Unsettling....

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I think there are a lot of very unsettling people who post at Wrong Planet, and have no shame in issuing death threats or whatever.
What the hell is wrong with some people, that they think it's ok to come into a forum like WP and make that sort of remark ?

Last edited by Ladywoofwoof on 04 Aug 2013, 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is nothing stopping you from forwarding proof of this harassment to a moderator. Why don't you do this? You can, you know. No one should be bullied on WP!

I totally agree.
It's a good idea for anybody who receives this sort of comment (either in a post or PM) to report the situation to a moderator.

Last edited by Ladywoofwoof on 04 Aug 2013, 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Some people just beggar belief.

Last edited by Ladywoofwoof on 04 Aug 2013, 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Perhaps you shouldn't share the posts in the public section of these forums, since it could make things worse.

I agree, that it would perhaps be advisable for others not to repost such comments in a public area of the forum ; at least until after the time when the problematic member is being dealt with by moderators.

You can also try reporting to more then one Mod, that way it might be reviewed, and dealt with quicker. Other then that its best to ignor the poster, and remember such a threat is considered RL and can be reported to police.

The owner of WP should add a "Report Post" option. This is a very successful and easy way to help moderate inappropriate content.

yep. any form of threat ...verbal, online or otherwise is a prosecutable offense.

I've seen some ignorant posts, but never seen an offensive one like you describe. I assume they are short lived posts.

PM's however are directed, and are of more concern to me.

I second this, there was a case last week of someone who kept posing the same insulting and offensive post over and over with different titles in the subject box.
In the end it filled the whole page in the recent discussions column.
We should not have to search and navigate our way around the site to find how to report to a moderator, as ESPECIALLY for ASD's coming across something upsetting and confronting puts us into freeze mode. Much better to be able to click - report to moderator - than to have a meltdown, panic attack, or have to shut down one's PC due to inability to cope and inability to find how to report the offending post.

Thankyou for all of your replies.

The charming fellow (z3r0), who recently said (unprovokedly and unjustifiably) that he wants to claw out my eyes with a knife and piss in my skull ; who would prefer to torture me hellishly rather than give me a peaceful death, and called me trash while implying that he intended to keep making the same kind of comment .... has been temporarily suspended from WP, after I reported him to a moderator.

Shame on him, for being such a creep.

"Rights are nothing till they have realised and established themselves as Mights; they are rights first only then."
- Thomas Carlyle -

Without the 'might' (ie means) to hold such people legally responsible for their actions (especially when they make them under the convenient cloak of internet anonymity) , people are frequently deprived of their right not to be subjected to such threats.

Which, I find very unfortunate.

Should be banned for BS like that.

I would agree with that.

The abusive guy has been suspended for a week, but this means that it's only a matter of days before he can resume business as usual.
I hope that having a stern talking to from a moderator might discourage him from doing that, however.

I think the problem is that banning people from an internet forum isn't necessarily very easy.

If the moderators ban a person by username, they tend to pop right back up again with a new WP account.
That was the problem with the abusive numpty who was banned several times a couple of days ago (I think it's probably him who Benh72 is referring to), until now he's ended up IP banned.

However even then, if the moderators ban somebody by IP address, there would still be nothing to prevent a malicious troll from going to an internet cafe and using a different computer to continue trolling.
Problematically, many people also have dynamic (rather than one static) IP address... meaning that every couple of week an ISP will jumble around the IP addresses of their customers ; meaning that the banned troll becomes unbanned, and some other poor shmuck might get stuck with their crapped-up IP address.
I thought that situation might have died out along with the era of dial-up internet connections.... but alas, seemingly not.

Which might be less of a problem, except for that trolls are usually very much aware of this information - and use it to their advantage.

With smaller forums this is much less of a problematic issue, however with a forum this size it's not entirely unlikely that some innocent WP member might end up banned because of some other froth-nosed member getting banned previously.

Which would be less of a problem, if it were possible for the innocent WP member to contact (and receive a reply from Alex) if that were to happen.
However, with Alex taking such an unconcerned and distanced approach to WP forum, and seemingly ignoring most of his e-mails (unless they're offering him paid work, or something) .... well... you know....


So, I'm not sure what would be best to suggest as a moderator response to the sort of downright abusive demented loons, who we've been talking about (z3r0 and suchlike) , when one of them starts up.
There seems to be a fair bit of that kind of thing at WP lately, and it really does make me uncomfortable.

Well see what he's like if he comes back again. I was intrigued enough to check his post history and there is not much substance there.

The troll quota seems to have gone up since schools closed for summer, that guy also signed up on christmas day too. probably just another bored kid.

And no, I don't expect much from the founder either.