Influx of Idiots...
 

http://www.oddworldforums.net/showthread.php?t=12028

Oh. My. God.

We really need to do something about this.

Holy crap. There can only be one possible reason for this:
Aliens have tapped into the internet from their planet, and are trying to communicate with us. Because surely, no human could be that stupid.

I'll be wearing tinfoil so these dumbasses can't hack into my mind.

I still don't know what that guy was thinking.

Hell, I wanted to keep it stickied in OT just on principle alone, but I guess stupid smelly Alcar moved it to Necrum. Boo. :p

Well really, though... what can you do? Aside from putting an age limit on the forum, of course. That's been brought up before and was pretty much completely shot down. The only thing I can think of is to be overly cruel to... slower... members.

But that would be mean.

Maybe we should have a required entrance exam over the rules that registered users must pass before they can begin posting. :p

oh man that would be stupid it's anoying enough waiting 2 days to post

There should be a box to tick on the registration form that says - Are you a moron?

That's got to catch at least a few out.



Then we can gas them.

well that would be pointless because they are bound to lie

Yeah, stingbee, you so smart!
I'd tick the box...

You'd be surprised- fool.

I've seen that work on forums that had the same problem as this place. The influx of idiotic new users stopped... but they still had to ban stupid people who registered before the exam was introduced, and that got people pissed off. They had to make a whole set of rules just so that they could ban idiots without having people rebel against it.

I think we at least need to do SOMETHING about these people. I know it's hard to think of something that won't be cruel/mean or over the top... but we need to really put our brains into action here. Otherwise we stand to have to put up with these annoying morons forever.

Personally, I think we should introduce multiple warning ability to moderators, so that for just one episode of bad behaviour they can hand out anywhere from two, all the way up to the full three warnings to a user, depending on the severity of their stupidity. Giving moderators the power to ban REALLY troublesome users.

Also, I think there should be a minimum age limit of 13. I've never met a single intelligent 12 year old person online...all of them have been immature and stupid in some way or another. However I HAVE met the occasional 13 year olds who have been ok. It's true that people could fake their age, but if they do and they turn out to be intelligent, then who cares? If they turn out to be stupid then with the multiple warning ability of the moderators, they'll be able to ban them quickly anyway... and that's assuming they pass the exam.

Heh. This isn't the first time I've seen that from Fuzzle54321. A while ago he PMed me asking if I could be his friend,I said a straight "No!" :p I didn't even know who he was.

very suprised that sorry ass question was put up by some one with over 250
posts ! They should know better than that.

Let`s face it morons abound in all levels of life. To try and keep them off this
forum would be tantamount to trying to keep them off the streets, a tall order indeed.

Aside from being an idiotic post, it should come under the heading :spam:

well whats the point of being someones friend if you don't know who they are its like a stranger coming up to you saying will you be my friend. fuzzleman54321 asked me I said yes becasuse I actually knew him

What's the point of asking someone to be your friend? I'd say no as he spelt 'friend' wrong and appears to be about 10 years old. I have a loathing for anyone born after 1990.

*sweeps sweat off forehead*
Phew, that makes me very lucky...
Rich The Intern doesn't have a loathing for me!

Where do you know him from?

Ah, another 89'er. We appear to be quite common on these forums and we aren't idiots.
Limiting age to 13 could work.

well manchester and I live in a scrapyard just kidding i live in wales and I joined his rpg and he joined mine then he asked me the question and then I got to know him

I can't help but agree, Dino. That's the problem with Oddworld, it seems to attract both the young and old.

Kids these days.:rolleyes:

I was born on 1990, I do not think that makes me an idiot, I'm fithteen anyways. If you ask me, it depends how smart they are and grown up if you know what I mean. I have met alot of stupid retared silly kids over the years though, even when I was a kid myself. Little childish bratz .

No offence anyone.

Well I think that's not really important how old a person is, but how much 'grown up' is his mentality, if you know what I mean.
Believe me, I've met a few of 18-20 year old people, who were, um...weird, childish... not to say stupid in some situations...and there were some 14 and 15 years olds that I've met and they were really smart and great to talk to about almost anything.

So, you know, limiting age to 13 could hurt someone, who is actually pretty smart and has something wise to say.

But I have no idea how to recognize and separate those two kinds of people who are mentally grown up, and those who are childish and annoying.

I can't agree with limiting membership to an age group. We'd still end up with idiot adults, less common they may be, and experienced 'Net users would instantly set their age to 18. That's what I do always. Sodding everything wants me to be 18, now.

Face it: these idiots are funny. Well, they're not, but they can incite humour. In my frustatingly liberalism, I say we have to let everyone join, and then just completely pull apart their confidence until they leave or grow up.

The mods have done a really terrific job of humiliating the brainless before they close their topics, but there is most definitely room for improvement. Some good effort was displayed by SeaRex in Fuzzleman's topic, but I probably would have wrote something like... "This is why your parents got a divorce" or perhaps "I play Dungeons and Dragons, but I'm not that desperate". I think remarks such as those would hit home with the offender, preventing any future stupidity. Who knows, we might even save a life or two.

It sounds like that's the way we have to go. Although they are few and far between young people can sometimes be intelligent people that can actually string together a coherent (and gramatically correct) sentence. It would be wrong to stop them from joining because of their age.

I can't agree with the idea of an age limit, either, mainly because some would consider it discrimination against the younger folks. Like some others have said, I've seen several people 18-25 that can be just as immature, and sometimes even idiotic, as some children. But also, some children are quite mature and intelligent for their age. I have a 10-year-old friend on another forum that is more mature than some 20-year-olds I know. But I agree that this situation can become quite frustrating at times. =/

As someone who used to run a forum myself (rockmetalforums, now defunct) I believe I can say with some authority that simply humiliating or insulting a user does nothing but create future problems. If your intention is to irritate someone until they leave, you might as well just delete the account altogether, it's much faster and forumwide saves everyone about 40 psi of bloodpressure. Especially the mod squad.

Also on the point of imposing an age limit - yes there would still be the occasional idiot. But Max, as you pointed out yourself, there would be a lot less of them. This is the whole point. Reducing the numbers of idiots. The fact that we can't 100% eliminate the problem of idiots signing up to the OWF, doesn't at all mean that the plan is a failure and not worth implementing - saying that would be selectively perfectionist against anything that you don't want. No individual initiative to reduce the numbers of morons registering for accounts will be 100% - they'll all need backup initiatives to catch the ones that slipped the net.

The age limit is just one weapon in a war against idiotic spammers. You've got the entrance exam, multiple warnings, and the age limit, all working together. I can see this drastically reducing the amount of clipwing dipshits we get each year.

You guys are all jerks.

I remember a couple of months back when we had a spam-wave someone suggested that instead of the 3-warning system we should introduce a 30 points system where mods allocate points based on the circumstances (eg 1 point for one-off spam, 5 points for repetitive spam and 25 points for blatant stupidity). Once the member hit 30 points they are banned. Points would last for 12 months from the date that they were allocated, after which they are cleared.

DI always knows exactly what to say...

I do believe DI is being ironic...