Is Countertrolling a Troll The Answer

[JayhawkCO]

It's somewhat striking to me that HighwayStar, who has been relatively quiet for a while, has suddenly reappeared right after MMM was banned.

HighwayStar reappeared before MMM's ban, not after.

And he's not a troll. Just has some unpopular opinions that come up quite often.

[JoePCool14]

I think part of the reason is that the mod team is super dwindled at this point. A lot of the admins are barely active on the forum anymore, and it seems like you do almost all of the modding at this point, with JN Winkler and the other Scott doing a bit. There used to be like 5-6 mods doing active modding.

How many mods do we really need around here? AARoads is a small forum compared to others I've participated in over the years (not that that's a bad thing). There's not that many posts that the mods can't handle it.

I'd still be okay with introducing some new staff though. In the event that someone has to leave or goes inactive for months or years, we have others to step up and carry forum moderation culture.

[roadman65]

You have to ask yourself do you want a less moderated forum more than you want to discuss roads?

The way I see it, it’s better to be moderated as I have been attacked by trolls when I first joined. I got chastised over simple spelling errors and was bullied by one user because I liked one comment a local radio personality made not because of the merit of the comment, but whom the person on air was at the time.

Plus if we weren’t moderated that last fiasco of an election would have been argued here driving more of a rift between us users. Heck people on social media are still arguing over the 2020 election, so you can imagine what would be going on right now at AA Roads.

People are stubborn now more than ever. At one time people used to respect other’s opinion and was always interested in it regardless. You’re going to have loyalty now over personal beliefs whether religious or political and no one will budge their ideals.

[Roadgeekteen]

I think part of the reason is that the mod team is super dwindled at this point. A lot of the admins are barely active on the forum anymore, and it seems like you do almost all of the modding at this point, with JN Winkler and the other Scott doing a bit. There used to be like 5-6 mods doing active modding.

How many mods do we really need around here? AARoads is a small forum compared to others I've participated in over the years (not that that's a bad thing). There's not that many posts that the mods can't handle it.

I'd still be okay with introducing some new staff though. In the event that someone has to leave or goes inactive for months or years, we have others to step up and carry forum moderation culture.

Not saying we need more mods, but we have less than we used to.

[roadman65]

We indeed do. It seems many are committed to their own lives and finding good candidates is getting to be a thing. Plus who would want to do it?

What I’m glad is one specific moderator is gone as he would judge your Facebook actions on here which has nothing to do with this forum.  Despite using different names on here over social media, it’s not hard for us to distinguish ourselves on both platforms. Like I already know who Froggie is on FB, who Max Rockatansky is on social sites, as well as whom NE2 used to be originally as he was one that was a popular internet roads site host without snark then.

[jeffandnicole]

It's somewhat striking to me that HighwayStar, who has been relatively quiet for a while, has suddenly reappeared right after MMM was banned.

HighwayStar reappeared before MMM's ban, not after.

And he's not a troll. Just has some unpopular opinions that come up quite often.

And then just repeats them ad nauseum. Even when I tried to gently nudge him towards a source to whom he could provide his opinion that may actually make a difference, he offered no response, goes silent, then a week later repeated his oft-repeated opinion.

[Max Rockatansky]

We indeed do. It seems many are committed to their own lives and finding good candidates is getting to be a thing. Plus who would want to do it?

What I'm glad is one specific moderator is gone as he would judge your Facebook actions on here which has nothing to do with this forum.  Despite using different names on here over social media, it's not hard for us to distinguish ourselves on both platforms. Like I already know who Froggie is on FB, who Max Rodentsky is on social sites, as well as whom NE2 used to be originally as he was one that was a popular internet roads site host without snark then.

Now I want to see a version of Mad Max where everyone is replaced with post apocalyptic animals. 

[roadman65]

Highwaystar is the one that feels if a road don't enter a city shouldn't be signed hence Baltimore on I-70.

He would love that NJDOT uses Ewing over Trenton on mileage signs on NB I-295 because it don't go through Trenton. Or he'll like TO NJ 29 on I-195 pull throughs because I-195 don't go to Trenton either.

[Hobart]

We indeed do. It seems many are committed to their own lives and finding good candidates is getting to be a thing. Plus who would want to do it?

What I'm glad is one specific moderator is gone as he would judge your Facebook actions on here which has nothing to do with this forum.  Despite using different names on here over social media, it's not hard for us to distinguish ourselves on both platforms. Like I already know who Froggie is on FB, who Max Rodentsky is on social sites, as well as whom NE2 used to be originally as he was one that was a popular internet roads site host without snark then.

Now I want to see a version of Mad Max where everyone is replaced with post apocalyptic animals.

Honestly, I would quite enjoy this.

[hbelkins]

Yes. This is what I want. We're not Twitter Usenet/misc.transport.road, we're not obligated to allow everyone to join. We want to be open to all, but if you harm the overall forum, you're out.

Which is why I will always prefer MTR to any moderated forum. I think all voices should be given an opportunity to be heard, and the decision on whether to hear them or not should lie with the listener.

Might as well give that deceased equine another swat... 

You should have supported Bugo's forum when he had it.

If you're referring to BIP Roads, I did join it and tried to participate, but it got hacked early on and didn't last.

Which is why I will always prefer MTR to any moderated forum.

I don't believe this, considering you post here and not on MTR. Why don't you post on MTR? Because the signal to noise ratio is too low. Which is because there's nobody there that can remove noise.

I read MTR regularly. I no longer have a Usenet provider (Newsguy went belly-up and I haven't bothered to look into any of the other providers so I can download binaries) so I use Google Groups to read MTR. Lately it's been overrun with spammers trying to sell credit card numbers. (That must be the new generic Viagra equivalent for 2023.) Occasionally an on-topic post will float through; sometimes it's a new post and sometimes it's a reply to a very old post. And that still seems to be where Calrog hangs out. The lack of availability of Usenet access seems to be the biggest culprit in the format's demise. And the overall decline of Usenet has been discussed here and elsewhere very often; it traces back to a former New York attorney general (Spitzer?) going after ISPs because their Usenet feeds had some binary groups that contained child porn.

When I first got dialup Internet access, my local provider told me they carried the standard AT&T Usenet feed. Years later, when I had AT&T DSL service, AT&T discontinued their Usenet access around the same time that AOL, which got credit/blame for an influx of Usenet users outside an academic environment when it began offering Usenet access, dropped its availability.

I used to read a crapload of newsgroups, but truth be told I have lost a lot of interest in a lot of the subjects I once followed. I no longer root for UK basketball for reasons that are not allowed to be discussed here. So there went rec.sport.basketball.college. A lot of my interest in NASCAR has waned over the years for a whole lot of reasons. Bye to rec.autos.sport.nascar. My favorite radio personality is dead. So there's no need to read alt.fan.rush-limbaugh. I quit watching pro wrestling eons ago so rec.sport.pro-wrestling is off the table. I've stopped keeping up with new developments in the Macintosh computer world so I don't have much need to read the comp.sys.mac.* groups.

It also doesn't help that Thoth, my Mac newsreader, hasn't been updated in about two decades and doesn't play well with newer Mac OSes. Unison also seems to have gone dormant and I found it quirky to navigate.

I stayed active in the Yahoo groups until the plug was pulled on them, although participation had dropped drastically.

I'm not sure what's replaced Usenet and the Yahoo groups. Social media, probably, but it has a lot of drawbacks. Not only do you have to deal with the arbitrary terms of service, but various group administrators have their own policies to which you have to adhere. One group has strict standards about photo quality, but will allow you to post any crappy video you want. That seems very inconsistent to me.

The fact is that this forum is the default. It's either talk about roads here, or nowhere.

Yes. This is what I want. We're not Twitter Usenet/misc.transport.road, we're not obligated to allow everyone to join. We want to be open to all, but if you harm the overall forum, you're out.

Which is why I will always prefer MTR to any moderated forum. I think all voices should be given an opportunity to be heard, and the decision on whether to hear them or not should lie with the listener.

Might as well give that deceased equine another swat... 

Something I agree with HBelkins on!

Free speech absolutism is not the panacea you think it is.

The answer to speech you don't like is not to silence the speaker. It's either to counter what is said, or to turn off your receiver. If a song comes on the radio that I don't like, I can turn the radio off.

If you didn't like what someone posted on MTR, you could killfile them. If you don't like their tweets, you can block or mute them on Twitter. That way, you're not subjected to things you disagree with, but it's still there for anyone else who wants to see it.

[Scott5114]

The fact is that this forum is the default. It's either talk about roads here, or nowhere.

And the reason it is the default is, in my view, because it is a moderated forum. This forum began when MTR was still the focal point of the roadgeek community. Once this forum opened, most people from MTR shifted here. The only selling point that this forum really had over MTR was that it was moderated. And that was why people voted with their feet–moderation was a ticket out of having to pick through Carl Rogers and "Laura Bush Murdered Her Boyfriend" and spammers and whatever other dross.

Thing is, someone else could very easily start another attempt at an unmoderated roads forum at any time. Lack of moderation had nothing to do with Biproads getting hacked and going down, so far as I know (I didn't participate in it so I may be missing something). The fact that nobody has tried before or since Biproads kind of says to me that there's just not a market for that product.

If you didn't like what someone posted on MTR, you could killfile them. If you don't like their tweets, you can block or mute them on Twitter. That way, you're not subjected to things you disagree with, but it's still there for anyone else who wants to see it.

Unless, of course, your ISP never carried a Usenet feed, and you didn't have the means to pay for one from some other provider. Then you were stuck with Google Groups, which had no killfile capability at the time this forum was founded.

My opinion of MTR was always that it sort of sucked. The serious, on-topic discussions were good if you could find them. But that was always a big if.

[Rothman]

Yes. This is what I want. We're not Twitter Usenet/misc.transport.road, we're not obligated to allow everyone to join. We want to be open to all, but if you harm the overall forum, you're out.

Which is why I will always prefer MTR to any moderated forum. I think all voices should be given an opportunity to be heard, and the decision on whether to hear them or not should lie with the listener.

Might as well give that deceased equine another swat... 

You should have supported Bugo's forum when he had it.

If you're referring to BIP Roads, I did join it and tried to participate, but it got hacked early on and didn't last.

Which is why I will always prefer MTR to any moderated forum.

I don't believe this, considering you post here and not on MTR. Why don't you post on MTR? Because the signal to noise ratio is too low. Which is because there's nobody there that can remove noise.

I read MTR regularly. I no longer have a Usenet provider (Newsguy went belly-up and I haven't bothered to look into any of the other providers so I can download binaries) so I use Google Groups to read MTR. Lately it's been overrun with spammers trying to sell credit card numbers.

So...MTR and BipRoads were your ideal environments and they both went to crap because of a lack of moderation.  If one desires a quality road forum, it would appear AARoads provides one while the others do/did not.  Therefore, whatever principles are behind the support of the dysfunctional MTR and BipRoads are not well-founded.

Reminds me of the Libertarian utopia of Grafton, NH and how the bears came in...

[hbelkins]

So...MTR and BipRoads were your ideal environments and they both went to crap because of a lack of moderation.  If one desires a quality road forum, it would appear AARoads provides one while the others do/did not.  Therefore, whatever principles are behind the support of the dysfunctional MTR and BipRoads are not well-founded.

Reminds me of the Libertarian utopia of Grafton, NH and how the bears came in...

I don't know anything about BipRoads' moderation practices. The moderation there had nothing to do with them being unrecoverably hacked.

[Rothman]

So...MTR and BipRoads were your ideal environments and they both went to crap because of a lack of moderation.  If one desires a quality road forum, it would appear AARoads provides one while the others do/did not.  Therefore, whatever principles are behind the support of the dysfunctional MTR and BipRoads are not well-founded.

Reminds me of the Libertarian utopia of Grafton, NH and how the bears came in...

I don't know anything about BipRoads' moderation practices. The moderation there had nothing to do with them being unrecoverably hacked.

A lassiez-faire approach to administration would lead to being vulnerable to hacking.

[Scott5114]

So...MTR and BipRoads were your ideal environments and they both went to crap because of a lack of moderation.  If one desires a quality road forum, it would appear AARoads provides one while the others do/did not.  Therefore, whatever principles are behind the support of the dysfunctional MTR and BipRoads are not well-founded.

Reminds me of the Libertarian utopia of Grafton, NH and how the bears came in...

I don't know anything about BipRoads' moderation practices. The moderation there had nothing to do with them being unrecoverably hacked.

A lassiez-faire approach to administration would lead to being vulnerable to hacking.

That's a false equivalency. Server security protocols have nothing to do with enforcing user conduct rules on a forum.

When my own site was hacked it was because I was a bit too liberal setting the 'write' permission on a directory that should have been read-only.

[Rothman]

So...MTR and BipRoads were your ideal environments and they both went to crap because of a lack of moderation.  If one desires a quality road forum, it would appear AARoads provides one while the others do/did not.  Therefore, whatever principles are behind the support of the dysfunctional MTR and BipRoads are not well-founded.

Reminds me of the Libertarian utopia of Grafton, NH and how the bears came in...

I don't know anything about BipRoads' moderation practices. The moderation there had nothing to do with them being unrecoverably hacked.

A lassiez-faire approach to administration would lead to being vulnerable to hacking.

That's a false equivalency. Server security protocols have nothing to do with enforcing user conduct rules on a forum.

When my own site was hacked it was because I was a bit too liberal setting the 'write' permission on a directory that should have been read-only.

I don't know.  Given my little experience with BipRoads, it certainly seemed "hands-off" in all aspects.  The approaches to moderation and administration certainly seemed to stem from the same mentality: "Let's just get it going and let it go..."

[Roadgeekteen]

Stumbled across Biproads twitter. I get bad vibes from it.

[Rothman]

Stumbled across Biproads twitter. I get bad vibes from it.

Heh.  The fact Biproads is on Twitter stupefies me.  

[kphoger]

Maybe better wording on my part would have been "directed at someone else".

Thing is, this forum is diverse enough that nearly any form of bigotry will be seen by a member of the group (race, sexual orientation, gender identity, whatever) it is targeted to. At that point it is directed toward them, and why should we make members of our forum have to choose between putting up with that or leaving the forum?

Put another way, if some guy writes "Everyone who lives in Wichita, Kansas is a sucker", that isn't worded so that it's "directed at" you and Jonathan. But yet there's no way you would read that and not come to the conclusion that guy thinks you're a sucker. Now substitute that for something that's a whole lot hateful than calling someone a sucker and you begin to see the problem.

If someone from, say, Long Island said that everyone in Kansas is a redneck who marries their sibling and don't doesn't even deserve consideration, then I don't think that person should be banned from the forum for thinking that–despite what that implies he must think about Jonathan and me.  But, if that same person started accusing me personally of something like that, would you honestly not see a difference?  There's a difference.

So...general racism and homophobia are tolerable...

Depends on your definition of 'tolerable'.  If you mean that racist and homophobic beliefs should be 'excused or forgiven', then no.  But if you mean that racist and homophobic beliefs should be 'tolerated or endured', then yes.

Sure, Kyle might just laugh off being called a sucker and carry on about his day. But there's also the chance that he'll say "Well, gee, if I can just be called a sucker and everyone's okay with it, I don't feel very welcome here, so I'm going to quit posting."

If someone is willing to leave the forum because they are not allowed to call anyone a sucker, chances are they're not the sort of person worth having on the forum to begin with, since they clearly don't know how to interact with others in a polite, non-abrasive way.

To which my response is the same as it was seven years ago.  Calling names isn't the same thing as having a well-articulated belief that others find offensive to their own worldview.  As I said back then:

More to the point, though, the arguments I've found myself in have all for the most part been intelligent and reasonable, with other members legitimately expressing their opinions and keeping their personal attacks against me to a clear minimum. I have not often been subjected to quick verbal slaps like "yawn", vulgarity, and the like.

If a member takes offense at a clearly presented, thought-out reply from someone of a contrary opinion, then maybe that member is not cut out to be part of an online forum. But I should also say that cutting, personal attacks using coarse language are both intended to and should be expected to upset the other party. Allowing that sort of behavior without censure is tacitly promoting an atmosphere of unwelcome and discord. New members will feel like leaving, veteran members will feel like disappearing, and the amicable exchange of experience and ideas that aaroads should be devolves into a clique.

[SEWIGuy]

Which is why I will always prefer MTR to any moderated forum.

I don't believe this, considering you post here and not on MTR. Why don't you post on MTR? Because the signal to noise ratio is too low. Which is because there's nobody there that can remove noise.

The golden age of usenet groups was great. By and large there wasn't much noise - there was kind of a gentlemen's agreement to stick to the topics at hand. That, and because of the lack of anonymity, there just wasn't a lot of trolling.

But it all started to fall apart when Google Groups became the primary way for people to access usenet. After that, web-based moderated forums like this became the norm.  Because people like to have SOME rules in these forums - complete free speech without any rules makes it unbearable.

[Molandfreak]

I knew I'd have to answer for this eventually...

First off, biproads was never hacked. It just got very low viewership and retention of posters because it didn't really have a reason to exist. I was way too online at that point and wanted to be angry for no reason at all, so naturally being a mod there sounded like a power trip I was glad to take. Just weeks later, I found myself in a new job I hated with practically no free time to post anywhere, including here. The biproads forum ended a couple months later due to lack of interest on everyone else's part, too.

I quickly became ashamed of myself, and even more so as months turned into years. I assumed that I became persona non grata here because of the way I conducted myself until Alps messaged me and said I was missed in the chat room. I started showing up to the chat room infrequently for quite a while, sometimes wondering if I would be greeted with pitchforks and torches if I showed myself in the main forum again. I DMed Scott with regrets about my conduct years ago, and he didn't remember what I was talking about. With that reassurance, I was able to comfortably return to the forum and haven't spoken out about this until now. I have grown a great deal since then and I'm glad to have made peace with the mods here.

[Rothman]

So...general racism and homophobia are tolerable...

Depends on your definition of 'tolerable'.  If you mean that racist and homophobic beliefs should be 'excused or forgiven', then no.  But if you mean that racist and homophobic beliefs should be 'tolerated or endured', then yes.

Nah.  Racists and homophobes need to be reformed, which is the opposite of tolerated.

[kphoger]

Racists and homophobes need to be reformed, which is the opposite of tolerated.

And making rules to prevent them voicing their beliefs will ... somehow ... reform them?  Isn't civilized conversation actually a better means to that end?

[Max Rockatansky]

So...general racism and homophobia are tolerable...

Depends on your definition of 'tolerable'.  If you mean that racist and homophobic beliefs should be 'excused or forgiven', then no.  But if you mean that racist and homophobic beliefs should be 'tolerated or endured', then yes.

Nah.  Racists and homophobes need to be reformed, which is the opposite of tolerated.

That's flawed logic assuming they all can be or even want to be reformed.

[kphoger]

Meanwhile, |Beltway|, long-term member and still 32nd in total posts (currently), left the forum 2½ years ago because he felt the moderation practices had made it an unwelcoming place for someone with his political beliefs.