Topic stalkers - Your view

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I notice that people live for certain controversial topics. Mainly to go in there, find a person they want to label as something negative, pursue a vendetta with a "holier than thou" attitude either until the thread is locked, that person is ostracised or until they claim some sort of moral victory in their mind.

I see the same folks doing this to men and women's threads and religious threads especially. Granted in the past different people were guilty of it but very little was done about it then either.

The problem is there is nothing specifically in the rules to prevent people from antagonising viewpoints they have an obsession against (or rather the gender, faith and person behind these viewpoints), and ironically by tackling it it could be argued that it's an attack on free speech.

There are men that really have it in for women here, and vice versa, and they even go as far as combing topics to find their boogeyman / boogeywoman to defeat. Equally people are doing the same to Christians, conservatives and Muslims (coming from someone that is not fond of faith whatsoever and vehemently against the ideologies that spurred all the recent atrocities.

How do we actually define this sort of behaviour and is there something that should be done about it? Because the problem I see is topics are getting locked, but no one is getting punished so the same people wait for another opportunity to argue with each other under false pretences and the cycle continues, wasting the moderators' time and ultimately making this a very unwelcoming place for people who need other members help or perhaps just one person to convince them to look at the world differently if their views are deemed "offensive".

I consider it to be "witch hunting" myself, and if I've ever done it id take necessary punishment. So that's my take on all of it, what's yours?

Name names.

Come on, man. I'm not that stupid

Besides isn't this called a knee jerk reaction? The threads barely been live 2 minutes!

I want to know what people think about this and how it should be tackled in terms of moderation. I'm not here to witch hunt as this thread would be just as bad.

If you have a rule, then there is no need to name names. It can be reported.

Then report those whom you think may have broken The Rules, and let the moderators sort things out.

I guess you could do that, but fanaticism and obsession aren't healthy and I think if people who were moderated for it specifically rather than just for "bad behaviour" it might go some way in making people consider their actions in future.

If you ban one person in an argument of two extreme opposites and they're behaving in the way I'm on about, it isn't really helping the person help them self if they don't realise why their actions may be interpreted as bad and they get angry, believe there's a bias and either make an alt to antagonise the forum or come back angrier and more bitter towards not only what/who they were attacking but WP itself.

Then there is no problem. People will disagree, and some people have strong feelings against certain practices. That's just how it is. If you're searching for a "perfect" environment in which everyone agrees with everyone else, then WrongPlanet may not be the right place for you.

No, not what I want at all.
I assume you don't think that of me, either, so not sure why you'd say it.

I think debate is healthy and there's nothing to be gained from sitting in an echo chamber. That's exactly why some people come here - for advice, alternate views, a different perspective.

But there is a point when it does become unhealthy - when people comb the forums for specific views and threads and attack the person behind them as a means of "victory points" for "their people". Be it a MRA, feminist, Athiest, practicer of faith, gun lobbyist or gun control advocate.

Perhaps identifying this pattern of behaviour in a report to mods can assist them but I don't see how it couldn't be incorporated into the rules somehow.

How do you know that these people are even deliberately stalking and "combing topics to find their boogeyman / boogeywoman"?

To claim that people deliberately COMB the forums for a fight with their enemies here is quite a huge assumption in many case, I would imagine. While I have no idea if perhaps anyone actually does do that -- there are boards I tend to stay away from that seem to have their own regulars and maybe that's happening there -- I think it's a nerve to assume that everyone does that.

Because there's also the fact that a poster may not be actively searching for ANY thing or anyone, but in the course of checking out the newest threads or contributing to one, they may see the post of someone they've had "words" with before.

And if that person is still talking trash, then it's a natural reaction to take them on again in that thread. Everyone has the right to defend themselves if someone is STILL harping on something from thread to thread.

Sure it's not a wonderful thing to be happening. But not everyone engaging the same person in a different thread has actively tried to find them in order to engage.

Personally I groan inside when I run into a post by someone I've had conflict with on here, but IF they are still referring in a combative manner to the topic that they were in combat with ME about, I'm not going to turn the other cheek.

I'm going to stand up for myself IF I run across that sh!t.

But it doesn't mean I've gone out of my way to find it, quite the opposite.

Yes true, you didn't say everyone does it, but I think it's a big leap in the dark to assume that when you see what appears to you like a case of seeking out the conflict, that the person deliberately did so. Some might, I have no idea. Maybe I've missed flagrant cases of this as there are whole boards I never look in on. But some conflicts you see that seem to have jumped threads can also be that the person involved stumbled upon the same trash talk, not that they actively looked for their nemesis to start up with again.

I learned in the early days of chat rooms and forums that it's best not to 'feed the trolls'. Some people are just itching for a reaction/confrontation, that if they don't get it they'll eventually troll elsewhere.

No I don't mean cross-posting, I mean when the person posts the same opinions on a different thread, even someone else's topic, or they start a thread of their own expanding on a previous argument in another thread. Expanding upon or repeating an opinion in a different thread isn't cross posting or breaking the rules, but it can be a continuation of trash talking; that's what I'm referring to, rather than actual cross posting.

As for your examples well of course that's crappy. I guess you've seen that actually happening, in which case yes of course that's really bad and that does sound like a case of deliberate hounding. I had in mind more if you notice that two people are still arguing across a couple of different threads -- which happened with me this morning.

But what you're describing, for sure, if there are people deliberately seeking out individuals then that's not good.

It doesn't happen often (very rarely in my experience) though sometimes someone with a grudge will stalk another member's future posts and threads in order to disrupt them and generally cause mayhem by undermining, sniping, intimidating and so on until a moderator intervenes to put a stop it.

It is repetitive, targeted, malicious behaviour, so that puts it generally in the broad trolling category. It isn't specified on its own in the rules however usually in these rare instances there is a trail of posts which when reviewed as a whole can be seen for what it is. These forum stalkers are mercifully rare, and generally target their one selected victim. I can think of one member banned a while ago for sustained stalking and disruption of this kind.

The moderator response to trollish behaviours would depend on the severity on a case by case basis. It's the kind of thing that the mod team would tend to discuss as a team, once it was reported, and in the forum stalking situation I would prefer to hear from the victim personally, with a list of threads concerned.

Topic following (ie following a specific issue rather than following a specific person for hostile reasons) is more complex. There is nothing wrong per se in following topics which particularly interest us - probably most of us do that, because we are motivated by a particular interest in certain areas. However it is unclear to me where the fine line is (or should be) which divides topic following from topic trolling. I haven't seen a discussion on this, (no names please) and it may be useful to have one.

The above views are my own, they are not meant to represent the mod team as a whole.