On the Nessie Question (NQ lol)

[HansHill]

Cross-posting this here from a different thread, this feels relevant - Mods feel free to remove if this isn't the right place!

I hear you, it's definitely circular and doesn't add a ton. That said, I do think strong criticism is important to keep all of us on our toes, and Nessie has in many ways been a valued contributor in that regard. Nonetheless, some 'throttling' might be in order, to allow others on the forum to have a chance to develop and debate their own ideas and topics, without everyone getting stuck in the same merry-go-round with Nessie's "bullflop bingo", over and over again.

I'm firmly in the pro-Nessie camp. Yes he's highly repetitive, however he takes his rhetorical clobberings in good humour and never spergs out. He is also well behaved and doesn't encroach onto the Discussion thread, which i think warrants its own kudos, as he knows he would not be welcome there.

His main "benefit" to CODOH however, is that I've never actually seen him getting the better of anybody - meaning any lurker who jumps into any random thread, has an overwhelming chance of seeing some point of contention being dunked on, which is very satisfying to see.

As for how to handle his rubbish, i like the idea of mods intervening and removing his derailment posts into the junk folder - a good example of this is the AI thread, where if you go to page 15 there is almost no discussion of AI happening at all, and as such I have stopped following it. Just to be clear, I'm not singling Nessie out for every derailment in the universe, however he tends to indulge.

[Nazgul]

Cross-posting this here from a different thread, this feels relevant - Mods feel free to remove if this isn't the right place!

I hear you, it's definitely circular and doesn't add a ton. That said, I do think strong criticism is important to keep all of us on our toes, and Nessie has in many ways been a valued contributor in that regard. Nonetheless, some 'throttling' might be in order, to allow others on the forum to have a chance to develop and debate their own ideas and topics, without everyone getting stuck in the same merry-go-round with Nessie's "bullflop bingo", over and over again.

I'm firmly in the pro-Nessie camp. Yes he's highly repetitive, however he takes his rhetorical clobberings in good humour and never spergs out. He is also well behaved and doesn't encroach onto the Discussion thread, which i think warrants its own kudos, as he knows he would not be welcome there.

His main "benefit" to CODOH however, is that I've never actually seen him getting the better of anybody - meaning any lurker who jumps into any random thread, has an overwhelming chance of seeing some point of contention being dunked on, which is very satisfying to see.

As for how to handle his rubbish, i like the idea of mods intervening and removing his derailment posts into the junk folder - a good example of this is the AI thread, where if you go to page 15 there is almost no discussion of AI happening at all, and as such I have stopped following it. Just to be clear, I'm not singling Nessie out for every derailment in the universe, however he tends to indulge.

Best idea is to either discuss the topic with another user and ignore the Highland Lord of the Kelpie. If not then it is best to ignore him or just mention something on the topic. When he is backed into a corner you will see sparks. Any Investigator knows you follow the evidence. The evidence presented by the Kelpie Lord is mainly hearsay propped up to be eye witness.

[Archie]

He posts too much without adding much of anything to the thread topics.

Here are some ideas I have to prevent him from ruining so many threads.

1) Junk Folder - for his off-topic and counterproductive posts
viewtopic.php?t=321
When he tries to derail threads from the actual topic to general talking points that have been discussed to death, it would really be better just to remove the posts rather than have people waste their time replying to this. The catch here is that I do not have the patience to read through all of his drivel. So I will request that people use the "report post" feature to alert me and fangers to his derails (especially if you are the thread author and feel the discussion is becoming bloated and not addressing the key points).

2) Nessie's greatest hits - this is a master list of Nessie's spam arguments
viewtopic.php?t=382
My hope is that with this here, people won't feel the need to keep responding to these points. Going forward I will consider most comments along these lines (e.g. "revisionists do not understand evidencing because they lack proper credentials") will be considered off-topic. Note this does not mean these topics like credentials are censored, just that we don't need to pollute every single thread with this.

[Nessie]

Archie, what you mean is that you want to be able to post faulty logic and ignorant and faulty analysis of evidence, in particular witness evidence, without challenge.

[HansHill]

Hardly. Of your ~1,800 posts, Archie has by necessity moved (not deleted) ~10.

[borjastick]

Here's another idea; Ban him, Bombsaway, Sanity Check etc.They bring nothing and they add nothing.

As Revisionists our purpose is to spread the word to the largest number of people around the world that the holocaust should at the very least be questioned and doubted. Our job is not to have endless arguments and derailment exercises with the likes of the driftwood named above who are here simply to waste time and cause disruption. They will never change their minds so why discuss anything with them at all. If you think it broadens the knowledge bandwidth or shows them up then don't. Because it doesn't.

In the old Codoh Forum these clowns would have been binned a long time ago.

[HansHill]

Question for the mods:

Are there any features where a poster can be limited to a pre-agreed daily post-limit? Say 10 posts per day? Or a feature where a poster can reply freely and unencumbered, but only when addressed / quoted directly?

Asking for a friend

[Stubble]

I support Mr Hill's proposal of a post limit.

If the posts had a 'cost' I know I would be wiser 'spending' them.

I think a daily limit of 5 post (or higher depending on how liberal the proposed rule would be) would improve the objective quality of posted content.

[Archie]

Unfortunately, there's no daily post cap or anything like that in the standard phpBB software. It would have to be an extension or customization, and I don't see one available. The closest thing in the admin settings is the flood limit which limits how long you have to wait between posts (default is only 15 seconds as an anti-bot measure). In theory I suppose it could be set to an hour or something to cut down high volume posting, but I don't want to inconvenience everyone else unnecessarily just to deal with one bad apple. The flood limit is a global setting so it would affect everyone.

It definitely concerns me that Nessie has 18% of the post volume on the forum while saying very little of substance. And then consider that there are probably that amount again of posts responding to him (many of which are interesting but also necessarily repetitive). I know it can be fun to bat him around, but we have to ask ourselves if it's really a good use of time replying to his extremely generic, very bad arguments over and over, especially since these arguments (confusions) are unique to him and are not even a good representation of "the other side." And he can't really be reasoned with. He just keeps responding with the same stuff. It's like trying to play chess with someone who can't figure out the rules. He was banned on the old forum precisely because of this high volume/low substance posting style which, just to be clear, does not meet CODOH Forum editorial standards. The only reason he has been permitted to stay this time around is because we have the two Holocaust boards which allows us to be very liberal with the Debate board.

If he is spamming his same old tired talking points in multiple threads, rather than replying to him (which just makes the problem worse), please report these posts so that they can be moved to the junk folder. By now, we have dedicated threads discussing most of his go-to stock arguments. We don't need to rehash this stuff in every single thread.

[Stubble]

As an especially guilty party, I must say in my defense, it is hard to let Nessie stand unopposed.

I will put him in my foes list and that should cut my posting by no less than 1/3rd.

Of note, I've been DM'd by more than one poster here and thanked for opposing Nessie, for what that is worth.

Objectively Keen appears to be correct, there is a way to stop him and it is not to feed him. Borjastick said much the same months ago. I know this and I continue to feed both him and Bombsaway. This appears to be one of my flaws, I'm sure I have more (hubris, bluster etc).