What does it take to be banned from this site?

[VernonDozier]

126 posts, 72 of them negative. Anyone who has been to the C++ forum lately knows who I am referring to. He hits all the forums out there. They've all banned him. That's his game. How long can he post complete drivel till he gets banned? He's been around here for five days and 126 posts, which has to be a record. Then he creates other fake users and uses them till they're banned. Sites tend to IP ban him, but he gets around that. But he hasn't had to do that here. He's still around with his original name even though he was thoroughly outed as a serial troll days ago.

Daniweb, if it wants to have a reputation as the place to go for serious people to exchange serious ideas, needs to crack down hard on this kind of trolling. Five days is four too many for this guy since it was clear from day one who he was, plus he SAID he had been banned from other sites, plus other people who had run into him chimed in and alerted everyone if anyone hadn't realized. This place is going to get the reputation as THE place for 16 year old trolls to go and waste everyone's time. Is that the reputation it wants? The really weird and sad thing is that he's gotten some superb technical responses to quite a few of his inane posts. The responses, on average, have been far superior to what most people get.

[happygeek]

Flag the posts as bad, they will appear in the reported posts forum and the mods/myself will then investigate and take any appropriate action.

<later>

Ah, looks like you did that and he has, indeed, now been banned after having received warnings about his behavior initially.

[peter_budo]

@VernonDozier the person was closely monitored due to previous circumstances. However majority of the posts been with in rules so we couldn't "interfere". When something went over the line appropriate steps been taken.

[VernonDozier]

>> @VernonDozier the person was closely monitored due to previous circumstances. However majority of the posts been with in rules so we couldn't "interfere". When something went over the line appropriate steps been taken.

Isn't the fact that he was posting in bad faith (i.e. purporting to want answers, but not really) against the rules? If you take it on a post by post "worm's-eye" view, there was no single post that violated a rule (keep it clean, no flaming, etc.) egregiously enough to warrant an immediate ban. But if you look at the totality of the posts, once it was clearly established that he was purely a troll rather than a regular misbehaving/uncouth member, judging the post by whether it breaks a "keep it clean" standard seems to be the wrong approach and even the most politely phrased post is provocative in that the intent is to simply p*ss people off. His mere existence on the forum at all would seem a violation. A new rule is needed: "Keep it honest...Don't waste people's time asking questions if you don't care about the answers."

[peter_budo]

There are some hot heads that thin it is OK to talk people in the same way as they do with their mates, "you must be stupid to think I didn't try..." and getting in more abusive terms. Warning cooled down many of these, the other either left or been "moved"

Pretending to be answering question and making lousy comments is not against the rules. Also daniweb community doesn't take it kindly and guilty person usually feel through their reputation overview. Once it established that person is ignoring attempts for moderation and change of attitude, then we imply first warning that can be later followed by infraction/s, which after accumulating 10 points lead to ban.

The case in discussion is one of the few that occurs once in a while and are just rare. Applying rules as suggested by you is not good idea.

I believe there is not a one person with certain amount of posts and regularity of posting that did not get in an argument about something while posting here...

[lexusdominus]

thanks for fixing this problem, it was quite surprising, really

[crunchie]

A new rule is needed: "Keep it honest...Don't waste people's time asking questions if you don't care about the answers."

Problem with that approach is that it is very subjective. How does anyone 'know' that I really want my question(s) answered?

[happygeek]

Yep. The whole point of the rules here at DaniWeb is to take an objective view of what is and isn't allowed, so that all members can be treated equally. Some years ago it was a much more subjective thing, and we ended up with different mods interpreting the same post in different ways and members getting hugely confused as to what they could and couldn't post.

The current system isn't perfect (I doubt any forum community management system will ever achieve perfection) but since we rejigged the rules last year I think it has been working pretty well and don't see any reason to start trying to fix something that isn't really broken.

The odd twit will always bend the rules, but it is just as certain that they will also eventually break them and feel the pain of the big moderating stick when they do. :)

[VernonDozier]

Trolls are a different breed. They THRIVE on negative rep, warnings, infractions, etc. I say just skip all the preliminary steps and go straight to the ban for trolls.

>> How does anyone 'know' that I really want my question(s) answered?

Yes, that's a subjective call. Maybe even beyond subjective. Mind-reading is more like it, I suppose. I lean towards giving the benefit of the doubt. If any mod doubts someone's a troll, proceed with the normal infraction system. But everyone has a line after which doubt is no longer possible, sort of like a jury , "beyond a reasonable doubt". I like to think I spotted him right away. I can't imagine anyone wasn't convinced after say, 50 posts. My personal line would have been this thread:

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread347061.html

From this thread all by itself, troll or no troll, he's just too annoying to bother keeping around. I used to be more charitable.

Anyway, just my two cents. If it's truly as rare as you say, it may not be worth changing the rules. Again, though, he's gotten some great responses. Narue for example said something like (paraphrasing) "I know you're a troll so I'm not going to bother telling you, but for the benefit of everyone else, the answer is..." The problem is I imagine anyone doing a search will see "Uh oh. Troll thread." and never read the good responses.

[Saith]

Luckily, us "smart ones" (really the ones that truly want to find the answer by digging for it) will filter through those kind of responses and will find what we are looking for.

I've been a Daniweb member now for ~2 months, ~2 months longer than any other forum, and I still consider this a very reputable site in so far as to searching this forum prior to any other and spending my time to help others.

No matter where you go, there will be good and the bad. Seems like this site does a good job filtering those bad down to a minimum. I say keep up the good work to the admin's and keep up with the great responses to those that are giving positive criticism.

[Dani]

Thanks for the positive reinforcement, Saith!

[AndreRet]

Thanks for the ban of the member. I agree that we can not just ban a member if he steps on the line. I have found that with a little tap on the fingers most "abusive" members do get back on the straight and narrow, although "spoonlicker" really asked for it.

My two cents worth.:)

I just searched for "spoonlicker". Why won't you guys (except Andre) mention his name, is it like V-v-v-voldemort? Dan-dan-daahh.

I looked at one thread in C++. Jeez, some people are dumb. He comes out with all this guff and still people waste their time in trying to answer his questions. Those guys who wasted their time in trying to help somebody who shows ZERO effort get no sympathy.

It was really entertaining though - watching 'episode by episode' as it started to dawn on one particular poster that he was a timewaster. She'd been told by others that he was a plonker, but NO, she had to keep at it. Then when her inner equilibrium became so unstable that she couldn't carry on, she gave the lamest apology for it and simply asked him to "play nice". She must have spent hours on those posts.

I'm glad you didn't delete the posts too. I'll be searching his other posts when there's nothing else on the TV. Now that's what I call entertainment!

[Dcurvez]

it is such a shame that people dont have anything better to do in their lives except play games with other people that do have a life..

and what is even sadder is that one day this "spoonlicker' WILL come upon something in his little pathetic life that he will classify as a mission..and then he will run across some other little low life pathetic excuse of a brainwave to lead him around by the nose ring in a frantic cause of degradeing(spelling) and time wasting..

[chrishea]

I just read through one of the Spoonlicker threads and as Ardav pointed out, it's quite amazing that as one person realized that it was a waste of time and gave up, someone else would jump in and keep it going some more. It's too bad that we can't have some annual awards. There are positive categories like Most Interesting Question or Most Thorough Answer but then there are a bunch of others like Most Gullible, Laziest Person Posing as a Programmer and so forth. You have to get cheap entertainment wherever you can!

[AndreRet]

I just found louwee in the vb4/5/6 forums, another trawler or maybe the same with another user profile. He/she posted in a few threads words like bla bla bla etc.

Did anyone pick up something else from this a*#? I saw he posted on 5 threads with the same bla bla. Hopefully the mods will ban this *&%^&^%.;)

[peter_budo]

@AndreRet I sorted one of the threads, but in case of second one I cannot open it (getting empty page). I left message for Dani to have look at it.

[AndreRet]

I also got the empty page. This page also turns up blank. He only posted an hour ago on all these threads, twice on the first blank page.

[peter_budo]

I also got the empty page. This page also turns up blank. He only posted an hour ago on all these threads, twice on the first blank page.

Because it is same thread :D

[AndreRet]

Hehehe, no brain no gain!!!:)

[Ezzaral]

You can view that thread again now. There was a post in the middle that was causing a parsing problem. I deleted it and it's fine now.