Hi everyone, I wanted to highlight these two insightful comments from a former thread:
The requirement of being welcoming and friendly to all, including to new users with questionable motives is extremely important, which is why it’s number one on the list:
Of course, being polite and friendly isn’t the same as being naive or gullible. I understand that there are multiple unwritten social rules and tendencies in any community, and a certain percentage of new users may demonstrate behavior that in some way puts doubt on their sincerity and intentions. It’s still always best to give them the benefit of the doubt by being polite if you choose to respond, as a significant percent of users here are non-native English speakers. Or, if your intuition suggests that it’s almost surely a scam or a troll then please simply don’t respond and do hit the flag button on the post to alert me to the situation. Flagging posts is quick and easy and it avoids direct interaction with problematic or conflictive users, who almost invariably respond even more negatively to attempts at public reprimanding or otherwise calling them out. I personally review flagged posts and privately moderate the situation with the problem user when required.
Thanks to everyone for reading this and for taking a minute to personally analyze if you need to make any changes.
There need to be more of these signs.
Another I’d like to see: “Be Courteous, Not Competitive.”
Too many people drive like it’s a competition. But it’s far from that. Everyone just trying to get to their destination, and safety should always be in the forefront. I’ve seen way too many people take dangerous risks all for some egotist showing off or believing wrongly that a few minutes they might save will make a difference when they’re late (it’s not worth the risk of an accident, or even worse causing injuries to others or even themselves).
With that in mind, flashlight newbies shouldn’t be treated as inferior. It’s not a competition. We all started out where they were. It’s a relatively small community, so fostering new future veterans is always a good thing.
I hope that the newbie in question wasn’t scared away from BLF.
I don’t know how bad that thread got, but I think that our community (including myself) can do better in the future.
I find the Mute feature really handy… when I see a post that I find disagreeable, I just Mute it…
calling someone out for making a post I disagree with, never goes well, the poster tends to just dig in their heels and defends their right to say whatever it was that I found disagreeable in the first place…
classic example, between my young children:
Sister 1 calls Sister 2 Stupid
Dad tells Sister 1 not to call Sister 2 Stupid
Sister 1 replies, “but she IS Stupid”
LOL
cant help you with that, I Muted the three posts from the person that got called a spammer, so I cant point you to them…
it would be pointless anyway…
for the record, I did not actually think the poster was Trolling… they just were asking what to me seemed like a pointless question, over and over again…
I really found that so weird. I’ll admit, I did goad them on quite a bit, but they kept on hammering on the same point over and over again. If they weren’t a troll, then maybe someone with other issues. I’m not a professional so I can’t speak on that, and won’t.
I found it strange how people reacted. Sure, the new user’s posts were unusual… but they didn’t behave like an AI or a troll or a scammer or a spammer or anything like that. They just seemed to want help with a flashlight, and maybe weren’t very experienced with communicating on public forums.
The user in question made some posts about a week ago that were very bizarre indeed, with several comments out of the blue about completely unrelated social / geopolitical issues. Those posts were handled more appropriately via the flag button and got automatically taken down in addition to my personal review of them, and the end result was no drama and most users never even noticed that anything happened. Nothing really makes sense, and there were definitely reasons to be cautious and skeptical, but as mentioned that’s not an excuse for being snarky or confrontational in public.
That’s certainly how I saw it, otherwise I wouldn’t have wasted my time with offering suggestions. I’m still not convinced it was either a troll or someone with issues.
Since I had retired for evening before the thread that was removed had apparently run off the rails, I felt that Carla Rogers initial post in her thread requesting help with her S2+ was unique, but certainly not suspicious in any way.
The bottom line for me rests with SB’s discretion, which I will always support!
I found their posts odd (and people’s responses even odder), so I looked for the new person’s post history, found some of it, and decided it wasn’t anything sketchy… just odd. The impression I got was of an older person with a tenuous grasp on technology, some difficulty keeping their train of thought on track, and some very strong opinions they feel a need to share. So I kept an eye on it, but didn’t leave any comments.
Looking at the user’s previous account(s), it wouldn’t be the first time they made a new account to ask a question… and took the opportunity to drop some political stances while they were here.
I tried not to post in that thread but ended up doing so, sorry sb.
There were definitely some wtf things going on. I noticed the op would make a post then make several edits in quick succession to clean up spelling and gramma. Not saying the spelling and gramma was perfect after, but it was really terrible to start with. Does AI work like that? Either way whoever was behind those posts seemed to have a chip on their shoulder.
If you’re referring to yesterday’s discussion I’d like to admit it wasn’t a collective assault on a n00bie.
The sequence was as follows :
Returning member (which took part in many BLF group buys) was acting strange and his/her way of writing was different than anything else.
There were suggestions from other users the text might be coming from GPT. Others (me for instance) questioned the former belonging to BLF which was caused by weird explanations of obvious in BLF phrases, for instance what is BLF GT.
In furious reply the returning user called us idiots, psychos and narrow-minded animals.
Well I still don’t feel this was ok even if it was provoked by our (rightfull or not) suspicious questions. The tone and words which were used in these replies was just boorish and (I believe) never seen here before. And this is how I will remember that user’s nick.
But for the good of this sweet place I’ll just keep ignoring that user and will not get involved in any direct confrontation.
It sounds like there was a whole lot of “crazy” (for lack of a better simple term) going on. I only saw a little bit of it. Just because you cleaned it up doesn’t mean it wasn’t crazy. People want to look at crazy and comment. Like that new user asking about whether or not he was looking at a UFO.
I understand be nice and all.
The problem is they don’t let all of the crazy out of the bag all at once. People interact and then the crazy starts coming out.
It’s like seeing a traffic accident , you have to look. And you’re going to try to understand what went wrong and comment.
