That was me. I am surprised you feel this way, and I am sorry you do.
When I saw your post, I thought it would be helpful to make those changes. I see now I should not have made that assumption.
I have become more enthusiastic about this software, and like many on Forumosa, I am still getting the hang of it. And as I become re-acquainted with Forumosa this way, I find myself using it more and more. This seems to be shared by others because I see our traffic numbers gradually rise.
So from my point of view, while you may have considered a poll (and decided against it), I figured that you would not have thought of a multi-choice poll!
Once again, I apologize for presuming too much, and I will restrain myself going forward
If this person is a troll, he succeeded with the number of post we put outside of the post. The best trolling when you get the other peoples to turn hostile against each other for no reason.
I think itās fair enough not to allow attacks, even on a suspicious post. Even if the post was intended as a wind up the fact that attacking replies are not allowed means that it is going to loose wind fast. So you donāt get the interwebs flame battle thing. Good job mods! Making the right decisions on having standards, thank you.
Yes except it was more legitimate questions about how is it possible to do this and that, and very little insulting and attacking was done in a particular thread. Most of it was very humorous actually and I was surprised how quickly the English teachers cottoned on (much earlier than I).
There was a suggestion to let it roll, but mods clamped down only on one side and it kicked this all off.
You know the old idea of insulting peopleās intelligence, intelligent people are going to ask questions. Play a game expect to be played back.
I , personally , think there should be a disclaimer on this kind of stuff in the header IF doubts of veracity of said claims are summarily deleted everytime they appear.
Doesnāt seem balanced does it.
Also when people are claiming āabuseā specifically you know where that can go right. Legal questions. Investigations. It didnāt quite get to that point but you know it had the potential (for instance if it was somebody who claimed to be a minor).
Where do you go with that?
Well I guess if you dont trust the honesty of a question then there is the option to just ignore it.
If no one responds then the thread is just like a spam email. Meaningless in the spam folder.
The thing is, how do you define ābogusā. Weāve removed stuff that has been pretty obviously so on occasion, more than a couple of times. Sometimes itās not so clear. Some things suggest it could be bogus, but some things mitigate that. What tends to happen in such cases is that people do raise questions, respectfully. Anyone should be able to see that thereās some doubt from reading such a thread, and can gauge their response, or lack of it accordingly. There has to be a balance. We donāt want to let people post questions for no reason, but we donāt want to turn away people with legitimate questions either. Unfortunately, posts in a format such as this donāt come with a āUSDA-LEGITIMATEā stamp attached. If youāre looking for 100% certainty that youāre helping actual people in need of help, youāll have to restrict your responses to people you can say that about with certainty. I donāt see how we can achieve it. We make these determinations the best we can, and thereās not likely to be 100% agreement about it in many cases. Under any circumstances weāre going to try our best to maintain a fair environment for all site members to post in. Allowing people to continually pepper someone with sarcastic questions or suspicions would be the functional equivalent of banning them, whoās going to stick around for that? Thatās not the kind of environment we want to see here.
Re language, Iām also an English teacher, and I donāt find the proposition that you can teach yourself a language to near native speaker level incredible. If you want to start a general discussion of that topic in another thread, please do.
Re legal issues, if someone is crying wolf, thatās obviously a needless distraction, like many other things online and offline. If we receive a complaint that a post is defamatory, we will of course look into it and remove it if that seems the most prudent thing to do. But if the person accused of being a wolf has never existed, and the claim doesnāt involve a threat to public safety and so on, itās difficult to see how anyone stands to get in trouble, legally speaking.
If you can prove someone is a troll, maybe you can sue (in one country or another) for your precious time having been wasted. Great, make it a class action suit. Trolls will tremble in fear! The interwebs will never be the same!
Until then, we will continue with our current system and wish you a pleasant day.
Suppose X posts a made up story. We donāt know what motivates X, but being believed for Y period of time is probably one of the goals. Give X feedback on what makes the story hard to believe, and you help X become a better liar. Give the moderators the same feedback privately, and X doesnāt gain this advantage.
As for the possibility (wisely pointed out by Andrew) that X is altering certain details of a story in an effort to maintain privacy, the best course of action in that case is still not to call X a liar in public.
Sure. But what about when first time poster goes on a rant that country T is such a shithole and country C is a utopian paradise? Doesnāt that reflect badly on all of us? It can be then referred to on other sites that āthose foreigners over at geriatricosa hate Taiwanā. Or some jewel of society who posts that he banged x number of e-z cycle little sisters.
Iād rather see a string of our curmudgeons railing at them and picking them apart, publicly, as proof we donāt hold no truck with that shit. And you canāt say it doesnāt look bad on the forum, as a whole, when some of the more gullible take what is written in an OP as fact.
Sooner or later (if it hasnāt already happened), weāre going to get more convincing fake posts than the usual āHelp, my Western boyfriend left meā kind of trolling. Maybe involving requests for money. (When the guy whose brother died first appeared, I wondered if this might be that, but people apparently know him and vouch for his legitimacy.) Most false claims seem harmless enoughāit doesnāt really affect me if some stranger got beat up, or whether a certain poster really is hung like a horseābut skepticism is healthy and should be considered a normal part of the game.
By the way, can we please get rid of the āSo and so is new here, letās all welcome so and soā banners? They are annoying clutter, and wouldnāt make me feel any more welcomed if it was me.