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General Website Queries: 2018 Onward

Moderators were appointed to deal with some horrific trolling. For example, at one point the full names and addresses of up to a dozen posters were displayed late on a Friday to intimidate them, and at the time nothing could be done about it until the magazine staff were next in the office on the Monday morning.

We also had the usual online personal harassment issues. Can't remember how many times I received sexually pestering PM's from men I only knew as (say) Satan's Hoof or LoveMadgickeMan. As there was nobody to report them to and no way to get them booted off, and no 'Ignore' function, I'd just decline to respond.
Even saying 'Get lost!' was engaging with them. We were powerless against these vicious idiots.

One particular troll, whom I will not name or otherwise identify, harassed women on here and even followed them to other boards. He was manipulative and persistent enough to compromise some of them.

By the time he demanded that I take a holiday abroad with him as I'd publicly promised (I'd done no such thing of course) I knew of his tactics. When he threatened to turn up and claim me in person I told him yeah, you do that, and Techy will punch you up the bracket. :chuckle:

One woman he'd chased to another board was so frightened when he told her he was on his way to visit, she posted on the board asking for help.

There's a lot more to tell about him but that's enough to give an idea about why we needed moderators. A very fine job they do too. :cool:
Ugh! Whenever I see or hear about such a creep, I hope they run into someone like an old friend of mine from half a lifetime ago. I'll call her Helen. Helen Wheels. She would have been likely to respond to a threat like that with something along the lines of Yeah, come on down and get a face full of mace, asshole. You've earned it, and I'd be honored to be the one to bestow it on you. And, if you get here in the next 48 hours, I'll throw in a free kick in the nuts. I like to wear cowboy boots, and I have a lot of experience dispatching vermin with the pointy toes. Yes, she was a piece of work. She made it clear that she wanted to be more than just friends, but I figured life would be a bit more, ah, interesting than I'd prefer. Ah the 90s. Fun times!

Ms Popper and I had a nice visit with Helen and her husband about a year ago, when we happened to be in Phoenix for a few days. She seemed to have mellowed a bit, but I'd still hate to be on her bad side.
 
Ugh! Whenever I see or hear about such a creep, I hope they run into someone like an old friend of mine from half a lifetime ago. I'll call her Helen. Helen Wheels. She would have been likely to respond to a threat like that with something along the lines of Yeah, come on down and get a face full of mace, asshole. You've earned it, and I'd be honored to be the one to bestow it on you. And, if you get here in the next 48 hours, I'll throw in a free kick in the nuts. I like to wear cowboy boots, and I have a lot of experience dispatching vermin with the pointy toes. Yes, she was a piece of work. She made it clear that she wanted to be more than just friends, but I figured life would be a bit more, ah, interesting than I'd prefer. Ah the 90s. Fun times!

Ms Popper and I had a nice visit with Helen and her husband about a year ago, when we happened to be in Phoenix for a few days. She seemed to have mellowed a bit, but I'd still hate to be on her bad side.
I like the cut of Helen's jib. :cool:

She wouldn't have been taken in, any more than I was. Vulnerable we are not, or even sensitive. :chuckle:
 
I work in heritage preservation, I'm busy revising for a computerised accounts exam & I'm doing coursework for book-keeping Level II. (They send me on lots of courses from work.) + I've got to keep my arts/crafts & musical skills going as well as my historical knowledge for work.

Sheer laziness. :wink2:
 
Sheer laziness. :wink2:
Yeah, right. You want to try it. It's a very varied role which can be challenging at times. You get sent on extra training & courses a lot & some of them are hard but they keep you on your toes & I enjoy it. I also think that I'm doing something worthwhile. ;0)
 
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I like the cut of Helen's jib. :cool:

She wouldn't have been taken in, any more than I was. Vulnerable we are not, or even sensitive. :chuckle:
Helen was a breath of fresh air when she turned up at a meeting of a volunteer organization I was a part of. She was new in town, and looking to make connections in the community. Our little outfit had been around long enough for the meetings to get tedious and repetitive. Suddenly, the meetings were fun again. Some of the stuffier people in the group were put off by her brashness and very direct manner, which is probably just what they needed right then. This all took place at about the time I was becoming dimly aware of the existence of the World Wide Web. I don't know how she actually dealt with online trolls, since we had both moved several hundred miles in opposite directions by the time I encountered any, but I doubt she was any less ferocious than she appears in my attempt at channeling her spirit.

One time I ran into her in town, after not seeing her in a while. She was all excited about her new apartment, which was in a large development where I had done a lot of work. I said that's great, but you need to change the lock on the door right away. She asked why, and I pulled my keys out of my pocket, held one up, and said, "This key fits your front door. It fits every door on every apartment and every duplex that developer has built in the past ten years. Half the plumbers in town have a key just like this one. Half the electricians, carpet installers, and so on. I know some of them. You need a new lock." She was dismissive. I couldn't tell whether she didn't believe me or just didn't think it was worth worrying about.
 
At one point we had about half a dozen prolific trolls, with multiple IDs. A couple were just permanently obnoxious but the one cited by Essy was considerably more manipulative as she says, to the point that a large number of the membership thought we the mods were bullying him, with a few leaving in protest. I have to say there were a couple of years where we weren't the most popular, but we couldn't disclose in full why we'd acted as we had. It's the closest I've ever come to quitting.
 
At one point we had about half a dozen prolific trolls, with multiple IDs. A couple were just permanently obnoxious but the one cited by Essy was considerably more manipulative as she says, to the point that a large number of the membership thought we the mods were bullying him, with a few leaving in protest. I have to say there were a couple of years where we weren't the most popular, but we couldn't disclose in full why we'd acted as we had. It's the closest I've ever come to quitting.
I had something similar happen to me once on a forum I mod at. Some bloke sending increasingly bizarre private messages to me, always in two paragraphs. The first paragraph would be friendly and polite, the second paragraph would be accusing me of throwing people out of the back of ambulances and that I was a "pigyob". I'm still unsure to this day what a pigyob even is, it sound's like something out of A Clockwork Orange.

Anyway, I put up with it for ages but saved all of his messages then one day I got an angry private message from my admin, this bloke had sent him a pm accusing me of bullying him.

I explained that it was in fact me who was the victim of harassment, pm'd my admin my password and added that I was going to stay off the forum for 24 hours to give the boss a chance to read everything this weird bloke had sent me and all the polite responses I'd written back to him.

Weirdo bloke was banned. The boss was sympathetic and asked why I'd put up with this guy for so long so I told him I didn't want to come off like a 'Nazi' moderator.
 
I had something similar happen to me once on a forum I mod at. Some bloke sending increasingly bizarre private messages to me, always in two paragraphs. The first paragraph would be friendly and polite, the second paragraph would be accusing me of throwing people out of the back of ambulances and that I was a "pigyob". I'm still unsure to this day what a pigyob even is, it sound's like something out of A Clockwork Orange.

Anyway, I put up with it for ages but saved all of his messages then one day I got an angry private message from my admin, this bloke had sent him a pm accusing me of bullying him.

I explained that it was in fact me who was the victim of harassment, pm'd my admin my password and added that I was going to stay off the forum for 24 hours to give the boss a chance to read everything this weird bloke had sent me and all the polite responses I'd written back to him.

Weirdo bloke was banned. The boss was sympathetic and asked why I'd put up with this guy for so long so I told him I didn't want to come off like a 'Nazi' moderator.
Your admin should have got your side of the story first, before making any judgments.
 
I had something similar happen to me once on a forum I mod at. Some bloke sending increasingly bizarre private messages to me, always in two paragraphs. The first paragraph would be friendly and polite, the second paragraph would be accusing me of throwing people out of the back of ambulances and that I was a "pigyob". I'm still unsure to this day what a pigyob even is, it sound's like something out of A Clockwork Orange.

Anyway, I put up with it for ages but saved all of his messages then one day I got an angry private message from my admin, this bloke had sent him a pm accusing me of bullying him.

I explained that it was in fact me who was the victim of harassment, pm'd my admin my password and added that I was going to stay off the forum for 24 hours to give the boss a chance to read everything this weird bloke had sent me and all the polite responses I'd written back to him.

Weirdo bloke was banned. The boss was sympathetic and asked why I'd put up with this guy for so long so I told him I didn't want to come off like a 'Nazi' moderator.
Yikes. If that were going on right now, I'd guess it was some sort of automated AI harassment. Good on you for always responding politely. I have no patience with assholes, which is one reason (of many) I could never be a moderator.
 
Is there a way to force an attachment - specifically, an image - that someone else has posted to display inline in a post of one's own? I am perplexed as to why my own two uploads display in this post, but the image that Ronnie and Enola both posted and that I was hoping to re-use does not. The BB code looks identical, save for the attachment ID, from my perspective as a user. It's frustrating, as I'd hoped for a comparatively easy visual comparison of the latter two images.

Solved courtesy of @Ronnie Jersey - see post #648.
 
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Is there a way to force an attachment - specifically, an image - that someone else has posted to display inline in a post of one's own? I am perplexed as to why my own two uploads display in this post, but the image that Ronnie and Enola both posted and that I was hoping to re-use does not. The BB code looks identical, save for the attachment ID, from my perspective as a user. It's frustrating, as I'd hoped for a comparatively easy visual comparison of the latter two images.
I simply right-clicked on Enola's image, clicked 'copy image' and then 'pasted' over onto my post.
Is that what you tried?
 
I suspect they are search tags - I've noticed them cropping up at the top of various threads over the past couple of days. Maybe they used to be hidden but now aren't?
 

Visible is correct, but they shouldn't take you back to the first page or they're semi-useless.

Let me investigate first and I'll explain how they are supposed to work.
 
Right, I think they are working—this is part of a programme that will unfold very slowly. Randy started off proceedings, but he got so bogged down in repairing old links and retitling uselessly named threads ('Look at this!!!') that he didn't manage to make much headway.

They are indeed search tags, but they work in two separate ways:

1) They make SEARCH function better, by a) adding obvious search terms to the thread even when those exact terms do not feature in the text of the thread itself, and b) boosting the ranking of threads whose tags match searches—so hopefully you'll see better results.

2) They are an alternative browsing method. If you click on any single tag, the forum will generate a list of every other thread with that tag.

The problem at this stage is that only a tiny percentage of the total number of threads has been tagged, so clicking on something like the 'Gordon Rutter' tag will take you to a result page that features only one thread: the same one you came from because I have only tagged him once so far (as an article author). If you were to try one like 'Ghosts & Hauntings' (from that thread you quoted above), you'd get many more results.

It will be very good once more is done, but it's time consuming and—like Randy—I've found that trawling threads to tag throws up loads of broken links and buggered formatting to fix, which slows the task further.

Shorter threads will likely only have one to three 'categorical' tags ('robots & robotics', for example); for longer ones with debate and references I'm trying to include names/locations/years as well as categories.

I'm sure I haven't got it quite right yet, but I'm working on it all.
 
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Right, I think they are working—this is part of a programme that will unfold very slowly. Randy started off proceedings, but he got so bogged down in repairing old links and retitling uselessly named threads ('Look at this!!!') that he didn't manage to make much headway.

They are indeed search tags, but they work in two separate ways:

1) They make SEARCH function better, by a) adding obvious search terms to the thread even when those exact terms do not feature on the thread and b) boosting the ranking of threads whose tags match searches—so hopefully you'll see better results.

2) They are an alternative browsing method. If you click on any single tag, the forum will generate a list of every other thread with that tag.

The problem at this stage is that only a tiny percentage of the total number of threads has been tagged, so clicking on something like the 'Gordon Rutter' tag will take you to a result page that features only one thread: the same one you came from because I have only tagged him once so far (as an article author). If you were to try one like 'Ghosts & Hauntings' (from that thread you quoted above), you'd get many more results.

It will be very good once more is done, but it's time consuming and—like Randy—I've found that trawling threads to tag throws up loads of broken links and buggered formatting to fix, which slows the task further.

Shorter threads will likely only have one to three 'categorical' tags ('robots & robotics', for example); longer ones with debate and references, I'm trying to include names/locations/years as well as categories.

I'm sure I haven't got it quite right yet, but I'm working on it all.
This all sounds rather complicated and frankly, a waste of your valuable time.
People can usually find what they want if they try hard enough. If they can't, they can ask other posters for help.
 
That's what I thought. Some Mod has forgotten to put the lid back on.
Coffin.png
 
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