[rnealw]

Having enjoyed all this I found myself drawn the check a couple of Forums where all of these persona's seem to live in Excess.
The one forum I do frequent We have an area which is dedicated to just having fun and enjoying each other so the Jerks quickly loose interest and leave.

[LindaA]

Entertaining article but very sexist. After all, everyone of these forum jerks you mention can also be FEmale! HA! HA! (BTW, I'm female myself, so I can say that.) {|-))

[LindaA]

No, he didn't, but then again, with the way people abbreviate so much in their online communiques, most folks likely wouldn't recognize a typo if they were to trip over one. :)

[yellorose2]

This article was great and I have run into many of these jerks myself many times. Thank you

[DennyA]

Not a comment about jerks, but I wish posters would divide long comments into paragraphs. Often I encounter a post that looks interesting but, without paragraph breaks is difficult to read.

[mibshubby]

I hate to bring this back on topic. I do love a good derailing...hmmm.... maybe that should be one of the types of online forum people. The derailer ...



I was going to bring up one type that bother me and that is the tag team effort of the quote pyramid builders. You know the ones - they have to respond to someones comment by quoting them but it gets out of hand quickly if there are a couple around. Soon it takes time to scroll through everything until you can find the next comment.



Myself, I prefer to just lurk on the side and read everyones comments with rarely posting anything myself. Usually, someone else would have posted my comments anyway.

[coastie65]

rnealw said:

Having enjoyed all this I found myself drawn the check a couple of Forums where all of these persona's seem to live in Excess.
The one forum I do frequent We have an area which is dedicated to just having fun and enjoying each other so the Jerks quickly loose interest and leave.

We have that here. It is the " General Talk " area. coastie

[coastie65]

mibshubby said:

I hate to bring this back on topic. I do love a good derailing...hmmm.... maybe that should be one of the types of online forum people. The derailer ...





I was going to bring up one type that bother me and that is the tag team effort of the quote pyramid builders. You know the ones - they have to respond to someones comment by quoting them but it gets out of hand quickly if there are a couple around. Soon it takes time to scroll through everything until you can find the next comment.






Myself, I prefer to just lurk on the side and read everyones comments with rarely posting anything myself. Usually, someone else would have posted my comments anyway.

Yeah, this thread has drifted around a bit. Sometimes the quotes help, if they are replying to something several pages back. It gets a bit time consumming and aggravating to have to go back to see what the reply was to. A series of quotes can get a bit confusing as well. coastie

[Shannon3277]

LOL yes, the Derailer...or maybe the Hijacker with the illustration being one of those guys in ski masks hijacking a plane.... :)


And the pyramid builder can be confusing. Some forums don't do the quoting feature well, and so the new comments get lost in the shuffle. Especially if the code is messed up and someone is quoting and responding line-by-line. But many forums have instant coders.

And maybe there should be one like Unabomber...the person who comes onto a thread and drops a huge bomb that disrupts the conversation to the point that it can't go on...like people who evoke Godwin's Law or post a bunch of random crap-like the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody-that have nothing to do with the topic. And hopefully someone could come up with a more original name.

And squishie, I have a stuffed cow named Squishmeister. :)

[BluRydge]

Thanks for covering an irritating and "oh, so true" issue in such an entertaining fashion. Also, kudos to the illustrator. They were great.

[techman]

What I would really like to see is articles on what kinds of jerks forum moderators can be> I have run into some moderators that should have not been Moderators. Recent anecdote:
On YAHOO!'s ANSWERS I answered a simple question, "How does one edit Wikipedia?" I answered back with a "QWERTY KEYBOARD". The person who asked the question evidently had sent in a complaint about breaking the TOS. I was at least given an opportunity to reply to the complaint. I simply answered the the tribunal, roughly that simple questions needed simple answers. It ended up the complainer was reprimanded. I quit CNets "HELP" because there, there are real jerks for moderators lurking there.

[rgreen4]

I definitely think those two should be added. "The Hijacker" and "The Unibomber" are types seen on a lot of forus. We even had a group of hijackers from another forum come over here and start up, but were sent packing. We have enough of our own thank you.

[mazorj]

Let's see how many of these I can commit in one post:

1. There have been several versions of this compilation over the years. The first ones were so old that they referred to UseNet types. Your list largely duplicates these earlier efforts, because human nature hasn't changed in the intervening years. lol :-)

2. Previous versions identified one of the categories here as "The Flamer" which is bit more precise and to the point, although the description still fits. Can't you %^&*#@ morons get anything right?

3. Your description of the Conspiracy Theorist type is too restrictive in that it paints a dark picture of a grim, reclusive paranoid. Many conspirowackos are highly functional and do not stand out as such until they expound on their goofy views. Get real, sheeple. Unless you retract this lie, we will know that you are a paid shill for the SeKRit campaign to discredit those of us who see through the lies by trying to make us look like CRaZy PSyCHoPaTHs !!!!!!!

4. Although I devised this term many, many years ago, you probably are hearing it first here: Global Village Idiots. As in "The Internet has transformed many local village idiots into Global Village Idiots." Or "It takes a Global Village Idiot to raise an idiotic opinion from its home-grown infancy to a worldwide topic of discussion."

5. Shame on you. This undoubtedly will incite thousands of accusative "Are so!" and "Am not!" flame wars on various sites. Can't we all just get along?

6. I haven't bothered reading any previous comments. They undoubtedly are inane, juvenile, and to the extent that they have any substance, I said it better here.

7. I speak from the considerable experience of having been on Internet fora (the proper plural of forum) continuously, starting in 1983 with CompuServe* on a CP/M machine using a 300-baud dial-up connection, then on to UseNet and now website blogs using Vista and DSL.

* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe

[squishie]

Hi Shannon
A stuffed cow? !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

How's this for my new advar?!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

OK, I'll stop before get self into trouble. Couldn't resist playing with insert button.

OPPS, The second image didn't work. Oh well
Message was edited by: squishie

[DigicamLife]

I didn't read through all of the comments yet but I wanted to make one point about the "FanBoy" that you seemed to miss.

The true FanBoy never can actually afford the objects he actually wants. He hangs out in forums and goes on and on about this or that and he is always just a week away from going out and spending the money to fulfill his longing. However just before he is put to the test there will be an article somewhere that announces that the newest version of that particular item is just around the corner and then Fanboy elects to not spend his hard earned dollars just yet. Better wait until the latest and greatest come along. This can go on for years and years. I know of one Fanboy who has been living in his Grandmothers basement since FidoNet and is still connecting by dialup with a PIII 733 running WIndows 95. That was a gift. He never actually bought any PC but he loves to tell you who has the best and why your opinion isn't worth the bandwidth to send it around the world.

John

[joesoler]

The question this inspires in me is: Does the internet inspire and create sociopathy OR does the internet just bring out the all the sociopathy which already existed?
I am frequently depressed about the lack of civility and racism (oh yeah you forgot the Racist/Sexist/Homophobe who always finds a way to make a racial/sexist/homophobic comment or slur regardless of how irrelevant such comment might be to the topic of the discussion) which exists on the internet.
If it already existed though then the internet might be helping because the best way to get rid of a foul stink is to air it out. Let us hope.

[Shannon3277]

I copied and pasted...LOL hilarious!

But above about the jerks for moderators...maybe Demagogue or Evil Dictator could be a good title? I think I've seen those names somewhere. I've seen mods who were real jerks, to the point where they would follow a person around on the boards to insult them or would come up with invectives that would make a sailor blush...and two of these were later made Admins! At first I thought I didn't get one guy because his insults were over my head (one of his insults), but the truth was that I understood what he was saying but I just wasn't enough of a jerk to fathom why someone would behave that way.

[rasmasyean]

What do you mean by you're a member of other forums? You just register like everyone else or you perform some duties there as a "team member"?
Does PC World hire you to moderate these forums and be a team member of other forums?
Are you like a professional moderator?
I've always wondered whether this was a job or hobby. Some sites don't have any moderators (or barely active ones) but they do have a lot of traffic so maybe they just don't hire ppl...or just don't care.

[WinTard]

squishie said:

Hi Shannon

A stuffed cow? !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/

1!

Quote

How's this for my new advar?!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/

1!

Quote

OK, I'll stop before get self into trouble. Couldn't resist playing with insert button.

OPPS, The second image didn't work. Oh well

Message was edited by: squishie

Hello squishie, I believe you are missing a ! at the beginning of your string...

http://forums.pcworl...m/legacyimages/
1!

Here it is with a ! in front of the string...
!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

~~~~~~~~~~
To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.
~ John Ruskin

[WinTard]

You mean iDiot isn't a trademark from Apple? (I am trying to be an iDiot here...) ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~
Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.
~ Brian Tracy