Topic stalkers - Your view

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So far I've only seen topic stalking by one poster about one topic. At first I felt pretty sure we'd got a troll, but I checked out the member's other stuff and was surprised to find nothing but reasonable, polite comments, except for that one subject, where I caught a powerful whiff of slipperiness and passive aggression. I know some issues are thorny, but for this particular one I can't see why anybody on their side of the fence would become especially upset - the other side of it would seem to be where the vulnerability is. Naturally the threads tended to turn nasty and to get derailed. As for what to do about it, I guess the current rules about courtesy are probably enough to fix it. I think if people would use "I" statements routinely instead of all this "you're...." rubbish, much of the problem would go away. This page explains a bit about their usefulness, with examples of how the technique is sometimes undermined:
http://humanpotentialcenter.org/Article ... ments.html
Not the world's greatest website perhaps, but it' a start.

Good link.

Another issue WP that causes trouble is when a poster becomes relentlessly aggressive to a targeted person (often an OP) to the point of harassment, and the target respectfully requests the aggressor to "please leave me alone, leave my thread alone, you've made your point and I have already answered it", however the aggressor continues, often even more aggressively. I have seen it happen to quite a number of OPs, and often the aggressors target more than one OP.

I'm not sure if there is a single word for this. These threads often end up being locked to stop the harasser, though that penalises the OPs (who are the victims of hostile posting like this).

Typically the harassers will say "I'm only saying what I think" as a justification for this behaviour.

Once the dialogue is degraded and the degrader is asked to back off, then backing off is a very good idea. Stubborn refusal to do so and a continuation and acceleration of the same behaviour is (enter a word here......).

I recall that sly, while himself broke rules before, was a target of this type of topic-stalking users just to bash him.

There are users I won't name who hold deep hatred and grudge against specific other users to the point they veto them as eternal foes, even if the vetoed users after quite a time reply these users on some topic with "I agree with you/ you are right on this" or even an apology , they will still reply back something like "I told you never to reply me again, I will report you" - this creates an overall ambiance of extreme unfriendliness.

Even tho I have seen those users, that I won't name, reply to others users who said the same opinions of those they vetoed, without this kind of hostility and report-threatening.

My theory that there's racism at play, but I have no proof for that - it's just a gut feeling and it often turn to be correct.

And oh....when I adopted it for my myself toward some users who catered for this behavior to make a point, they all revolted against me, it is so funny.

I hate that topic-locking thing. As you say, it often punishes the innocent along with the guilty. I thought that "clean-up" job I saw the other day was a better way to deal with such skirmishes, though I imagine it takes more time and careful judgement.

I really wish there was an "ignore posts by this person" button that worked. I've sometimes resorted to scrolling down every time I see posts by certain people, but I'm only human and I find it hard to always do that, then I can get angry and I want to wade in and kick some butt.

Been rather busy the last few days but have been lurking.
Just wanted to say thanks for all the comments, opposing, agreeing and attempting to understand.
Also thanks for a mod chiming in. B19 you probably understood my sentiments best and handled it very impartially.

Boo brings up a very good example of a user bullied by the very system that existed to support him.
sly279 is a guy who has had a hard time making friends and finding a love interest. Understandably this frustrates him and he vents. There are so many people here who have had years of experience in how to deal with this, or maybe show him the right way. Instead, I see white knight men, and anti-men women using him as the "perfect excuse" for their agenda in this forum rather than trying to steer him in a direction that would even get him remotely close to their way of thinking (surely something they'd want?)

And these people don't just stop at one thread, they go out of their way to find users like him, who post in topics the way he does, and keep a constant tab on their post history to bully them and use them as an easy means of proving "their point", whatever their point may be, and score imaginary points that don't exist for their social credibility in a forum that is supposed to be the ultimate support network for Aspies and not a sub-network of normal life that lets socially awkward people feel better than some other socially awkward people.

MRA's and particular "Feminists" on WrongPlanet are the most guilty in my opinion of this sort of behaviour, although it can apply to political extremists here, too. I think the reason for this is that on WP they feel it is a safe space where they can preach free speech (in their mind, on their terms) with what they believe comes with freedom of consequence. And let me be clear on something - WrongPlanet should be a safe space for ALL ASPIES and NOT a set kind. It means people will agree and disagree and that's fine. But unfortunately there is no set way to deal with this problem which leads users to report the problem in an insincere way as a means of a loophole or out-of-box solution, rather than genuine solution.

And lastly, when we disagree with each other we should at least try to figure out why and have a moderation system that promotes it, not enabled suppression of one side which is exactly what happens when topics get locked and the angry folk don't get punished, because of their "feels". And isn't this meant to be a site where we get the tools and topics to not only cope with tough topics that attract these sorts of problems but deal with them humanely too?

I could go on and on, but I think we need to find a way to deal with this camouflaged problem in a way that addresses it as its own issue and continue to keep WP a welcoming place for everyone on the spectrum.

I don't see any reason to make some new category of rule violation for this, it seems like the kind of thing that is best dealt with according to the existing rules, by warning people who get rude or aggressive.

As to people who try to ban others from "their" threads, I find that behavior irritating, as usually the person simply wants to silence an opposing voice, often one who isn't actually doing anything wrong. When you post to a public forum, you're opening yourself up to critique, it's kind of the whole point of discussion. It doesn't help that the people who do this don't tend to respect it when others ask them to go away and are often aggressive posters themselves, seems pretty hypocritical.