Forum posting 101

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Lesson 1) This is the Internet, where not everyone will agree with you.

Lesson 2) If you want to post an opinion, and you want everyone to agree with you, start your own forum, post your opinions, and delete all the ones from people who disagree with you.

Lesson 3) If you can't start your own forum, and don't want anyone disagreeing with you, DON'T POST ON FORUMS.

Lesson 4) Don't worry that some disagree with you. It doesn't mean you're wrong.

Lesson 5) Be careful. Not everyone who at first appears to disagree with you, does. They might just be trying to present another side to the issue.

Lesson 6) Internet forums are not about convincing everyone on earth you are right about anything. They are FORUMS, where discussions are held. It''s highly unlikely everyone will agree with you on ANYTHING.

Lesson 7) You might be WRONG. Keep that in mind.

Lesson That avatar you see is probably not the person. Don't draw judgments from avatars. They're just pictures, not people.

Lesson 9) Everyone on the board is a human being. Not just text on the screen. They have feelings, lives, bleed when cut, and hurt when hurtful language is used.

Lesson 10) Nobody's perfect. Sooner or later, you might forget some of these principles. Keep an ample supply of apologies on hand at all times.


Feel free to add any others you think of.

(This was originally going to be a rant questioning the motives of posters who get mad just because not everyone agrees with them. I thought this might be a better idea.)

Hey, I like what happened to lesson 8 there! Cool! Literally!

Heh, I just noticed what this is in response to, amusing. Anyway, I think those are all good points. When I was younger I would often get caught up in trying to make people agree with me, but eventually I saw that there wasn't much point.

It's not a response to any one particular post. It a culmination of observances from the past couple of weeks (actually years of forum posting - but the past two weeks were the catalyst). I don't mean to call attention to any particular examples, or single anyone out.

I agree with lot what you say. But in lesson three, I doubt that forum will last. Not many people will join and they will leave and they be giving it a bad word for it and it be unlikely new people will join after they heard bad things about it.

I think you mean Lesson 2) If you want everyone to agree with you, start your own forum and delete all posts from everyone who disagrees with you.

You're absolutely right. It wouldn't last long. The point behind the lesson is how pointless and unreasonable it is to expect everyone to agree with anything you say. The chances of a forum like that lasting are about as likely as the chances of everyone agreeing with you.

I've actually seen this attempted a few times. It becomes obvious what's happening very quickly. The real shame is that even the posters who do agree quickly become bored and leave as well. Because there is no intellectual stimulus.

Bravo.

If everyone agreed, then there be no internet dramas or debates or arguments and it be boring. That's what I love about the internet.

Lesson whatever: Learn not to feed the trolls/learn to distinguish troll from not-troll.

Fair enough, still a good list.

Lesson 11) You choose to be provoked because you have the option to not read what the person is saying and not read the thread or even read the person's PMs and on IM, you can just hit the block button and keep on blocking them. If you feel provoked by someone, don't respond to it and just ignore it and move on to the next post. This is the internet, where you have these options. In real life it's a different story.

Lesson 12) Some people post their false locations or gender or age because it's how they feel on the inside and the fact their location is based on their fantasy. (I am talking about profiles) Funny story, I posted Oregon in my profile one time because that is where Dottie Hinson lives but it happens to be my real location as well and someone thought I was from here which was true. But when I used to say I was from the Benny & Joon town or called myself Spokane Girl, some people thought I was from there.

Lesson 13) Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make them a troll.

Lesson 14) It may seem like someone is contradicting themselves like what they say but they could be thinking the same of themselves. For what I listed in lesson 11, some of you are probably thinking I am contradicting myself but I think this of myself too, I sometimes choose to be provoked because I have those options I can do I have listed.

Lesson 15) Just because someone thinks something bad of you doesn't mean they're right. It's their opinion and how they view you and only worry about it if the majority or half think that of you. Then you know you have a problem. Don't worry about what some people think.

Lesson 16) If there is a thread you don't like, don't read it. If you don't like the content in it, don't read it.

Lesson 17) Getting banned from a forum does not mean you are a bad person and you did something wrong. Sometimes moderators abuse their powers or there are members who report you to them because they didn't like your opinions so they can manipulate them by pretending they are hurt or offended or claim you're a troll and trying to start trouble or sometimes it's just the people with issues, not you. But however, if you encounter the same issue on every forum you go to, then you have a problem and it's obviously you, not the forums so it's time to figure out what you are doing wrong and change your ways. But sometimes a forum has ludicrous rules such as there is a forum I heard about (I don't remember the name) and one of the rules is "No replying to trolls or feeding them" but the problem is you get banned for replying to one even if you didn't know they were a troll. The mods ban anyone who replied to the troll. So yeah anyone can get banned for that because that rule is impossible to follow and it's the rule and the mods, not the person.

Lesson 18) Welcome to the internet

Personally? I've found that trying to identify trolls leads to more problems than it solves. I don't even think about it anymore. I think I made the mistake of "tagging" one here once, but regretted it rather quickly. I find things go much more smoothly If I just assume the best of intentions of everyone. It may not seem that way sometimes, and when it doesn't seem like I'm doing that, that's where lesson 10 comes in.

I know what your saying though. If you think that's what's going on (trolling) it is best just to move on ASAP before you get all worked up over something stupid. That's hard sometimes for me though. That's why I just try not to think about it at all most of the time.

The past few weeks has been rather trying, I have started on responses to certain posts then decided against hitting the submit button, sometimes given the content of topics I feel its a waste of time offering my opinions. Anyhow very good topic MrXxx

Sometimes people think someone is a troll when they're not. I have made that same mistake myself and it turn out that person had BPD or was dissociating, or just had issues. Sometimes I am not sure if someone was trolling me or not or if someone is a troll or not. I would think either this person is a troll who likes to mess with people or this person is just insane and totally unaware of their actions nor do they understand what they are doing.

Personally if someone thinks someone is a troll, don't bother replying to them giving them advice and all. That I don't understand why people bother replying to people whom they think are trolls giving them helpful advice or support. Even I don't want that from people and then I find out they think I'm a troll. I see it as a contradiction there. Maybe they do it for their post count and to make themselves look good.

Sometimes people think someone is a troll as their coping mechanism because it helps them deal with that person so they don't get themselves all riled up by that person so if they think that person is just trolling, they won't feel as provoked and they can ignore him or her easier. I've pretended someone was a forum bot to help me cope with her on another forum and it helped me. But she got pissed when she heard me and my friend were pretending she is a forum bot and not real and claimed she had always been nice to us and that was totally untrue what she said about herself.

I did report someone here once to a mod because I thought he was a troll and someone's sockpuppet and it was the way he was writing his posts but he turned out to not be this other person who I thought he was. Do I feel bad about it? No, nothing was done about it and he wasn't banned or anything. It was just because after this incident with a former mod, people joined here with odd usernames so me and lot of others thought they were the former mod's sockpuppets. And I reported one of them to DW a Mom. I am sure I wasn't the only one who had reported this user to the mods. I am sure other users whom we thought were sockpuppets were reported as well. I know one other was reported and he was a troll, just someone from Zomg and pretending to be a woman in her forties with a child. I also reported another person whom I thought was a troll because he was questioning everyone's diagnoses and acting like his was better than ours because he had more life experience than us and he was being a jerk. But it turned out he wasn't a troll because he apologized for his behavior and we all took his posts literal because of the way he worded them. He isn't bad after all and I think he's okay. I think those were the only two whom I ever reported whom I thought were trolls.

Last edited by Decepticon on 23 Jun 2010, 2:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

It doesn't work in a forum.

But a moderated blog--it makes more sense there for someone to disallow or screen comments, since there it's not about totally reciprocal exchange (in my opinion)...it's about one's own opinions and those first.

Everyone has different ways of handling it I suppose. Just felt I needed to post it because it does happen.

another rule or guideline I can think of would be ...
Don't take the "Interwebz" seriously. Makes you an easy target for trolls and such. Can also get you into a bit of trouble to, such as when someone might just be joking with you but you take it too damn seriously and just go bat**** crazy over it.

One way to know you have won a debate is if your 'Opponent' can only attack your grammar/English or just outright insults you instead of trying to find REAL holes in your arguement.

Also as a somewhat crude analogy. Winning an arguement on the internet is like winning a Golden Raspberry award. You still SUCK! (((The original analogy would have been the special olympics but didnt want to really offend anyone with this post.)))