This guy showed up and posted 20 lol's in 20 threads. I then noticed he was creating a thread in free thoughts. I immediately figured he was our handbag salesman. So, I started giving him infractions for meaningless post content to stop him. Well, he got one thread in before I could ban him. I saw that the thread wasn't about handbags but about ufo's and conspiracy stuff. I had thought to quit the infraction spree because it wasn't advertising like I thought, but I checked his profile and he was creating another thread in World Events. I figure he was about to post a thread with links to the same web sites about Ufo's and whatever. So, I finished up my infraction spree and banned him. http://www.sciforums.com/member.php?u=25961 I've informed Spurious of the cleanup needed in his forum. I've not informed Absane or Vslayer about the thread in their forum, it has some limited content so is up to their discretion. If they allow it to stay, I'll delete my posts in the thread. I must say that it was a pain in the ass going through all this to beat a spammer to the punch. But, it was a tad exciting. A race to the finish line. Does anyone think I overstepped my authority in making this call? Edit: Apparently Absane decided that the thread was spam. It's been deleted. Now only his 20 lol's remain.
I deleted the thread because I figured he joined just to advertise his website. If he wanted to start a serious dicussion, he would not have spammed SF.
I've just come online. I'll take a look at his posts, clean up as necessary, and consider a ban if it is warranted. Stay tuned.
That was my original thought when I started this thread. It's fairly obvious that the guy was a troll. Or, rather, a spammer. The 20 lol's followed by thread creation was enough to determine that. But, are the actions I took acceptable to the users of this forum? I don't like this infraction business, but I used it as my only recourse to deal with a spammer. And it felt good....
Normally I only report spam - but do not give infractions - and then let the mods/adms decide what to do - if everybody gives infractions , you might end up with 1000 infractions for one post ......
No, only one infraction can be given per post. However, this does not stop users from giving infractions to other posts.
Oh - I didn´t know that .... A Happy New Year to you Absane .... I am leaving now , but will be back next year ... :m:
Of course it is. It's the new Shop-A-Neighbour policy, a la Germany, 1933. The only difference is that this is a misguided democratic initiative, not deliberate oppression. The atmosphere of fear, suspicion and panic generated is much the same though (minus the shop-burning). But.. I wish you'd stop going on about it. You mention it in every post. It won't last. We beat them then, and we'll beat them again. Vive la Résistance. Stop being such a pathetic whiner.
It can be. So far, only two people have been banned by infractions... err. Excuse me... "suspended" by infractions. Metakron. And now Sexy Joe. I have already spoken against Metakron's banning and succeeded in getting one of his infractions reversed thus ending his banning after only one day. I still think that the other infractions were unwarranted. That, at most, one infraction should have resulted from a mini-rant that he went on. (Although, personally, I have no issues with rants and reasonable insults and don't feel that he should have even had a single infraction for his tirade.) Now, Sexy Joe is a completely different matter. He was clearly a spammer. He signed up and proceeded to post "lol" in 20 threads so as to achieve the ability to post a link. As soon as he gained this ability, he proceeded to create threads. Now. After reading his first thread, I was inclined to let him go as it wasn't really the "buy this handbag" kind of spam that I had thought it might be. It was, instead, just a couple of links to a ufo site and invitation to talk about ufo stuff. Of course, this is basically spam as it invites the user to some other place to discuss rather than discussing it here. But, whatever. Anyway. As I said, I then checked his profile and saw he was creating another thread. I had little doubt that he was preparing to spam the forums with threads with links to his ufo site and that was his sole purpose here. So, I decided to finish up my infraction spree and ban him. So. I took the power of supermoderator and/or admin upon myself using infractions. This is a rather open/shut case regarding Sexy Joe, but the difficulties lie in more ambiguous cases. Hence, this thread. Edit: Heh. Sexy Joe is on right now. Sending "forum feedback". Maybe he thinks I acted inappropriately? The idiot didn't need to spam the forum to post his thread. The only thing he gained from the spam is the ability to post a link. He could have posted the link without the http and asked people to copy-paste it into the browser. Of course, his threads still would have been deleted as spam.
I have no difficulty about Sexy Joe. He was just completely meaningless. I'm always in favor of giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone who tries to make some kind of statement. Some people aren't.
And, note that the infractions were "meaningless post content" (except for one mistaken "improper language"), only worth 3 points. I could have chosen "spammed advertisements" as it was apparent that this is what he was getting ready for. But, he wasn't advertising yet. I could have banned him with 5 spam infractions. Instead of 7 trolls.
Why is he that he was banned almost immediately but sderenzi wasn't and Baron Max hasn't? After all, whose picture do you see when you look up "troll"? If we want to talk about useless posts (in your parlance, "meaningless post content", I could easily find many 'prominent' people who SHOULD be banned for being trolls.
He posted in 20 threads. One word. "Lol" Then he started making spam threads. You can't equate this with Baron Max and/or Sderenzi. They are hated for whatever reasons, but they are not spammers.
