Anonymous askme derails: a reboot? December 26, 2005 5:13 AM   Subscribe

Umm, yeah. I realize this callout is pointless since the the poster in question is so blatantly abusive and off-topic, but I thought it might be necessary to create this thread so the original anonymous poster could have an additional thread in AskMeFi so we could help him.
posted by SeizeTheDay to Etiquette/Policy at 5:13 AM (27 comments total)

FWIW, I believe that delmoi is also slightly responsible as well.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 5:15 AM on December 26, 2005


delmoi shouldn't have succumbed to this guy's level, but it's F who obviously has the problem.
posted by arimathea at 5:23 AM on December 26, 2005


F's comments seemed chemically induced somehow, if writing can in any way.

I suspect meth or something similar. Give him a chance to come down from whatever he was on and explain himself before breaking out the banhammer.
posted by Dag Maggot at 5:46 AM on December 26, 2005


Wow, something like 20 of Fred's comments just disappeared.
posted by grouse at 5:49 AM on December 26, 2005


yeah I'm on it, and writing the guy an email to let him know how AskMe works.
posted by jessamyn at 5:51 AM on December 26, 2005


Is there a term for when an argument devolves into dictionarywonk?
posted by fleacircus at 5:53 AM on December 26, 2005


that was... wow.
posted by shmegegge at 5:58 AM on December 26, 2005


Can someone also tell him to STOP capitalizing CERTAIN words for EMPHASIS because it's enormously ANNOYING.

What were the deleted comments like? Reading the thread now is very disorienting because the reactions all seem out of whack.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:16 AM on December 26, 2005


Most of the comments that gained responses remain; he just went off the deep end when delmoi stopped responding.
posted by Firas at 6:29 AM on December 26, 2005


Can I get a pony in the form of Wiki-style CVS page history for times like this?
posted by kcm at 8:18 AM on December 26, 2005


I thought about saving the page for just this occasion, but it was so relentlessly banal I couldn't get motivated to hit the 4-5 keystrokes it would have taken.

There was a lot of back-and-forth about what "fraud" means, a lot of dictionary quoting, etc. The whole thing was a great example of the dictum "just because it's not appropriate for AskMe doesn't mean it's inherently interesting."

Which I have crocheted on a potholder, by the way.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:10 AM on December 26, 2005


the only thing worse than a trainwreck thread is a doctored trainwreck thread.
posted by quonsar at 9:19 AM on December 26, 2005


Now I want to know what Fred said.
posted by geoff. at 9:26 AM on December 26, 2005


yeah. i do too.
posted by TeamBilly at 9:34 AM on December 26, 2005


he just started kind-of rambling away to himself. lots of short one sentence posts. imagine a drunk guy on the street muttering to himself. just like that, but perhaps bit more coherent.
posted by andrew cooke at 9:38 AM on December 26, 2005


There's nothing more foolish and embarrassing on AskMe than amateur internet attorneys. They all speak in absolutes, and they all prove that the tiniest bit of knowledge can be dangerous if anyone listens. They're all idiots.

It's like on Slashdot, where every science thread is invaded by a handful of chumps who think that watching NOVA qualifies them to enter a discussion with an air of authority. Except on Slashdot, the unwashed are promptly corrected by adults who know what they're talking about, and the noise is quickly modded down. Here, the dime-store legal advice from Law & Order experts is allowed to stand.
posted by cribcage at 9:41 AM on December 26, 2005


Sorry if my solecism in using "fraud" colloquially and imprecisely in the first comment led to a derailing...
posted by nicwolff at 9:49 AM on December 26, 2005


Fred's AskMe history has other crap in it. Definitely unclear on the concept.
posted by mediareport at 9:55 AM on December 26, 2005


"Well, he keep using words like "pasghetti" and "momatoes", he make numerous threatening references to the UN, and at the end, he repeated the words "Screw Flanders" over and over again!"

(I'll never get tired of that simpsons quote.)
posted by blue_beetle at 10:28 AM on December 26, 2005


Christmas stress. What a wonderful thing.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:46 AM on December 26, 2005


FWIW, I believe that delmoi is also slightly responsible as well.

Yeah, I should have just ignored him right away. I didn't think he would make such a big (not to mention totally nonsensical) argument about the definition of a couple words, which were totally irrelevant to the situation at hand.

The crazy thing was, he'd posted like 11-12 comments in other threads, one per thread and then he posts like 35 comments in that thread.

I'm guessing he was probably drunk.
posted by delmoi at 12:19 PM on December 26, 2005


There's nothing more foolish and embarrassing on AskMe than amateur internet attorneys. They all speak in absolutes, and they all prove that the tiniest bit of knowledge can be dangerous if anyone listens. They're all idiots.

It's like on Slashdot, where every science thread is invaded by a handful of chumps who think that watching NOVA qualifies them to enter a discussion with an air of authority. Except on Slashdot, the unwashed are promptly corrected by adults who know what they're talking about, and the noise is quickly modded down. Here, the dime-store legal advice from Law & Order experts is allowed to stand.
posted by cribcage at 9:41 AM PST on December 26


Good thing it's not called AskMetafilterWhereEveryoneHasBothAnMDAndAJD. Anyone acting solely on the advice of posters in these threads is an idiot, true, but I don't recall anyone ever recommending that. If you don't like AskMe, don't use it.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:12 PM on December 26, 2005


Otimus Chyme, not every single argument with a hint of elitism is a personal attack on you. Obviously if you're clear about how well you know what you're talking about the above doesn't apply to you.
posted by Firas at 6:15 PM on December 26, 2005


Except on Slashdot, the unwashed are promptly corrected by adults who know what they're talking about, and the noise is quickly modded down.

That stopped being true around the time UIDs hit six digits. The current moderation system filters out the minority of experts and amplifies popular misconceptions and crap analogies. These mob-rule truths then become stronger when the story is dup'ed the next day. Again and again the cycle repeats as each editor steps up to repost the story. With each iteration, the feedback loop shapes the discourse of a million computer geeks until the every thread is a 200 dB infomercial about space elevators and source code. Everything else is attenuated into obscurity at the bottom of an 800 post thread.

Of course, this phenomenon is not restricted to Slashdot; I see it happening to Metafilter as well. Every time some PoliticsFilter boosts the gain a little closer to unity, Metafilter becomes less like a radio and more like a clock. It's a sad thing to see. Radios are so much more interesting than clocks.
posted by ryanrs at 7:18 PM on December 26, 2005


Someday I'll post the story of Goldilocks and the three Metafilters. Here's an excerpt:
Then Goldilocks tried the green one, "Oh!, this one's overdamped." Then the gray one, "hmm, underdamped." But the blue one was just right! Then Bush was elected.
posted by ryanrs at 7:23 PM on December 26, 2005


I dunno, I kinda like clocks.
posted by jmgorman at 9:47 PM on December 26, 2005


-Tick.
-Tock.
-No, it's Tick.
-Look, obviously it's tock, because grass is green. Tick is just ignorant.
-People like you are the reason why I never use MeFi any more. It's Tick.
-You are just a PoliticsFilter nutjob poster. And it's Tock.
-I don't care what you think in your tiny anti-Semitic mind, it's stil Tick.
-MeFI is just a Tock echo chamber. In the real world outside your MeFi armchair dreamland, everybody knows it's Tick.
- Can't we find a middle way between Tick and Tock?
-Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck UN Flanders Jesus Satan Hitler cock Tick.
-META!!!!!
posted by cleardawn at 8:05 AM on December 27, 2005


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