Trolling and flaming in the Green Room

You're out of your mind.

If you're trying to troll it's not a good troll and it's in the wrong forum; if you're not trying to troll then stop posting while inebriated. I don't remember ever even seeing the picture of your kid and if I were really that into trolling people with my avatar I wouldn't have just changed it. skinofninjavision is a much better troll target than you are, or at least was until you went on this apparent angry and irrational bender.

/admin hat off

There are situations which haven't really been discussed yet, but will probably one day come up.

Say, Dan Leach takes a picture of a mountain and posts it in the Green Room. He later says he hates the picture. Someone else likes the picture, and uses it as an avatar. Is this trolling Dan Leach if he complains? What if he doesn't?

Say, Muad takes that picture of Obama in the traditional Kenya tribal dress and uses it as an avatar. Can an Obama fan complain that this is trolling Obama supporters and ask the mods to make the other guy change their avatar? What about quotes? If someone posts a Ron Paul quote in their sig, do big-government liberals and conservatives have reason to complain? If someone posts a bible verse, do atheists complain? There is a line between personal trolling and trolling groups that need to be addressed, because right now, it seems to be OK to troll a whole group of people, but not an individual.

Frankly, I think we left TrekBBS to get away from this type of skullfuckery. There is going to be people who feel "trolled" here no matter what the rules are, and I'd rather allow some trolling to go unpunished than to push us closer and closer to a teddy-bear board that so many other boards are out there. I don't think the board wants a free for all in every forum, but I think in making the rules more strict, we move further away from what the spirit of this board was suppose to be founded on.

I'd say trolling is as much by effect as it is by design. Sometimes the design is obvious and sometimes it isn't, but the litmus test is in the reaction to complaint.

When the design is obvious and there's no complaint, there's no trolling and no reason to act on it.

When the design isn't obvious and there's complaint, test the intention of the alleged troll by asking him/her to alter or remove the thing that's generating the complaint, and that will expose whether it's by design or not. If you get a lot of stalling and lawyerball rather than an offer to compromise or reason things out with the affected poster, pretty good indication that the trolling is by design.

When the design is obvious and there's a complaint, well, then it's pretty obviously trolling.

For short times those were true.

But it was decided that is was too ripe for abuse to warn over random pictures which might happen to hint at something when no one is actually saying what is being hinted at. People with an axe to grind could then assign meaning to anything and everything.

Seriously, even if his av somehow echoes some photo of yours, it doesn't actually contain any information of yours. Why should that be warnable?

Sometimes complaints themselves are trolling...and you know that better than anyone. Faux outrage to get others in trouble is extremely common which is why you need some guidelines and sense injected into the mix.

Determining which complaints are genuine (from me, if that's where we're going with this) and which aren't is easy. If the complaint stays in the Red Room, it's trolling. If it originates in here or through the Report function, it's authentic. Easy as pie.

Other people do it differently.

Dayton, for example, has expressed his troll of choice is abusing the rules to shut up people he disagrees with.

Some people hump the report post button.

Everything isn't about you, John.

Yeah, I know. I was just offering an easy way to tell what the motivations are for somebody that complains. I wasn't trying to make it about me, either, just couldn't tell whether maybe you were or not. What a paranoid bunch we've all become.

I'd say trolling was intent, and that it doesn't take that big a journey to indicate that because I took down the picture of my kid it was something to hit me with.

Because the chances are its just a coincidence when I post about my privacy concerns that he happens to choose an Av which is based on those very concerns when he's changing it from another poster he was trolling is a bit much for any rational human being.

Oh and of course its in the first row of google image results for what my picture was about. What a coinkeydink!

If the protections I get aren't the same that previous posters got, I'll say OK, par for the course. I've been banned for complaining before.

Oh, and has it now been ascertained that it was indeed JC in the Av, and he was being trolled? Or are you going to just ignore that?

Of course you are. Despite the 100% certainty. No, you don't have to warn or ban others but an official statement that you can't use it as an Av as its trolling outside of the Red Room would be nice.

In fairness, she has incorporated that very thing in the updated rule on personal information.

http://www.wordforge.net/showpost.php?p=2416736&postcount=148

The rule is in flux at the moment, but the intent is to cover that very thing.

Glad to see the changes are forth coming.

However, it still doesn't help me, and so I'll give Liet 24 hours to take it down.

I think when he thinks it through he'll realize that there's just way too much information about most of us out there, and that as a good son who lives near his father that familial relationships aren't things that really are a good source of troll fodder.

I'm going to use a picture of a random redhead to troll Tamar. She's gonna get trolled, so hard. Just you wait.

You are right.

Nothing could be at all menacing about random strangers attempting to troll you with stuff you should have known better than to post.

Let alone something as silly as an av.

I take it all back. Nothing will come of this.

I never saw this picture you posted and thought nothing of Liet's avatar.

Liet's avatar reveals nothing. Just because it has some resemblance to a photo of yours doesn't make it against any rules. That is going way too far and if that was policy we would probably have to give up avatars entirely.

Dude, I don't even know which picture of yourself you're referring to (I avoid that thread), but the picture Liet is using has indeed been going around the internet for about a week now. Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, and a link to the Google reverse image search results. A Google Image search shows that it has been posted at various sites within the last week, and everyone is crediting the photo to this guy, who posted it on November 21.

Yes, I'm sure it's all a complete coincidence that one of the guys who was trolling with avs before posted a picture that just happens to troll me when I was arguing about said trolling.

Completely coincidental. No chance at all it was intentional. Its not like if you looked for a pic to troll that topic that would be the first one that came up because it is a current meme.

No worries, Tamar. I'm sure nothing at all will come of this.

:whatever: :whatever: :whatever: :whatever: :whatever:

I tried looking up the picture but it's not there. How similar are we talking?

I don't get why this thread is still open. It's just a soapbox for visionrazor at this point...right?

I removed it.

It was a picture of me and my kid dressed up on Halloween. I was the Stay Puft Marshmellow, my kid was a ghostbuster. Its was staged similar to the pic that Liet has as his av, with my son shooting up at me as the monster.

I made sure my kid's face wasn't visible, and of course I was completely obscured by the costume.

Liet clearly intended it as a troll.

Evidently the rules have been interpreted differently since such things were considered poor form and Lanz stopped it from happening on at least two occasions for far less than this.

So I'll just deal with it myself.

Except for the Ghostbusters theme, that doesn't sound at all similar considering it's a baby as Stay Puft Man. I don't think anyone would have drawn that connection if you hadn't pointed it out. Honestly, I suggest you calm down and think about it some more before you take any action in regards to "dealing with it" yourself.

We can't consider anything with a Ghostbusters theme trolling you.

I also don't think a single person would have associated it with you at all without you mentioning it.

You are completely high. As I said, I don't remember even seeing the picture of your kid. You seriously owe me an apology here for losing your fucking mind and taking it out on me.

You need to take a vacation from this place for your own good as it seems you can't think straight any more.

So if I ask nicely for you to remove the avatar because I believe it to be an attempt to troll me by going after my family, it shouldn't be a big deal for you to remove it.

I'm pretty protective of my family Liet. And I think you are suffering from a credibility issue, as discussed previously with JC. You are the one guy who went so far as to truly troll JC by placing his face on a disgusting body.

And of course you make no bones about being as nasty as you can be to people you don't like on a regular basis here.

It isn't exactly a leap of herculean proportions to think you are trying to go after me through the one bit of personal information I've posted, because you just finished doing it with another guy via the exact same medium.

If that's not true, then it would be a very simple thing to change the avatar.

But let me guess, there's some obscure principle you'll invoke as your reason not to, or just because I request it, no?

Demiurge, even with your explanation of the connection I'm still not seeing how Liet's AV is trolling you.

I'd say at least two people would have associated it as a troll - me and Liet.

He won't admit it however, where's the fun in that? He argued that his use of a doctored image of an obese body with JC's face on it wasn't a troll either.

I understand you guys don't understand how it could be a troll.

But then, you don't want to. No, I'm not saying any picture of a ghostbusters theme is a troll of my family, but this one almost certainly is - context matters. Intent matters. The same picture posted by Chuck wouldn't raise my eyebrow. A picture by someone who just trolled via the same method that I'm in an argument about over that very topic is.

But I don't expect the current admin to do anything about it because according to you the rule has been changed from when such obscure avatar trolling WAS considered a troll by the board owner.

I've asked Liet nicely to remove it.

Ball's in his court.

NO ONE WOULD HAVE DRAWN THE CONNECTION.

Until Demi opened his highly emotional mouth and started crying.

Not one person would have said Liet is trolling Demi. The people who repped the comment probably don't even remember seeing Demi's picture.

Here's the thing: Are you being sarcastic to make a point? If not, I'd say you're getting wound up over nothing. Because I don't believe Liet is bright enough to troll you in the manner you described.

Unless gul or someone came up with it and told him to do it.

A troll generally contains some sort of insult to get at the victim....what in Liet's avatar is remotely trolling anyone or anything??

People wearing similar costumes...how is that a troll?

I am trying to understand your point here, but it's difficult.