So I have a legal question for all of you. A particular user has been in the penalty box and is told not to post or comment on the site for at least 2 months. Now it is up to 7 months, but this user keeps coming here and posting. So imagine you have a house and you tell someone they are no longer welcome, but yet they keep trying to get in. There is legal cause to file a police report if someone does that to your physical property. Do any of you know of a situation where this has happened on a virtual property? Where someone files a report to keep this person out? For this particular user, you know who you are. I am seriously getting tired of you creating all of these accounts. It is getting silly and while I have a better ability to keep up on multiple accounts, unless I watch the site 24/7, I am relegated to a baby sitter which I don't prefer to do. Seriously, YOU ARE NOT welcome here and I am getting to the point of seriously pondering legal recourse, especially after me telling you multiple times this. Maybe you all can help me do the background on such a scenario and help me find out what is available. What are your thoughts?
Legal question for all of you
I can't comment as to 'legalities', but why not delete his comments whenever you log into the system?
Nobody here expects you to be a 24-hour cyber Jack Webb (young members will have no inkling who I'm referring to--here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Webb), so just delete his stuff whenever you do come on.
If it's who I believe it is, you've pussy-footed around with this situation far too long anyway, and you continue to be way too school-marmish about ridiculous things like 'improper' language, while letting countless threads get bush-whacked by the likes of this individuals and others.
Delete his 'comments' (if you can call them that) , take off the childish language 'filters' and otherwise allow adults to be adults.
Take a hint from HistoryMike's comment on the Lucas County Fair thread. If this guy thinks your site's becoming irrelevant, it's a strong likelihood others feel the same way.
but it is not that simple. Without getting into details, there is no assured way of being proactive on this without moderating all new users which for a site like this, won't be done. I now have the ability to better track multiple accounts and I have made exceptions for certain accounts, but for users to create accounts to get out of the penalty box violates the rules of the site.
Also users who do get the penalty box, it is for good reason and there is no debate on getting it, and debating it will actually extend the time. So when I tell someone they are not longer welcome, there should be precedent for virtual rules being the same as physical rules. If we all put our head together, I think we can see what that precedent is.
Now, it is not my problem when users go over the line. But there is a line which once crossed should go to the next level. The purpose of this post is to try to determine what the next level is.
I can't even understand what you're trying to accomplish now with this situation. I really don't understand your follow-up or what you're trying to do here.
Can you not simply block an 'IP' address? Wouldn't that be a start? Don't most people post from just one or two, maybe three IP addresses? I'm thinking home desktop, laptop, work? Maybe not.
Oh well, carry on, other 'Swampbubblers.'
a perfect world McCaskey.
Im not sure what you would file a police report for, as I dont know what the crime would be. I agree with the above post that say to just delete the posts, sooner or later he/she will get the message.
just to let you know that some ISPs change IP addresses every time a user connects. Other ones refresh on a weekly or monthly basis. So a user could have 365 addresses a year, 12 or 52 or 1 or 2 or 3. There is too much chaos to rely upon IP addresses alone.
That Guy, the users who are in the penalty box are there because they failed to change. They have passed the point of deleting. I think if you can think through what a user could do to take up all of my time posting thousands of comments and posts a day, well that is not productive.
If you ask someone to leave your house or business and that person keeps returning, what would you do?
if there was an ignore button all you'd need to do is let everyone know that 'the new poster' is the same as ...
and one click and nobody'd see their stuff.
especially for all those who apparently dont have the ability to 'ignore' the offending poster on their own.
Seriously, it takes more than the original 'problem' poster to ruin a thread with back-and-forth personal nonsense that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. It takes all the people who feel the need to respond to in kind that poster.
'Feeding the troll' I guess is the common cyber-expression for this problem.
I'm not out to create enemies on here, but personally it's my belief there are some members of SB who secretly enjoy the highly-personal BS that often ensues when the poster we're talking about here starts spewing his nonsense.
It gives then a liscense to respond in kind and I think they should be held accountable for their inability to walk away or ignore the situation.
It takes more than one to destroy a thread.
right now the obvious parties have been held accountable. This whole thing is way out of hand more than anyone actually knows and it is all just stupid. One decision is easy, the other tough but everyone has had multiple times to get it right. They will be able to come back after their prescribed amount of time.
There is one particular poster, (I don't know if it's the one to whom you are referring here), whom I totally ignore. I NEVER read any posted item, nor any of her/his comments on others' threads. I am not a lawyer. And I'm not nearly so well versed in cyberspace as you are, Chris. Others more knowlegeable than I may have ideas of what stronger action you can take.
1. The ignore button would be an improvement, but in some ways it is almost too little too late. One of the reasons I spend less time here is that it simply is less interesting. A few trolls and loons have hijacked the site for their own agendas, and there is little sense of community here now. It's more like a war zone.
2. As far as the Poster-With-Many-Identities: to keep Chris from having to play cop for all new screen names, perhaps we could flag the problem people for him.
3. Perhaps there could also be a voting system, whereby through a democratic process posters gain or lose their right to participate. Using a rating system like the "rate this post" could work, or maybe the use of polls to vote users of the site. On other boards it is simply an administrator stepping in and booting off troublemakers, but I understand that Chris wants to keep this as much of an open and free forum as possible. Wikipedia has a similar philosophy, but at times the trolls and agenda-pushers can destroy entire articles.
4. On my own sites I too have been torn between pure freedom of speech and building a sense of community. At my main site, I simply decided to limit the amount of writing I do about the neo-Nazis, which caused them to go away out of boredom. On a site like this, perhaps you could limit certain offensive posters to groups or sub-blogs, while leaving the main page post-level entries open to "established" users. Wikipedia uses a process like this on pages likely to be vandalized.
http://historymike.blogspot.com/
I agree with HistoryMike and McCaskey. From HistoryMike: One of the reasons I spend less time here is that it simply is less interesting. Give the man a cigar!
First off, does this mystery spammer have a name or a user name that everyone recognizes? If so, say it and stop alluding to 'you know who', which is puerile and obtuse.
Secondly, acceptable behavior on SwampBubbles is completely arbitrary, and Chris Meyers is the one and only arbiter. Unless Chris wants to change this policy, then asking the general public for legal advice (which few of us are qualified to give) is pointless.
Third, as I mentioned in item two, few of us are qualified to give legal advice. I, for instance, am not licensed to practice law in the State of Ohio, and in this case that fact matters. That said, my suggestion would be to call an attorney and ask the attorney what, if any, legal options are available.
Forth, your comparison between private home, place of business and SwampBubbles probably doesn't hold much water. If a person not known to me were in my private home and refused to leave, I would arm myself as I saw fit, summon the local constabulary and force the intruder to wait around until Officer Friendly arrived. I'd do the same in my place of business, provided I was the general manager or proprietor. You don't have that option here, and you might have trouble proving the identity of the interloper.
Personally, if I were sitting in your chair I'd assign SysOp status to a half-dozen or so trusted users and ask them to police the place. Set up a way for them to delete all posts and suspend an account with one or two key strokes. Support their decisions. Eventually the stupidity will cease.
I'd also get rid of the incredibly stupid profanity checker.
Mad Jack
Mad Jack's Shack
user was never as good as what it should have been. It never really ignored users completely. Plus the site overhead was more than what it should have been.
But this whole episode has made me re-look at what is out there and see if there is a way to reward trusted users. I am still pondering how to do it.
Why make a police report. Just sit outside his house and when he gets in his car you can call the cops and say there's a drunk driver.
Lord knows you would have the percentages on your side.
MikeyA
this type of post doesn't help the situation or the discussion at hand, only inflame it and divert attention away from what appears to be a honest attempt by the site administrator to resolve an issue.
You're better than this, I've always felt, but when you do this, you're as much of the problem as 'Gary'.
You can never stop a truly motivated individual. I've learned that.
All you can do is beat them at their game.
Chris has two options. The first is to keep freezing his accounts. The second is to just let us keep harassing him back on our end. As much as he says it doesn't get to him I know it does. If it didn't he wouldn't keep trying new names.
MikeyA
you're missing the point.
You are not 'beating them at their game', they only come back for more, they enjoy being the antagonist. The more you respond in kind, the more they re-respond in kind.
It's a game for suckers and the site and it's members are the losers for it.
Well I was all in favor of hijacking their threads with comments on dwarves but everyone abandoned that idea.
MikeyA
Perhaps that would be fun. Every time one of these resident clowns (such as Gari, John Law/Mike Cooon, DB-A) creates a post-level heading, every comment could be about Middle Earth and dwarves, like this copy-pasta:
Dwarves are shorter in stature than Men, but stout. They are renowned for their skill in metal working, mining and wood-cutting as well as their love of feasting and drinking ale. They tend to hoard precious metals, which has led to problems such as when they delved too deeply for mithril in Moria and awakened a Balrog which was known as Durin's Bane. Dwarves are skilled in decorative metalwork. Axes are often their weapon of choice. They are quick-tempered and are distrustful of Elves. It is hard to discern dwarf women from the men becaue they also have beards.
We could even rotate the nonsense themes, burying the post with alternating treatises on navel lint, running shoes, or favorite kumquat recipes.
BTW - I had trouble finalizing this post because the word "cooon" set off the profanity filter. I ended up adding an extra "o" to get this filthy word past.
http://historymike.blogspot.com/
dwarf bombing threads that are hateful.
is right this is a broad question that can be applied to the most obvious violator and I wanted your take on it.
I agree with HistoryMike. There's tons of modules for Drupal that will allow us to police the swamp. But with change will come inevitable whinging, so here's a few suggestions in developing a ratings system that only moderately annoys everyone involved:
- Create a trusted users group. Base membership on number of non-spam comments or months since signup. That should be easy to automate.
- Let trusted users see who rated comments and what ranking they gave. We'll be able to discover "voting irregularities" that result in spam or abusive comments being rated higher than they should. It also cuts down on retaliatory low ratings because most users can see the low rating and can rate the affected comment higher in response.
- Only trusted users can view spam comments. While this might seem like a negative for longtime users, you can set the default comment rating threshold higher than the spam rating. This also prevents abusive users from creating duplicate accounts to raise their comments above the spam threshold since newly created accounts can't see spam comments.
- Clearly denote a spam choice. Set it off to the side or place a separator between the spam option and the 1-3-5 options. We will be less likely to use it unless it's actually needed.
There's a city full of walls you can post complaints at
it's your site, Chris, but a 'trusted users group' sounds like it has potential.
Chris, I've commented before that you and I disagree on most public issues, but I like the way you try to run this site and keep it open to people like me who disagree, I hope, in a civil, albeit caustic, way.
Anything that aids in your running this site is fine with me. Keep up the good work!
Chris,
You might find some guidance in these documents.
Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy (1995). This gave online communities the legal right to exercise control over content in order to best serve the needs of the community. It does not likely mention police action, but it may be of interest.
"Speech Showdowns at the VIrtual Corral,"
(Here's the link to the abstract: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=755884). Interestingly, this is indexed under Virtual Law...
And Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community.
http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/
the resources.
No problem--I have used these in "Writing the Community" classes when working with virtual community.
Rheingold literally wrote the book on virtual communities. He has a website with contact info. http://www.rheingold.com/
It would be interesting to hear his take on your problem...