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Post your comments for It Takes a Village Idiot: The Jerks of Online Forums here

[madman21904]

And the worst of all are the ones who have nothing useful to say, so they post a 14-page rant about other people's meaningless babble.
WTF??

[ddg4005]

Great article. I've encountered every one of these types and they never cease to amaze me. They make posting on forums more of an adventure than it needs to be.

[rgreen4]

JR and Mike - it looks as if you have spend some time here. We have most of your characters. I can actually put userid's to a few.

[coastie65]

This should be required reading. :D coastie65

[Lazarus]

You totally ignore a very obvious situation. Forums are not hard to start. People who seek to be in control, who exhibit many of the traits you list, often come to be in charge. You even list one common title of these folks "Moderator" and yet include a blanket denial that the officially sanctioned moderators are beyond any inhospitable behavior. In general, unless a forum has a clear and worthwhile purpose, they appear to be taken over and managed by people who are more into being little dictators than communication facilitators. Forums often come to be controlled by people who are, basically, trolls.

[antohne]

I dont mean to sound like Johny One Wodr but. ... "lol"

[mjd420nova]

Unfortuately, just about ever forums/chat room has every one of these personalities. Learning how to respond or not to respond to these idiots can be a real exercise in restraint. There is a whole world full of characters who delight in doing everything they can to disrupt and side track a thread by flaming some user who they think they can incite to making an irresponsible response and then they jump all over them. Many of the forums I visit are made up of a tight knit core of members who will not tollerate these fools and will either gang up on them or just plain ignore them. Some boards have handy ABUSE buttons or SPAM response tags that can be used to call attention to clowns who flaunt the guidelines and push the limits of being considerate. Then there are another group of personalities that will espouse drivel and unsupported facts that on the surface appear to be ligitimate but have no basis in fact or substance. These can be dificult to deal with and for me fall under my number one rule of life. "Believe none of what you hear or read and only half of what you see" One category I encounter but was not outlined is the inflexible user who has a set opinion and will never consider anothers viewpoint. They will expound on their beliefs and pound it into the ground. Many of these are what I call the APPLE CORES. I won't take that any farther lest I stir the pot and get them started up here.

[Finsternis]

WRONG! Forum visitor for 20 years. lol
But seriously, I have met almost every one of that is mention in this post.
My personal favorites is the Antagonist and Mr. Credentials.
I hate it when I'm in religious forums and this guy simply starts to either insult me or posting a bunch of "me did this, me did that, me great".
By the way, you made a lot of typos. lol

[deebug]

Obvious troll is obvious, and so am I.

[kitsune17717]

good article. I can attest to many of the personalities listed here.

[BGG001]

Fanboys and Antagonizers are the worst imo.

Oh yeah, one more thing.

Fail (Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail 4/26/09)

[perlajulieta]

jajajajajajaja I have never laughed so hard with you. I lol at the story, and at the comments, it is so hard to recognize our own biased ways. Thanks a lot for it!

[mpheadley]

This is absolutely hilarious in that these are SO MUCH like the people on this very comment forum!
Now we have names for the people here!
But Yikes! I might be accused of being Mr. First because I work at home and am addicted to my email and often do around the time that the daily PC World digest email gets to my inbox, ha!

[ScooterC]

I have corrected, or pointed out wrong "facts", I have known some people that were hurt by wrong Info.:|

I tend to ignore spelling (but wonder, where is the spell-checker) and grammar errors, unless the sentence makes no sense..

I am guilty of being long winded at times.Usually in emails to people I know.

[mpheadley]

I know what you mean about being long-winded. But sometimes I actually know what I am talking about, and want to thoroughly explain something. I know I will have a question and go searching for that subject I want to learn about and only end up with a half answer because everyone comments even from the beginning like everyone if familiar with what they are talking about already.

[ScooterC]

h5. Good Afternoon mpheadley,



Before the interent, I used to Publish a Family newspaper to stay in touch. It was easier then writing the same letter over and over again. I got damn good at it!

I continued the practice when the majority of the family had email. I printed and snail -mailed to the rest. Until the family started to slowly die off. Then the "paper" stopped due to lack of readers.

My brother never wrote till there was email, he didn't like to write. It's taken me 3 years, to train him, on what is acceptable to send me. He got started very late.

I have been INTO computers since 1978. The beginning forums were dial-up Bulletin Boards. We all manged to get our points across the spelling was similar to the text-messaging of today (short hand), Didn't care much for it then and still don't, although I understand the why.

The biggest obstacle back in the 70s was cost of LD-phone calls. I couldn't afford to call much of anywhere. Now, I can call all over the USA, at no cost, thanks to VOIP. My parents paid for most of my calls TO them - we had a special code. as most of my freinds did.

See, Long winded, it would be no different if I met you in a park (assuming we both spoke English).

Take Care,

Scooter

[jrbales]

My pet peeve regards the Fanboys. Consider: You're a Windows user and there's an interesting story. You decide to read the feedback hoping to get some interesting, valid readers' feedback to the article. The first thing you encounter are the rants of the Linux (and to a lesser degree the Mac) fanboys, taking every opportunity to let you know you're an idiot for using Windows and how superior they are because they use Linux/Mac. These people have to be trolling Windows sites simply to try to demean anyone that uses/likes Windows. My question is why, if Linux/Mac is so wonderful, are they spending time reading anything about Windows! I know the only time I read anything about either of these Operating Systems is because I'm interested in them and only post when I have a valid question or observation based on my use of the OS in question. There are some forums that I stopped visiting because they were so infested with fanboys's rants which overwhelmed the subject I was interested in. (BTW, I'm primarily a Windows user but also interested in PC-BSD as an alternative OS)

[Shannon3277]

LOL Great article! Might I make a few suggestions for additions to the list:


Righteous- He is the one who knowingly posts inflammatory comments for baiting and reaction. He fancies himself an authority on everything under the sun, but often really knows very little. When people react negatively, he starts musing that 'you people are only getting mad at me because you know I'm right' or something like that...you aren't disagreeing with him but with God/Buddha/Ghandi/X political pundit/etc. He takes any resistance to his views as further proof of their veracity, even though they hold water like a seive. What's really going on is people are reacting negatively to him because he's being an ass.

Martyr- Related to Righteous, she is the one who plays the 'poor old me' game, usually about things that don't really exist or are really minor, like being told 'happy holidays' at PetSmart rather than 'merry Christmas'. Nobody has ever suffered as much persecution as she has...she often puts herself on the level of historical figures like Paul of Tarsus or Joan of Arc, despite never having been beheaded or burned at the stake. The constant attention whore, she manages to make every discussion-from religion to football to 19th century African hairdos-about her and her 'struggle'. Reality is, people don't hate her because of her 'cause'...people hate her because she's a whiny brat.

Can you tell I've been on forums for a while? :)

[photocatcher]

How about the guy who reads someone’s response at a forum and then just rearranges the words of that response. They offer nothing new or add to the topic. This has happened to me three times at three different forums. It is kind of creepy. Why do they just remix the words that someone else wrote?