Discussion on:

Five online behaviors that are overused and misapplied

Trolling, creeping, or linkbaiting (more properly flame-baiting), and then claiming to be "just expressing an opinion" when called on it. But I'm only speaking hypothetically.

I think that one looks something like this:

6. Dissembling

People who engage in poor online citizenship such as trolling, flamebaiting, personal attacks (including "argumentum ad hitlerium"), scathing flames at straw men, and other such poor sportsmanship, often try to cover for themselves in patently dishonest ways. Some of the most common tactics include accusing victims of firing the first volley or otherwise inviting the attack, claiming misunderstanding that is the reader's fault when the "misunderstood" statements denotatively mean exactly what the reader said (s)he thought the writer was saying, and pretending to have been testing people to see if they would act unreasonably.

I've seen that go around a bit, as have you. For some reason, specific examples seem to elude me just now.

"argumentum ad hitlerium." I can't wait to start using this.

Not so much here at TR but a couple of other forums I peruse, it seems a number
of the participants place some sort of high value on being the "first to comment".
I've noticed it more at I, Cringely than other places I haunt, seems almost after
each blog, there is a battle over who can make the first comment, and that
comment invariably is only "First!"...yeah, yeah, here's your medal, now go away
since you have nothing meaningful to say.

Like Loverock Davidson advocating Windows Phone over anything on sister site ZDNet.

LOL. It's like listening to a SnakeOil salesman, or soap-box preacher.

That's just Linus letting his hair down and venting some steam... pretty convincing, eh?

And what about the folks that reply just to agree, like "I totally agree!" That's it, nothing else to contribute. He/she just wanted everyone on the site to know that he/she agreed with the article or a comment on the article.... Don't you agree? ;>

nt.

Again, though, a lot of that can depend on the atmosphere/mood of the board in question. Some message boards will have strict rules (i.e. forum rules specifically state that they don't want simple "I agree!" posts), while sometimes the person starting the topic puts in the very first post that they aren't looking for "yes-men" responses but actual dialogue.

This is really one where you have to look at a fair number of their blogs and their responses. If the blogger covers a range of topics and gives different views on different items, well, what you said is true. However, there are a few bloggers I've seen at TR and elsewhere who are very biased on certain subjects, especially certain proprietary companies, and most of their blogs and all their responses are along the lines that the company they support is correct (no matter what they do) and is always better than anything else - despite the evidence to the contrary.

This is really a case of don't claim it until you know more or you already know more.

Must admit I've not heard of this creeper thing before.

There are some bloggers, and even entire sites, that are well known to play favorites. Even then, though - they're not getting special consideration from the vendors or manufacturers they advocate - at least, not directly. They might develop tighter inside lines to those companies and get the jump on pre-release demos and goodies.

I think it is a safer bet just not to play the "you're getting kickbacks" card with writers. You want to call them on a pattern of bias and personal preference and question their subjective credibility on a particular review or opinion? I think that is fine, and probably worth exploring. Calling them a shill or suggesting they're getting kickbacks is just "playing the Hitler card". It is lazy and almost certainly inaccurate. If you've got proof of it and there is *no* disclosure in the article, then you've got a major news story and the end of that writer's career.

See what I mean?

about the overused (and, we can assume, inaccurate save for purposes of hyperbole) *shill card*! It's one accusation around here that, once posted, receives--instead of the more-customary 'upvotes'--from those who agree with its charge, a sudden litany of separate posts: near word-for-word repetitions of the accusation. Maybe if they say it enough times, it will....effectively besmirch the article via its author, who had dared speak well of a given vendor's products....

Worse yet is when someone writes an article saying something less than glowing about a particular vendor, and people accuse the author of being a shill for a competitor (or, my favorite, accuse the author of being a pro-China communist oppressor).

you have to study a lot of what they write and say before you can make any claims or accusations about a bias. I also did say there are some who have a clear bias, and you have to be aware of that before you accept what they say as gospel, which is why you should read more than one article by them and more than one article on a subject before accepting all it says as true.

I try to avoid calling people shills or the like (even if I've reason to suspect they are) but will call them out on wrong information or an unproven claim. I'll also speak about what I know from research and / or personal experience, often stating which it's from. I have found some disagreements come from different experiences of the software and equipment, also from longevity in the industry and depth of experience also plays apart in what one knows about and how they see things, as does what their job is or has been.

I was just elaborating with my own thoughts, not disagreeing with yours.

I think it probably is an overused term... although, whether a person intends to be a troll or not, I would define their behaviour as such when:
1 - they ignore facts & logic in another person's argument, and do not reply to that person's points.
2 - enter into ad-hominem attacks by trying to undermine the authority of the other person instead of arguing their points.
3 - argue their own points with no further proof than citing their credentials, which are universally irrelevant to any discussion about anything other than themselves (ie - your qualifications are no proof of anything other than the fact that you possess those qualifications, they dont even prove that you earned them, only that you have them).

...and there are plenty of people around who do this unfortunately.

You see a new forum, with some potentially interesting content -- but you also see that "some guy" who apparently doesn't have anything BETTER to do is basically "haunting" the forum, has an opinion about everything anyone else posts, has racked up ten times the number of posts of anyone else on the forum. Do you say "thank goodness for an 'ignore' list", do you simply "vote with your feet" and find somewhere else to get that same content, do you private-message the person and suggest [whatever changes come to mind, up to and including "get a life..."]?

An RV forum I belong to has two "experts", who indeed are well versed in the motorhome field.

Problem is they are jerks. If you have the temerity to disagree with them, or give advice, they go all sarcastic and venomous on you, and heaven help the fool who proves them wrong. The best one just alters his stance over several posts until he agrees with you. The other one considers it his mission to take you down. Anyhow, since they do have good advice usually, the best way to handle it is like the "Soup Nazi" episode of the Seinfeld show. I just read their posts, and avoid all other contact.

I fully agree with the label someone a Troll as a mean to try and direct the discussion against them.

You can add Homophobia, Xenophobia, Racist, Aetheist or showing curmudgeon tendancies on wasted money on political ego trips etc to this list. These also get applied with casual abandon to attempt spike someones post.

Phobia's etc mean a *strong* irrational dislike, not expressing discomfort, favouring the status quo or just plain disagreeing with Advocates or Fanbois - when challenging/questioning for statistically significant evidence.

For example - Auto-labelling someone a Homophobe, as they disagree with Gay Marriage on the basis of it undermining one of the foundations of modern society - whether you have a religious point **or not**.

They just have a different opinion on things to you, and perhaps as they actually have children may have a more valid evidence based viewpoint on the subject of rearing off-spring than say... childless gay couples.

-

Or are religious people barking mad

Or arguing against statistics on race and crime v's stereotypes where the numbers do tell inconvinient truths...

Or throwing money down the toilet on Stalineqse follies like running the Olympics in the face of financial ruin of virtually all previous attempts promising 'lasting legacies'
etc...

"Troll...too often it is applied to suggest, ???You???ve come to this forum only to engage in a debate that you know will make the regulars angry.???
...
"There are exceptions. Going into an Apple forum to pick fights over Android is trolling."

Sorry, obviously there's some semantic or philosophical difference bewteen these two statements that I fail to apprehend.

I would also like to coin a term "Trilling" which is Trolling by someone who hasn't got a clue what they're talking about.

Reading all the items on the list, I must say I am happy to be more of a consumer and less of a contributing type. If I have an opinion I write it and if someone else has an opinion they can react. I don't go searching for deeper meanings or react to someones opinion as I endorse freedom of speech.

Flaming, Trolling all these terms are quite new for me although I do understand the concepts. Perhaps the time has come to look at reactions on how you normally do this in real life. Everyone has an opinion, some are not to the point for a conversation going on. During a conversation such remarks are very often ignored in a gentle way. I suggest we take online conversations more like real life conversations and start ignoring more. Isn't being social all about ignoring each others flaws?

...so who died and made you the Hitler of netiquite??!

Straight to Godwin in one line. Beautiful.

a point...

It's 'netiquette'

by implying that it's "bad" to want to enforce even a tiny bit of "rules of etiquette" on the Internet... since I'm sure the majority of the readers will assume "Hitler = Bad". Even calling him the "Miss Manners of Netiquette" would have been less confrontational.

Of course, the use of the "/sarcasm" or "j/k" tag would have also been good, if you were going for a tongue-in-cheek response...

Overuse of smiley faces and emoticons is another peeve of mine. It has gotten to the point where they don't just look juvenile; they obviously don't even mean anything any longer. People use them as punctuation now, without even necessarily meaning anything about the intent of the message, or as a way to say "I effing hate you, but I want you to not flame me, so I'll put this stupid smiley face here to have plausible deniability about my intent if it comes to that."

Anyway, I though the obviousness of sarcasm in this case was shockingly obvious, so no additional indicators were needed.

Sometimes a poster will step into a discussion between two people but not be aware of their previous interactions. This can lead to the third party misinterpreting the relationship between the original posters, and missing cues obvious to others more familiar with the OPs.

Maybe that should be #9 - Rescuing the princess when she really wanted to be with the dragon in the first place.

I like the dragon/princess rescue metaphor.

In this case, I think it was obvious not only because of the content of the sarcastic message, but also because of the fact that others had already responded in a manner that made the sarcasm rather obvious.

Sometimes I use a smiley in a very English sense... like the attendant who gives you a tight smile and says, "Thank you, have a nice day... buh-bye"... All-the-while subtly implying they hope you get run over by a lorry on the way home.

In addition to all the other problems of smileys not necessarily meaning what the overly simplistic defenses suggest they must always mean, there's also the problem of people like you who use supposed sarcasm indicators sarcastically, further muddying the waters thanks to the obstinate insistence some people have on using ineffective indicators as sole markers of sarcasm or humor.

Words are ineffective indicators of sarcasm or humor.

Even visual cues can be sarcastic, and that's the problem. You can't solve the problem with a faux wink. You need the auditory cues or explicit disclaimers. An emoticon is too often meaningless or sarcastic for it to be any kind of reliable indicator of anything.

99% of the people I encounter "get" my sense of humor and are capable of correctly interpreting sarcasm or other nuance *most* of the time. I mean, occasionally even my wife, daughter and I misread each other. Misunderstanding happens.

Online communications *are* notoriously more difficult to convey subtle messages in - and all of the attempts to correct for that have been less than satisfactory.

Still, it seems that this is a two way street. There is a woman at the office, she is nice enough - but she has no ability to detect sarcasm. After several times joking with her and either getting a blank look or upsetting her, I just began to avoid her. When I have to deal with her, I keep the conversation as literal as possible. Abstraction or subtly just doesn't work with her. It isn't that she is dumb or humorless, she is just very literal.

I submit my 2 prior posts (above) are clear examples of trolling... opinions?

...and the biggest idiots are those who complain about who jumps into their conversations. If you're posting on your Facebook wall or someone else's, you may as well be talking loudly about a sensitive subject in a quiet restaurant. You have no business complaining about who's listening, or who wanders over to your table to join your conversation without an invitation. If you want to avoid comments, take the conversation to (real) e-mail, or (heaven forbid) the telephone. The existence of certain technologies does not automatically mean they're a good idea.

"The existence of certain technologies does not automatically mean they're a good idea."

eg nuclear weapons, facebook, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, facebook, facebook...

Your privacy settings determine who can view your posts. You can block a person from ever seeing you again. Both things I've been after TR to do in every site makeover. You see how far I've gotten. Being more like FB, in some ways wouldn't be a bad thing.

`

Facebook can change its policies and features, then reset your privacy settings without asking you. It has done so several times already.

This happens a lot, when I look for some resolution to gremlins taking over my computer, I will browse on tech forums. More often than not someone had the same issue and other readers, instead of commenting with helpful suggestions, post the comment that they too have that issue. OK I feel for you but really it does not help solving the problem and because now the forum post shows a lot of answers the knowledgeable people won't go there, thinking the issue has been solved and the people seeking for answers have to dog through a range of posters who share their fate.

I hear what you are saying about "me too" posts, especially if you initiated the thread and are hoping for an answer.

But "me too" is more often helpful than not, in the Linux forums I frequent, at least.

If someone posts details of a problem, they may actually be missing something, or perhaps they are way off base, mis-attributing a cause to a problem.

Say the person is having problems with wifi, and is blaming the broadcom driver, and I have the same problem, but my hardware is not broadcom. My posting I have the same problem, even if I offer no solution, is helpful. It draws all eyes off a red herring, in this case the problem would not be the broadcom driver.

It also helps in that sometimes one wonders if they are alone with a problem: "is anyone else seeing this?" A "me too" is very helpful in this instance.

Now, I have seen threads where eventually people are zeroing in on the solution, and then a newb chimes in with a hollow "me too." Annoying, at worst. It would make me go to the thread to see what the new post is, a waste of time, but I'd estimate these types of useless posts are less than 5% of the total.

Again, this is regarding some Linux forums I use. I don't do social media, or engage opinion-related discussions, so I have no reference point there. Perhaps useless posts are more prevalent in less technical arenas.

'me too' posts results in the issue rising in importance and eventually one of the senior techs associated with the forum will decide it's now important enough to devote more time to. In short, they help decide priorities based on frequency of user problem.

Would it not be better to have something akin to the "like" button on FB posts, or the + votes here on TR to state that you are experiencing the same issue...that way the issue could be raised in significance w/o the endless thread of "same here" and "me too" posts that make the comments section drag on and on.....

where you can "thank" a poster in a topic, or even rank a particular response in the thread. It just seems to vary depending on the forum software they're using.

if it 'bumps' the topic back to the top of a list or otherwise returns it to the public's attention.

Was trying to figure out why all of a sudden my face was muting my phone. Googled it, found many hits. Spent an hour reading "me too's" before I tripped over a possible answer. Checked one of the links in the answer, which didn't help, and then found many links for the problem, but couldn't find again the one with the possible answer. Argh city. But I do see the other points made below.

You bring up what seems to be an axiom of using the internet to find solutions, if you have a question, searching for it will find hundreds of other people with the same question, but good luck finding an answer.

You have to really sleuth it out, to come up with a way to re-frame your search to avoid all the posts with the 'easy' question, the ones with a lot of "me too" but short on answers.

Of all the misapplied behaviors, I have to agree that I have seen this one by the most. It is as if someone having a heated opinion is only there to cause trouble, or make things worse for the product being debated. I think there are people who have strong opinions, and who might even be called narrow minded that you can't show them a red circle and prove to them it is a red circle. However, that does not make these people trolls, and dismissing them outright as trolls, does not help any online community. I think there are far fewer people that go out to insight a flame war, than we accuse.

I have also seen writers or websites being accused of favoritism cause they are "making money off the ads." These people clearly don't know how little money these ads usually bring in. I am sure the whole 1 cent per click is really swaying the integrity of the article. I think people do this to justify their own beliefs, and feelings on a product. Often the people who have the strongest beliefs on a product have never used the alternative, or didn't like it but can't grip why everyone else doesn't have the same opinion.

Some people like oranges, others like bananas more, an article talking about how great bananas are doesn't diminish the oranges so get over it. (see how I refrained from using apples in that analogy ) We all have opinions, but if we can have more constructive arguments we enable ourselves and others to make better decisions. Dismissing a writer or a poster simply due to "not liking what they said" doesn't add anything to your argument. So put it into words, and support your ideas. You'll get better responses, and might even get some people backing up your point of view as well.

from having it up. I go to a tech site for tech information, not ads - and the ads are most often about garbage that is not what I want to buy or for sale in places several hundred miles to several thousand miles away.

Last time I turned off all my anti-ad protection to see where the ads were tar getting, since most sites target ads to your locale, I had to laugh. At the time my ISP was based in Perth in Western Australia while I'm in rural New South Wales (for those in the US think as if I'm in Atlanta Georgia dn the ISP is in L.A. California) so I got all these Perth ads based solely on my ISPs location. They've since been bought and the new owner has nodes in Sydney and Melbourne, a few times I've checked which nod I'm through and find it various between them, based on which had the lowest usage when I rebooted the ADSL modem and relogged in. That puts any ID location a good six to seven hours drive away from me - say about 700 miles. Other times the ads are for services in the UK and USA - even more ridiculous.

So please, everyone, spare us from ads for anything except what you yourself are selling, as I may be interested in them.

I use Chrome with the No Ads plugin and never see an ad,

where I trained it, so now I only see ads when I turn adblock plus off to see what is happening. But there are times I HAVE to use another computer than my own, and I get all angry about the ads again.

I doubt that TechRepublic would be able to find a good business model for providing all this free technical content. Would you rather pay a subscription fee?

I'd happily pay a small subscription fee to have back the fun community we used to have. But the powers that be higher up have made many changes which I feel are detrimental to the TR community as a whole, and the major increase in ads was but a minor one of the changes.

Y'know . . . I can't find anything worth disagreement in that statement. Hell, even the formatting in my older articles at TR is broken now.

Since CBS decided I didn't qualify to continue writing articles due to an arbitrary bureaucratic detail, all of my articles will be "older" articles soon enough, of course. By then, though, TR might change CSS formatting enough to have broken the formatting in those articles as well.

One that had a good run, a couple of championship years, and several division or regional titles. I picked up great seats before they hit it big, and kept up my season tickets over the years. Then the owners decided to reconstruction the stadium. The finished product resulted in reduced sight lines, long lines at the concessions, and some truly bad plumbing. Many fans understandably left, even though the team was as good as ever. Recent rebuilding has repaired a lot of those problems, but many have moved on to other entertainments.

How's that for beating an analogy to death? Want me to compare computers to cars and their operating systems to engines again? Oh, and I have no objections to the advertising.

except there were no championships, rather 4 lost superbowls in a row

nt

I thought the non-US audience wouldn't get the reference; or the Minnesota Vikings either. Dale Jr, maybe.

many of the stories I read from storiesonline.net (warning it's a marked adult site) are written by US authors and many evolve around sport or have large sport contingents, thus I get to learn a lot about the US sports just by enjoying stories such as Lost and Found by Douglas Fox, of the Defenceman by Cold Creek, or Path to Glory by Brendan Buckley - heaps of such stories; and most US writers always find an opportunity to include their favourite footballs or baseball clubs in them. They cover not only the major league teams but also many college teams like the Penn State Lions and the UTEP Miners etc - and that's for all the way over here in Australia.

I'm not so sure the team is as good as before, for that matter. It's difficult to say for sure, though. Some turdly writers have been sent packing or departed of their own volition, but so have some good writers, and both good and bad writers have been picked up. The very best writers at TR have always been a very small subset, which is normal for basically any venue, but I mostly read articles for those best writers, and as the known-best writers dwindle over time I don't find myself spending a whole lot of time trying to find out whether there are new writers as good as the best that have been lost.

of the highest sort - being that you so frequently show up and comment on my articles.

Of course, sometimes you just can't help but watch Jerry Springer, precisely because it is SO awful, so it might just be that...

I followed Sterling here -- probably *the* best writer on TR right now.

It drives my thoughts to Digg, a site I used to visit frequently. My feeling was that Digg wanted a *different* readership than it had, and that the redesign was intended to drive that migration. I'm not sure if it worked out the way Digg wanted it to or not, but in the end, I think that the Digg reader-base changed significantly.

Just observing from the bench, over here.

I think that, if not initially, digg at least *eventually* started trying to build for itself a docile readership/userbase that would meekly submit to corporate guidance toward the day its readership/userbase would be a valuable commodity, auctioned off to the highest bidders (mostly advertisers).

Wow. It was interesting to read this list, and to realize that not much has been changed since the days when college freshmen got their free accounts and discovered USEnet newsgroups.

The infamous, trademarked "Max Attack", is a good example.There have been others that have stooped so low, even some attacking Max. I generally get a kick out of those as a survivor of a vicious Max Attack-(Trademarked.) Use freely.

Trolls thrive on getting people all worked up. Seems the best way to deal with trolls in general is don't respond to them. Let their obnoxious comment float into oblivion. They'll find another bridge to where they can terrorize the billy goats.

Side note: those of you who do not live in Michigan won't realize it, but "troll" has a different meaning here. Anyone who lives in Michigan's Lower Pennisula can be refered to as a troll (and often is!). That's a reference to the Mackinac Bridge which connects the two separate land masses which define Michigan. ("Don't you cross my bridge, or I'll eat you...") lol.

Nope, I'm a troll. And proud of it! lol

while my father was stationed there in the late '60s. That's when I vowed I would never again live where the highway department owned plows, or where the weather forecasts included the words 'lake effect'. Still, I do support the movement to "Make 'Superior' the 51st State!"

I love the Moderators of forums and chat rooms out there that sit on their gilded ivory pestals and rant and rave about their "freedom of speech". That they can say whatever they want, whenever they want, no matter if they are right or wrong, or who they hurt, or the amount of myopic opinion that they include in their "facts" (no I am NOT referring to anything on this website). And they always seem to toss in the fact "because this is America".
YET, these "paper thin" people are the first to kick you out and ban you if you disagree or try to engage them in honest and intellectual debate and how they just MIGHT be wrong. AGAIN, NOT REFERRING TO THIS WEBSITE.
To these people I have two things to say: "Freedom of Speech" is a two way street; to wave a banner of free speech while silencing opposing views, isn't. And this isn't America, this is the Internet; you shame the view that other people have of "Freedom or Speech" with every person you ban.

The volunteer mods here on TR tend to be a pretty tolerant group. Unless a post is out-and-out spam, contains profanity, or is excessively abusive, we'll usually let it stand, even if we are the target of the disagreement.

Of course, there's a first time for everything.

Okay, this one's been up for 8 hours already.

Deleting in 3...2...1...

I did say that I was in NO WAY referring to this website. I mentioned it twice even. I give high kudoos to almost all Mods for weeding out the mental landfill that the Internet has become. However there are some very self-righteous bad eggs out there.

The emoticons / smileys in Nick's post?

Those things have gotten so overused and divested of real meaning anywhere that I've grown effectively blind to them, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same applies to LordLQQK.

sorry about that

The following post is sarcastic in nature.

to start bracketing my sarcasm with sarcasm.

The previous post was sarcastic in nature.

Haven't they gotten to the point of abused too? In some places it is getting to the point that you have to install plugins to see all these asinine things. Some people actually respond to posts solely using these things, like it is a viable statement. It is getting to the point that I am having to Google some of the more obscure ones just to see what the hell these people are referring to.

When I am searching for information on a topic it pains me to see postings that look more ornate than Rockefeller Center during Christmas. Do we really need goofy little animated turds to indictate the BS that is left behind by junior?

nt

In their place (and sparingly used), emoticons are a useful feature of forum software or a web page. Unfortunately, they are grossly overused, and usually by people who are trying to be "cute" or "avant-garde".