Since I made a smartass reply in the other thread, I owe a thoughtful one here.
Stickjockey's idea of probation (e.g. no posting in L&P until >100 posts) is a favorite that I've mentioned before, but Oleg said it's not possible in this software. Trying to do that manually would require half as many Moderators as members.
I don't really have a solution, just an observation: THR is a great forum, thus word of it spread, thus the population increased, thus statistically we have increased the raw numbers of jackasses and trolls.
This is a common theme in lots of areas. Anybody remember back when AOL first "merged" with the Internet? Usenet was absolutely flooded with imbeciles who didn't know they weren't on AOL anymore, and the signal to noise ratio became nearly 1:1 for a while.
Why do so many people like small towns versus big cities? In small towns, everybody knows everybody, which creates "self-moderation" on behaviors. If you know you're gonna run into people on a daily basis, you're better behaved.
I like to SCUBA dive, and in my favorite destination, where I've been going every year for the past 12 years, there is this great dive shop. When I first started going there, the town was sleepy, and the dive shop was small, but known by some through word of mouth only. It was a friendly, laid back operation where it was not uncommon to run into celebrities on your dive boat because of how low key both the dive shop and it's customers were. We were all there to dive, we all wanted a friendly, low key experience, and we all happily had one. Over the years, this dive shop has become well known throughout the world. If you go to this dive destination, it's this or one other of the many operations there now that is ranked as "#1" in dive magazines and on the net. The operation has tried its best to keep its "small, laid back" atmosphere, but again, with increased numbers come increased jackasses to be dealt with. The shop tries to deal with this by creating "special" dive trips, putting it's long time customers on boats with each other, much like Oleg has created APS for those of us THR "oldtimers" that want to keep a friendly place to hang out and talk about "just stuff".
The analogy is that both the dive shop and THR grew, but both want to keep the "laid back" atmosphere. They both try their best, but without, as Oleg said "becoming Drill Instructors" it's nearly impossible to control the rabble without killing the experience for the rest. Maybe a lot of this is up to us. I haven't posted much on THR myself in the last half year or so, but maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe those of us who don't like some of what growth is doing to THR need to post MORE there rather than staying away -- to "set an example of behavior" as it were. Also, and I know I have been guilty of this myself -- instead of retorting posts by jerks, there needs to be more just plain ignoring the posts. Most of the threads that degrade into the noise that bothers me are almost always either started by, or invaded by, someone looking to get a rise out of others. Simply ignoring the jackass posts (and I KNOW it's hard to do) will eventually cause many of the troublemakers to look for new ground, and could go a long way into making things better.
So as a conclusion to my ramble, if we don't want THR to turn into an overly moderated, lords of discipline kind of place, much of the onus seems to be on us as the users to set examples of behavior and do better at simply ignoring the gadflys that have been drawn to it via its growth and popularity.
