henry6, have you tried sending a note to Kalmbach's customer service? It could be some problem that can be taken care by someone there. Before our trip this spring, my email notices stopped coming, even though all seemed to be in order on the threads that I had posted on. After we returned home, I sent a note, and the response was "such and such" but the problem continued. I sent a another note commenting (not in so many words) that I was still not getting my full money's worth, and someone at Kalmbach dug a little deeper, found the real problem, and fixed it. This was the second time that my email notification had been interrupted, and I requested Customer Service's help both times.
As you may have gathered, you did not miss anything by not getting the foul-fingered contributor's contributions in your correspondence.
Johnny
Yeah, Johnny, I had it happen to me before and sent a note and they fixed it. Did it here yesterday, too, but have not heard back from them.
As for Finger Fred, I got all his messages on the first round over the weekend, but not the second round or third round.
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.
bubbajustinWell, nevertheless Poppa Zits I think you will agree that his behavior was VERY VERY innapropriot, and he was NOT acting his age if he was a teenager or an adult. I just read a message that Norris sent me and I guess from the way it sounds, he has been stopped for now. (knock on wood) I do however PZ hope that he will be set straight in whatever law he is breaking, has broke, or will break in the future.
Has nothing to do with inappropriate. My question was which law or laws did he break, since people are calling for the law to be brought in on this?
He probably didn't break any law. And probably nothing could be done if caught. But I didn't like what he did, nor did many others, and we'd invent a law on the spot if we knew who he or she is.!
I have a question. If someone with bad intent enters the forum and posts something that is indecent or extremely offensive, how quickly can the moderators remove it? Wouldn’t removing the offending post be about as urgent as putting out a house fire? Is the removal procedure complex or time consuming for some reason? The damage done goes up with the length of time that the offending material is exposed to the public on the forum. That monkey business last Sunday night was there for the entire world to see for at least a couple hours. It may have been visible for much longer, but I did not check to see.
I can understand why there should be some protection from such attacks, but I am guessing that there is nothing that would be 100% effective short of having the moderators check every post before letting it onto the forum. But beyond trying to prevent attack posts from happening, I would think it would be just as important or even more important to be able to remove them as quickly as possible in order to minimize the exposure. For as long as that attack material persisted on the forum last Sunday night, I think that it was extremely fortunate that the attacker did not post something really offensive.
Bucyrus I have a question. If someone with bad intent enters the forum and posts something that is indecent or extremely offensive, how quickly can the moderators remove it? Wouldn’t removing the offending post be about as urgent as putting out a house fire? Is the removal procedure complex or time consuming for some reason?
Bucyrus: As of about a month ago, I became a user/moderator. Somewhat reluctantly, I decided it was something I could do, to keep the forum on the up and up. I enjoy the forum, and want to make sure it's an enjoyable place to visit. There are about a half dozen of us user/moderators, spread over the various forums. We are all volunteers. To answer your question- it takes me approximately 1 to 2 minutes to remove a post. That's after I find them. If I have to go through every thread, looking for them that's adding more time. At any given time, there may or may not be a user/moderator tuned in to the Trains Forums. My internet was down from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. That eliminated one set of eyes. Monday morning, the troll had posted on every thread on the first page of this forum. I deleted perhaps 20 before I went to work. (Got my priorities, you know.) Troll was reposting as fast as I could delete. I probably took out 6 or 8 on the Diner thread alone. There are only 2 moderators that have the power to boot a user. So, until those guys could shut him down, all I could do was keep playing whack-a-mole. I probably whacked about, ? , 40-50 on Monday. This problem is certainly not limited to the Trains Forums. My other passion in life is sprintcar racing. I am active on 3 forums and they've all had their fair share of troll attacks.
The answer, is to be patient. When the inevitable troll pops up, don't respond. Hit the report abuse button, and a moderator will check it out. Be vigilant. When you see a familiar pattern, from a new poster, let us know with the report abuse button. It may be a familiar troll (we have several), or it may not. A heads up to the moderators won't hurt. Be forgiving. When you complain about another poster calling you a ninny, or complain that a moderator deleted your post where you called someone else a ninny, consider that the moderators may have spent countless hours of their weekend deleting 200-300 offensive posts from your forums. Keep that last point in mind, when you're using your free time to use a free forum. For cryin' out loud- everybody start some interesting threads, so we don't have to dwell on the troll non-issue!
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Bucyrus, it is a good question. When a mod enters the control panel to lock the interloper's account (Isn't that a nice name?), he/she must accurately type the user-name, wait for the computer to raise the account, and then we have to click on functions that force a log-in on the next visit, and we must tell the computer to not let the person post again. When we effect the ban, if the person is still present, he can still post until he logs out or leaves the site...clicks out. At least, that is what I think...could be wrong.
No sense trying to fill the tub when the drain is unplugged...so we plug the drain and then go about dealing with the posts. In that person's control panel is a function asking the mod/admin person if all the user's posts are to be blocked from view by other members. I clicked "yes" to that on the weekend, but it seemed to serve no purpose when I returned to the forum-proper and found that I had to clean up 40 posts....entering each thread, scrolling down, clicking on "moderate", and so on. It took some time, let's just say that. That was Friday. Tom Stage did a larger job Sunday evening the same way...one thread and one post at a time.
We have asked Wade if the "block posts by this user from view by others" only does that for regular members and still permits mods/admin status users to see them...that may account for what we saw, and mistakenly assumed had not worked as intended.
As the King of Siam would say, "Is puzzlement!"
-Crandell
Murphy and Crandell,
I can see how it could get pretty complicated. For what it’s worth, my impression was that the offending posts were posted simultaneously onto all threads on the first page. I don’t know if that would be possible, but I was watching pretty closely, and when I saw the first one, I immediately saw that it was on all threads on the first page. That was around 9:00 PM CST Sunday. The previous time that I had looked was only about five minutes earlier, and there were no offending posts. I don’t think somebody could have gone down the page and posted individually to all 16-18 threads in five minutes.
On MR he had three postings each per minute as posted on the header. He covered about a page and a half within that 4/5 minute period. I'm thinking that s/he had at least 2 computers with about 4 browsers on each to do that. Or one fast cut/paste arm--
Thank goodness it was dealt with quickly----
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
As a regular user, I can post a "cut 'n paste" canned message into four or five threads a minute with ease, and if you have two computers running, which we think is the case with our "friend" (remember, he mines multiple registrations so that as quickly as we bung one, he reaches for another), I could double that. If I were determined and fueled by something not normally present in my system, I might be able to triple that with two computers simultaneously.
But it is not possible to post the same message into several threads simultaneously...there is no code permitting that to happen.
As I have stated, we ought to be smarter at our own game than we appear to be..to him. That is why he returns...it's like shooting fish in a barrel. But if he could not post at will as soon as he registers with a new user name....whose house..?
On another forum I belong to, you need to have at least 5 posts before you can post photos or links... It's designed to get rid of bots though, not trolls. But it's too easy to get past those unless, say, you give every new member a 1-post-per-day limit until they're past those 5. But then he'll do them in batches and get a whole bunch of new accounts ready all at once... Post one new post every day in many different accounts, and then store them all up...
That wouldn't help at all with this problem, and would also deter a lot of new registrants.
It's hard to get past a malcontent poster. The very ease of use features we cherish are the tools of his/her trade.
I'm on (or used to be) a local web board that for some reason has attracted the attention of an individual whose purpose in life seems to be to shut the web board down. He's even gone so far as to impersonate the board administrator to the hosting service and request the site be taken down. Not to mention complaints to other hosts about "inappropriate content" (in his eyes). He's also threatened to expose all of the members of the board, lawsuits, and a host of other actions.
And we don't even know why.
I say "used to be" because right now the board seems to be down, and has been for several days. Since the administrator didn't give us any forewarning, I can only presume that the action was "hostile". Since the admin and the mods are all "volunteers," they may have decided it wasn't worth the effort.
Which is a danger we face even here.
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...
Well, as soon a a mod. sees it I think they have the jurastiction to either let it go, or delete it.
I'm not stupid, I know that there are people like this out there. I still think that it is sad that people are that dumb to do this to such a fine group of folks. I hope one day it will be that no more people like that will exist because thay have all changed. Maby one day in a future world...
The road to to success is always under construction. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape.
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