It always comes in cycles.... Wait till summer comes and school's out, hehe.... You haven't seen anything yet in this regard.

Such postings and posters, quickly fall off of their own accord. Trust the membership to do the requisite flogging of such individuals...they usually do a superb job in this regard...

You have to take the good with the bad.

For example, the thread which went on seemingly forever, about alleged UFOs landed in a field. We asked for daytime photos, the poster provided them, and then other requests for more info, and more followup. On the initial outing, this post would have seemed like the category you mention, but had we out and out trashed the thread at that point, then we never would have went on the weird little journey that was that thread, hehe...

I guess I'm just saying you sometimes have to go through the coal to find a diamond....

It's your BS filter. While we've always had some level of what you describe, increased popularity brings increased attention and increased attention seeking. Thankfully, increased popularity online only occurs when something interesting is going on... and despite the chaos of noise-makers, I think we have a few interesting things here.

You have seen nothing I had seen members been banned for trolling withing a few hours of posting, so don't worry is part of message boards to have some that will try to spam the boards.

But they have been taken care off in not time.

ok, thanks for the assurances, folks. I'll pump some steroids into my BS filter before Summer. It does seem a shame, however, that these threads often seem to get a lot more responses than legitimate threads.

I noticed it alot lately.

And as far a disinfo goes i would say about 80% of what i believe is a lie or just plain ol' dis-info. I can admit this but it doesn't mean i give up have my own beliefs.

Just my opinion on the subject of dis-info.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
I have noticed that the vast majority of these posters have a very low post-count, which would suggest that they are signing up purely for the purposes stated above, that they consist of only a few people that are repeatedly signing up repeatedly under different usernames in order to spam the boards, or in the case of scenario "b)" that they are long-time members signing up under new names to disguise their activities.

Such problems are a problem not only for ATS but for any large Internet communities. While the moderators do their best to stop such activity (at least I hope they do), what do you think of my favourite way of dealing with such problems which is just reporting such jerks to a moderator if they're a problem?

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
Thankfully, increased popularity online only occurs when something interesting is going on... and despite the chaos of noise-makers, I think we have a few interesting things here.

I've whined about this before, beating my chest and calling for reform, but SkepticOverlord is absolutely right.

The reason so many dweebs flock to ATS is that there is some excellent stuff here. It is unfortunate that so many of my fellow members equate junk posts with "participation", but ultimately, that's what the "ignore" button is all about.

While it can be frustrating to have to wade through a bunch of garbage to get to the gold, having someone else decide for you what's garbage and what's gold would be worse.

It took me a while to figure that out, but I'm catching on.

My advice is to learn not to let the garbage get you down, but rather become adept at skipping over it and not letting it spoil your ATS experience.

As it happens, about 99.9% of trolls and net.infants tend to retreat and sulk in their lairs when people don't play their silly little games.

They also tend to do the same things over and over, a heuristic that makes their threads and posts much easier to conveniently overlook.

I can usually tell if a thread is worthwhile by the title now, and don't even bother going after the sort of sucker-bait I used to.

In time, it's something we learn to do, one way or another, and well, that's life in the Information Age.

I mainly feel sorry for the moderators who have to wade through all that crap, knowing full well what to expect but needing to read it anyway as part of their duties.

It's maddening work, but they're damn good at it, and I'm glad they are willing to do it.

For my part, I just try to give them and other members something worth taking the time to read, and recommend that my fellow contributors do the same.