email (like we did way back in the day). People already here using a free email account would be grandfathered in, but any new members wouldn’t be able to use free email providers.
Does this site have the ability to shadow ban users? That is, can we ban a user so that their comments/threads are hidden from everyone else but they think they can be seen? This highly annoys the trolls and would provide some relief, though still only temporarily.
Me (and other mods) going around deleting every thread/comment made by a repeat offender that deserves another ban but we know it won’t do anything (e.g. challa). Not censoring individual posts, but deleting every single thing they post. A mod-ban, if you will. Takes a bit of work, but seemed to be pretty effective with The_Edge.
An ignore feature. Would be nice, but as Chad pointed out a while back, advertisers would still see the content so not ideal (though would be nice for users and the lack of replies may make the trolls so bored they may wander away on their own).
Stop feeding the trolls. I’ve been a bit more proactive with those that are guilty of always feeding the trolls. But, I’d rather not spend time slapping the wrists of otherwise good AFers.
A voting system. For the love of god, a voting system. Once your comment has netted -5 votes, your comment is automatically hidden (yes, exactly like reddit). You know why subreddits like gonewild (you know you’ve been there) aren’t full of creeps and jerks in the comments section? Those trolls get downvoted to oblivion and after a while they stop even trying. If AF is to remain a completely accessible forum (i.e. anyone can sign up using a free email provider) then we need more community enforcement. I’ve pointed out the positive aspects of a voting system before so I won’t belabor this too much, but think of a user like Purealpha. He doesn’t deserve a ban but he’s one hell of annoying poster in the WC. However, he does actually provide decent content in the Investments forum, so voting would work particularly well in his case.
That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Thoughts AF community?
If it has to come down to one of those options i’m thinking that the voting system or shadow banning may be a good first initiative and possible solution.
I wouldn’t mind registering with a work email but I know that may prevent a lot of otherwise great contributors from using the forums. Some companies may not allow you to register the email because of cyber security policies etc. Also, people change jobs fairly frequently or become unemployed and then the work email is de-activated.
Ignore feature would result in disjointed incoherent threads because you would have some people replying to trolls and others replying to the person replying but not the troll (it would be chaos).
^And it certainly does not have to be limited to my original suggestions. Those were just what popped into my head.
Sidebar: During an enlightening conversation with Challa over PM, I did tell him I’d start this thread and to join in the discussion, defend his actions, etc. Does he have the stones to show up? Methinks not.
I fucking find it hilarious a few white boy jokes have triggered you ( someone known for rape, black and bombing Arab jokes in the past) to start acting like a pretentious wanker on a crusade for the greater good of the forum. It is fitting that the only person as pretentious as you is an White Trump supporter who would be more at home milking a cow than riding a buffallo is now trying to act rational whilst being a two faced piece of shit. It is not surprising that this environment gave rise to a white hick masquerading as a black man.
There is nothing in my posts which are ‘racist’ and funnily enough if some of these touchy pink bastards didn’t whinge about it so much while simultaneously crying because everyone is too touchy now it would not even be funny anymore so blow me faggot.
Ps: still fucking hilarious you tried to explain to me that the arrangement you wanted was not of cuckolding. Defensive much
Another option is to swing the banhammer much more quickly with new users that are obviously duplicates of old accounts (or just come out of the gates being an asshat). For example, ban Challa today, wait for 3-5 days to see what new member pops up in the WC, notice by their 10 post they’re back to making the same inflammatory remarks, ban immediately. Do this over and over. Eventually, they will probably get bored and move on.
As I’ve said before, this site waits way too long to ban spammers, which leads to it having no effect (as they get months out of each new username). The other site I always reference, that is very clean and civil and full of fantastic conversion, would ban that racist minutes after the above post, and delete the post. Their rule is simple; you get one warning, them banhammer. And so people know this, and choose not to misbehave, they do so on a different site (here). It’s all about how humans calculate risk/return. Misbehaving on this site, is like criminalizing in the US government, why not?!
A points system is just groupthink rule-by-mob, which is already a problem for robotic finance people. Correct analyses will always be unpopular. Example: we’d all downvote Turd, those posts would be hidden or he would be banned, and then we wouldn’t see the Trump win coming.
Not responding to trolls will never work. A gifted troll is, by their nature, gifted at reading your psyche and baiting in just the way that will make you respond. And there are various types of trolls: provocateurs like me who try to get the dummies to think, and then racists like Monkey.
Down vote or verified identity (via email or some other means). Heavy moderation would also work, but given the demographics of our board I just don’t think we have moderators that are active enough to do that. Probably best to make it a system change and not increasing man hours
In order to fix some or majority of the problems plagued by AF (along with many other anonymous online forums) - expert syndrome in fields including but not limited to social politics, social science, economics, finance, accounting, etc AND know it all comments and extreme negative and racist and berating comments - we should connect AF accounts to LinkedIn accounts. Of course we need to have LinkedIn profile as a link for everyone to see once you are a member of the AF family. Anyone who is not a member of AF or without login credentials cannot view our threads.
The above method is very similar to that of SumZero site. Those who are also members of SumZero can concur.
You did not consider that Trolls with multiple accounts may downvote you and other users on WC as well?
Proxy may solve for IP ban.
Who will play the God and judge who is a troll and who is a “normal poster”? And will such recognition criteria be known ex ante and transparent and consistent toward any member always and ever?
Only not much intelligent person would log in with corporate e-mail address on any Internet forum with due respect toward AF.
Just my $ 0.02
Disclaimer: I do not use multiple accounts but some of statements by OP are annoying although personally I’m not angry or upset with you or anyone.
If there’ll be someone else helping STL the whole $hitshow would be over. Also the fact that the_edge is back as streetfighter and the monkey guy is posting stupid stuff again and again seems to suggest that the trolls don’t get the hammer as often as necessary.The monkey guy has been around with this handle for at least a month, the edge has been around a tad longer than a month with the new handle. I think STL enjoys their presence to some extent cause it gives him his authenticity and sense of self worth just like how cops like the quasi rough but not too rough neighborhoods better than some rich boring neighborhood.
The IP ban isn’t a viable option. It’s very easy to get around it and in the long term may cause problems for people who share the same IP ( something pretty common even with the small AF population ) the only solution is to have at least two other mods who ban the offenders right away. Luckily they all have the same pattern which falls into one of these categories:
The Rahul Roy archetype: Clueless and naive Indian whose making mistakes and posting stupid stuff until people get angry. We all remember the endless posts about Indian gods, SRK abs, and Standford University with the whole Thank Jargon associated with it.
The monkey guy who posts anti west/ anti white stuff all the time. He’s pretty direct and doesn’t give a damn. Posts again and again.
The_Edge , hustler, cooler, Atush, who posts anti immigrant, Anti Indian stuff all the time albeit being an immigrant himself.Also there’s the late night drunk poems at night which are pretty fun to read and hard to comprehend.
Turd, I don’t find him a troll, he just goes on making endless threads when he’s high or drunk or something.
As I have mentioned above just connect AF to linkedin profile…all fixed…Without it…you’re out and people on the out cannot view our threads…This will make our population smaller but more productive and civilized. A lot of these “expert” comments on politics, social sciences, and economics blah blah turn people off…With a LinkedIn profile, picture, educational attainment, experience it makes it a little tough to go all out expert mode and know it all mode when you went to Southern Akron University and work as client portfolio manager in Akron…and/or makes it little tough to be neo Nazis on a forum with your profile on it.
This is one of the notions propagated in the past few years, that people who have real expertise in areas should be ignored or viewed with suspicion of having ulterior motives. Its lead to things like people arguing against climate change, or acting like they know better than any number of actually knowledgable people on a technical subject.
And to be clear cw, the issue isn’t so much qualifications as it is that if people in the real world knew you were making these insane “views” of yours public, they’d shun you, and that that’d influence you to change your behavior here. Personally I think the issue is that stl should just be much more lenient with swinging the ban hammer.