Thank you for an example of trolling.Originally Posted by aceside
Try going to an auditorium to listen to a speaker and cut in every minute to interrupt and say things about the subject that are either plainly wrong or pure voodoo. In a few minutes you will be thrown out with no questions ask. This is how Don's Domain was conducted. We need another place like that where we can talk Blackjack. A place where the best players would feel at home and at ease to share new ideas and concepts. A restricted place to exchange with the real ones, no moron with 30 hours under the belt trying to answer every newbie who, if they made their homework, are already a century ahead of them. It's sad to see how it goes right now. I have great respect for Norm who made a wonderful job building this forum put I think this place is at a cross road.
G Man
People have been saying that for years, just as they have been saying AP will be dead for years. Meanwhile, BJ21 is dead. Don's Domain is dead. There are many forums which are pure voodoo. A dead forum has no purpose. There are three methods of ignoring posts here which users seem to refuse to use. It's as if they want to be interrupted so they can complain. If I followed the rules to throw out all users who have made trolling posts, there would be three users here as even the complainers troll. Some often.
This site was never meant to be newbies coming in to ask questions answered by a handful of gurus. There is value to the much larger number of lurkers who never post seeing stupid claims with reality based responses. We have two current threads with folks talking back and forth about deep studies. I see other threads where bad ideas are posed and quickly refuted.
Look, the basic studies have been done. New methods and ideas are needed. New games appear on a constant basis. The Subscribers forums have no noise and have 278 subscribers. Folks can post there just as those that avoid free sections of other fora.
"I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse
Certainly respect your opinion, but disagree. Are left those who want to discuss blackjack, not troll. If quantity is desired over quality, of course that's a different matter. There was a paying portion of DD, as there is here. As you can imagine, that was a lot more important to Viktor than it was to me. I cared only about the quality of the discussions and the integrity of the site.
Don
No, no such desire. But people need to understand something important. Yes, it WAS 100% signal and no noise, but you may be surprised to learn that that was achieved with an extremely rare banning of an individual or busting of posts. I stated the rules of posting upfront (see the archives here), and I think everyone understood that I intended to enforce them. And so, I think the threat of being banned acted as a deterrent to the potential assholes. It just wasn't worth it to someone to test whether I meant what I said or not. The pro was that you got to post something stupid or to foment trouble ... once. The con was that that got you kicked off the forum forever. Most people realized it wasn't worth it. And so, the discussions were about blackjack ... period.
We did bar two people forever, Clarke Cant and a psychopathic criminal friend of James Grosjean, whose handle I forget. Clarke was also simply there to cause trouble. He enjoyed disrupting, and I lost my patience jousting with him. And that was it.
Don
I’ve remained largely silent for years as I’ve repeatedly been told everything would be better if I simply ran the forum like Don’s Domain. These are all the threads in the last twelve months of Don’s Domain:
June 2012: Don Schlesinger: Happy Father's Day! (one response)
November 2012: Don Schlesinger: Happy Thanksgiving! (no responses)
January 2013: Don Schlesinger: Happy New Year! (no responses)
January 2013: Three threads with four responses by Don
June 2013: Good-bye and thank you!
With all due respect to those with suggestions, Don’s Domain was an important effort and the archives remain of great use. But, it faded away. Currently, over 95% of Green Chip posts are to the politics forum. I don’t claim to know everything about running a forum, and I heavily resisted starting this forum because I knew the attendant problems. (And I’ve been attacked in thousands of posts for banning people.) First forum I admin’ed was on AI, 40 years ago on the ARPANet. Rarely had to bust anyone since you had to use your real name and everyone was either a prof or grad student. (Well, except for me.)
One thing I do know is that if you squelch any discussion annoying to someone, discussion ends. All the basic blackjack questions have been answered, over and over and over. Nietzsche posed: “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” Fruitful discussion requires new ground. Most new ground is infertile. But, if you pound anyone into the sand for daring to raise their hand, progress comes to a screeching halt – or a slow death. Better to educate, and occasionally find a seed that may germinate.
Last edited by Norm; 01-09-2022 at 07:13 AM.
"I don't think outside the box; I think of what I can do with the box." - Henri Matisse
Let's not forget BJ21 Green Chip. That forum remained mostly troll- and idiot-free with very little moderation or banning. For some reason peer pressure worked there in controlling the masses. If an idiot showed up, he was called out by the members and faded away into obscurity, almost without exception. Perhaps Al can comment on that, if there's anything to add. And before you say look at BJ21 now, it's demise was realted to ownership change and lousy forum software and nothing else.
It's odd that BJ21 worked with member/peer pressure to control it, yet here, idiots/trolls like aceside are refularly ridiculed, yet they don't slink away with their tail between their legs. I wonder why that is...
Posting Permissions
-*-
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks