Bill wrote: It also would encourage and reward members for posting accurate useful responses to questions.
My girlfriend used to flip burgers for “Rotten Ronnie's” back in the day, and was rewarded on more than one occasion.
Every month McDonald's gives the title of “Employee of the month” to the person who has impressed the heart of the managers. As a reward for this great achievement, they present a gift box to the employee. It is a cool gift box and holds enough to make one happy. lol
By DPR standards good Andy should be banned by now 😂
Perhaps a the ability to assign a bright red message "Identified troll - Do not feed or encourage" to an individual's posts would be useful. As always, there will be boundary situations, but I think there's one poster in the Mako thread for whom the message is clearly appropriate.
Sherm
That's a tough one to prove. The "who intentionally" part. Someone a little on the sensitive side thinks everyone is out to get them, so everything is "intentional". Paranoid about it even. Someone who doesn't like the dialogue, à la Andy for one, will throw out the troll word to distract.
And it's a bit of a stretch to assume "derogatory or insulting language" is "hostility" and then by extension "hostility" is "trolling"
It's usually pretty obvious though. Brand new user goes into Nikon forum, makes first and only post that says "Nikon sucks, Canon great" then disappears while 500 posts of anger follow. Troll admires his handywork from afar. This make be the extreme, but most obvious trolling follows this pattern somewhat.
I always assumed back in the days when "trolling" became a term on Usenet that it was an analogy to someone with a fishing line and a lure behind a boat, as if someone was disingenuously trying to elicit responses as an end in itself, for entertainment, and not doing what a troll under a bridge might be doing, which is less specific and more about just being socially ugly in a forum, which seems to be its current usage with many people.
That's my interpretation - it's posting for the reaction, rather than the topic. Seems to be specifically for adverse reaction. Sometimes used in a quasi-positive way to get a reaction which demonstrates that someone has become over-invested in something.
Carrots better than sticks? A good big carrot can inflict some damage too.
More seriously, I don't think it discourages bad behaviour, because the people who go that route aren't so interested in the gold stars.
So now we need a hard and fast rule. Imagine how you'd fell if you had that tagged on your user name and had no idea whatsoever why it happened.
Of course it doesn't. It deals in models, which hopefully provide a good fit to observable reality. Still, the further you get into Physics the more you realise that observable reality isn't done and dusted.
I've seen lots of those. Someone would come into the Nikon DSLR Fx forum and say DSLRs are dead. (which may or may not be true) I'd look at their profile, they hadn't posted in 6 years, and this was their first post in this forum. I'd write a reply asking how come after 6 years without posts that this was important enough for you to make this your first post in the Nikon DSLR Fx forum? I'd get a warning from the mod, my post pulled.
So blatantly obvious, but as has been beaten to death here, mods chose their own interpretation of what the issue was. I've went astray from your point :), but an opportunity to stick it in there. :)
But that is different, models vs. reality. We still base those models on what we believe are facts.
While a scientific model is theoretical, the objective observed data are "facts" explained and predicted by the model.
It's a fact that, on a given date at a given time, the shadows cast by vertical poles at different latitudes will have different lengths. The model that explained this observable fact in Eratosthenes' time was that the Earth is spherical in shape. Today, we have the technology to observe Earth from a great enough distance to directly document this physical quality of our home planet. Twenty-three hundred years ago, Eratosthenes didn't have that option. But he could coordinate a team of observers to measure the lengths of the shadows cast by vertical poles on the same date at the same time. The data gathered (facts collected) were best explained by a spherical Earth model. That model could also be used to predict the lengths of the shadows cast by a vertical pole at a given latitude on some future date & time.
If the reasons for assigning it are limited, then I'd be surprised if I didn't know. At least I would be able to contact the relevant admin people, which in DPR was limited (for sandbox) or absent entirely (for bans). Beyond that, it's a warning for people to respond to the troller (?) at their own risk.
Observations rather than 'facts', I'd think, and rarely are they 'explained' - just predicted. If a model's prediction fits with repeatable observations, then it gets adopted. Then along come some more observations which it doesn't predict. Have the 'facts' changed? No. Is the model 'wrong'? No, it just doesn't fit everything. We don't have a scientific model that doesn't run out of steam somewhere.
It's a repeatable observation - something different from a fact. And of course, the Earth isn't spherical in shape - the spherical model works well for many things, but not for everything. It's a philosophical point maybe - and not to be used to argue against observable, empirical 'facts' in less abstruse areas of endeavour.
Not that anyone cares what my opinions are, but I like the rules of baseball. Three strikes and you're out. Sometimes honest conversations get heated and people need to cool off. It happens to the best of us. Learn and let it go, or risk not needing to be told again.
Of course, if you purposely hit someone with a ball, immediately you are ejected. I'd leave it up to a mod to make such a call but generally things like racism, bigotry, violent threats, etc, really don't have much of a place in a forum about photography outside of maybe some discussion of images themselves, but not towards other users.
I've run an online community since the late nineties. It's certainly presented increasing challenges over the years.
There are problems with gatekeeping. Do you gatekeep in advance so that nobody can get in, or gatekeep after based on the opinion of a small set of moderator values? Bearing in mind that all power corrupts.
I encourage my community to set it's own standards, with tolerance at the forefront of it's values. If there is an issue to address, in veracity, tone, or behavior, take the time to address that through polite argument.
Take the responsibility to help create the community that you wish to be a part of. Don't leave it to others to impose it on you. A community is always better collaboratively setting it's values, embraced with the consent of it's members.
People are wrong all the time. I know that I am. This is rarely bad faith, but often an opportunity to expand understanding, and share a different perspective.... if people are prepared to tolerantly help, rather than stand by.
Think well of others, and yourself, and build something everyone can be proud to be a part of.
