Yes, the ISP's are somewhat of a guide, but by no means foolproof...they change if they are dynamic addresses, and this particular cad is cagey. However, the email address is often what gives the ego behind the intent away; he makes up names that are partly off-colour, grossly off colour, too cute by half, pompous, etc. So far, we have been fairly effective at whacking the mole when it first raises its head, but we do need to sleep and talk to our wives for a few minutes each day....you know....
selector I have recommended that new posters should have their registrations approved by any monitor who gets to the stack and can verify that it isn't our favourite troll in another guise. Additonally, that their first few days of posts be scrutinized prior to posting. This is practiced at many forums. If nothing else, it will slow down the sociopath who seems to pollute the model forum at will when it next enters his mind. I haven't gotten much support for that suggestion, but perhaps it will win some credence in time. -Crandell
I have recommended that new posters should have their registrations approved by any monitor who gets to the stack and can verify that it isn't our favourite troll in another guise. Additonally, that their first few days of posts be scrutinized prior to posting. This is practiced at many forums. If nothing else, it will slow down the sociopath who seems to pollute the model forum at will when it next enters his mind. I haven't gotten much support for that suggestion, but perhaps it will win some credence in time.
-Crandell
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Membership approval and moderated posts, aside from making more work for someone, only slow down the determined. IIRC, the incident on this forum involved someone with something over 100 posts.
The shame is that one determined individual can ruin it for everyone else. That happened on a popular scanner frequency site. After several hacks by the same individual, the site owner gave up and we lost a great resource.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Fellas, Wade Emblad tweaked the server on Friday late afternoon with what he concluded was going to improve things, but you all know what happened later that evening. Then, we had a spammer/troll who plied the model forum with filth. I am not able to say with certainty that it, too, was the cause of a later shut-down (but it seems reasonable to assume so). Now I am getting some pages loading double-wide as the software seemed to want to do when we first rolled it out several months back.
Some folks have resorted, when it seems dead slow or "oops" oriented, to deleting their cookies, and then accessing their favourite forum through the main page of trains.com. Maybe, just maybe, it is a decent approach for the foreseeable future until Wade can nail this thing down.
Sorry for all the trouble. If affects us all equally...no favourites.
Quentin, I had that problem also last night; must have seen
the "OOPS" message at least a hald dozen times just trying
to read various Threads; gave up on the computer and went
back to reading one of my books, at least I didn't get an
Error Message when I turned a page there.........
Being Crazy,keeps you from going "INSANE" !! "The light at the end of the tunnel,has been turned off due to budget cuts" NOT AFRAID A Vet., and PROUD OF IT!!
Murray Quentin, I was able to get in last night, but the Trains site was very VERY slow to respond.
Quentin, I was able to get in last night, but the Trains site was very VERY slow to respond.
Today we seem to connect ok, but there are other strange things....some posts turn the page into elongated size, etc.....Just seems to be a few strange directions it heads to at times.
Quentin
Yes, it is disappointing trying to get on for hours J.....Seems ok this morning. Lets hope it continues to be available today.
Quentin - had same problem here. It's them, not us. Just irritating when it is in "prime time".
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Wasn't able to get on here at all Saturday evening.....If trouble is in the web site, sure hope someone can soon find the problem and overcome it.
Victrola1An old machine (P4) loaded with LINUX Ubuntu and a Firefox browser does not event show a tab to connect to Trains forums. Loading LINUX was done as an experiment. Other than this quirk, LINUX works. Am I doing something wrong, or is there an inherent OS conflict?
An old machine (P4) loaded with LINUX Ubuntu and a Firefox browser does not event show a tab to connect to Trains forums. Loading LINUX was done as an experiment. Other than this quirk, LINUX works. Am I doing something wrong, or is there an inherent OS conflict?
First thing that comes to mind is if you have Adobe Flash installed (Flash is available for Linux). Otherwise OS incompatibility is not an issue with the forums - I'm posting this using Firefox 2.0 running on Solaris/SPARC (Flash is available for this platform as well).
Victrola1 - That's pretty computer-technical - way behind my meager abilities to answer ! If you don't get a useful answer to your question here, though, there are a few other more specialized forums on this website. So may I suggest that you try posting it again over in the Community Assistance Forum at:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/733.aspx
Hope this is at least somewhat helpful. Good luck with it !
- PDN.
Yes there was quite the surprise when looking at a post on the MR forum this morning. I was surfing at work and had to derail the browser quickly.
2040 EDT and It won't take my posts...except this one if it makes it.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Thanks for the update. I too had problems for an hour or so - now I know why.
Too bad it was that kind of nonsense - but I'm glad that doesn't seem to happen too often here. Technical problems, yes - true offensiveness, no.
"dispatched" - I like the use of that word in the "removal of a nusiance" sense - too bad it has a more common meaning in the RR business.
A very offensive post was made and it appears all the forums were taken down while things were cleaned up.
But we're back now!
I recieved an email report of a posting on the forums that was obscene. I think and thank them for closing down the site until it could be cleaned up and the violation removed and violator dispatched
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
I had trouble for around an hour or so and just got in.
Dan
....Trouble again this morning accessing TRAINS.com {forums}....Tried for several hours. Just now finally made access. 11:20 am EDT.
Me too, from about 8:05 AM to around 9:00 AM (both Eastern Daylight Savings Time - it's now about 11:25 AM here, to help you calibrate that with the Forum's time clock and your own).
The different thing was that the error message I was getting was a more generic "Page Not Found" or "404" type of Internet error (I forget exactly what it was, and didn't save it or write it down) - not the "Oops - Something Has Gone Wrong" error that seems to be limited to this (or Kalmbach's) Forum.
Thanks - good to know we're not alone !
- Paul North.
I also had trouble for about an hour and now it is OK.
I tried and tried to get into the forum this morning for some time and almost gave up but decided to go enter "trains.com" and eventually, did get in that way.
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