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An Open Letter to This Board's Moderator, [email protected]

chandler

Blue Ridge Foothills

Dear Sir,

The TUSCL Discussion Board has become broken. The time has come for you to take action to fix it. Two posters, davids and RomanticLover, using similar trolling spam-like and tactics have made it virtually impossible for the users of the board to carry on a discussion. As I'm sure you must be aware, these two regularly flood the board by starting dozens of pointless topics at a time which nobody responds to. As a result, the topics intended for discussion, get pushed down off the bottom of the page. Topics get lost for the people trying to discuss them, and obviously, new visitors are discouraged from finding anything worthwhile to take part in.

As I write this, there are 9 topics davids started today in 36 minutes, which nobody has responded to. Each topic is a repeat of something he and RomanticLover has started several times before with no replies. There are also dozens of RomanticLover nonsense topics flooding the board, many of which he has bumped back onto the list, but nobody has replied to.

This board is just a small group that relies on the honor system. As such, it is vulnerable to sabatoge by people with no honor, as davids and RomanticLover have demonstrated. This is where you come in, as moderator. I and other posters have tried self-policing, encouraging the others to ignore the trolls, but it's impossible to prevent a few clueless posters from giving the trolls the attention that encourages them to continue. Only a prudent moderator can fix the problem, the way this board is set up to function.

Understand, the problem is not the content of the messages davids and RomanticLover post, even though all they do is cast aspersions on the very subject this board is meant to discuss. (Although I haven't read anything by them in months, nothing leads me to believe their rants have changed.) The problem is the tactics they use to sabotage discussion and gain cheap attention.

So, what should you do as Moderator? If you wanted to shitcan these two and ban them, I wouldn't have a problem with it. However, I think several other steps could accomplish the same result. A few ideas in the form of rules that might be programmed to be automatically enforced:

1. Disallow any poster from starting two topics in a row.
2. Cap the number of topics one poster can start in a day and/or in a week.
3. Disallow any poster from posting the first reply to his own topic.
4. Disallow any poster from bumping his own topic back onto the list after it has dropped off. Bumping others' topics is allowed, just not your own.
5. Cap on consecutive posts by one poster -- consecutive chronologically but regardless of the thread -- to prevent trolls from bumping a string of threads to the top.

Some of these may only work if davids and RomanticLover are considered one poster, to prevent them from working their mischief in coordination. I welcome the suggestions of other legitimate board contributors as well.

Sir, many of people have derived enjoyment from this board, For this I thank you, and I'm sure the other contributors thank you, as well. However, I feel that a lot of what we here have put into it will go to waste if the present predicament is allowed to continue. For you to do nothing would would be a shame. Please take action.

I am posting this message to the board as well as emailing it. I welcome your reply to the board, along with the ideas of other board contributors.

-chandler