Hi Scarp! A sock is a dummy user, a forum member who may have one or more alternate forum accounts pretending to be other people.

Sock Puppet - remember Lamb Chop?

Not fussed whether Fishy stays or goes TBH - banning is soooo DIF and at the end of the day the best way to starve a Troll is to ignore them. If you want to keep them in a cage and poke 'em with a stick if they have some humour value.

re: banning

IMO we very much began with that attitude and approach. While we have retained the principle that banning is something that should not happen, we had a lot of experiences of people from other places getting wind of that, saying "wanna bet?" "I reckon I can make you ban me!" and then going very destructive. To the point that many of our dearest members started to give up and move on, if just to avoid the stress. Now the policy is that banning is brought about by consensus and only if that person is clearly just out to ruin the forum out of some ennui. Everything is transparent and has its own sticky thread. Any "fast action" by mod (temp banning) can be overturned and the number of bans of individuals in two years is still in single figures (IIRC)- bearing in mind one particular guy has come back with various psuedonyms and each time tried the same wind-up.

I believe SZ has got the balance right: that between upholding free speech and protecting members from spammers and vandals.

mikey mikey wrote:
+100....and long may it continue.

Don't forget new folks that PMs clearly appear to be being read on the DIF (again).

As for bannings - I'm only new but would have thought someone who declares themselves a damaging troll on another forum - well it's not the best 'start' really is it, and not personally the kind of company I like to keep. But if he stays I will enjoy 'engaging' with said fish

mikey mikey wrote:
LOL, that's wack. You'd never see that on a thread of, well, pretty much any other topic.

electricdreams wrote:
I'm not suggesting they are not but what makes you say 'clearly'?

oioioi wrote:
I didn't log in for a while and when I went back there were new PMs that I'd never seen before that had already been marked as read (and with no email notifications to their email inbox which they've had since they joined, with no 'failure rate' of notification - except for those PMs).

So I asked an ex-mod from there what they thought (without saying what my own suspicions were) and I got confirmation that they were pretty sure they must have been read.

Happy to be corrected/have other alternatives offered

That's something others could do to be on the alert for imo.

Mountain wrote:
For some reason, probably due to mike, I read that as:
Hi! Scarp, a sock, is a dummy user......

Gilly wrote:
Yeah, the scary thing though is that if they're PMs you've already read you wouldn't notice that someone else had also read them

oioioi wrote:
I think they are patrolling this place most probably The People's Voice type threads. I hadn't posted on DIF since about November but I had been on there now and then checking on threads even up to a few days before I first posted on here.

My user name on DIF is babs123

I came on here and told my little story of how I had found Earthlinggb's blog and posted his link on DIF as I was outraged. It was immediately deleted (twice because I put it up again) and was warned by a mod for being subversive. I asked for my (small) donation back and they said they were nothing to do with TPV I would have to take it up with them. (!!!)

I went back to DIF a day or 2 later and now my profile is inactive. I have never posted anything contentious and in fact have only 55 posts since I joined. They must have read my post here and checked my PM's to see if it was me right?

I'm more inclined to believe they are signed up here than reading PM's as a whole load of you wouldn't still have got my PM invites and the whole hidden text thing has gotten to them. Plus they probably want to read half the info that has been deleted from their forum

Besides hypocritically being a member of a 'banned on DIF' forum is a lesser evil than being caught reading PM's

Babs wrote:
Indeed. Kinda sad really.

dubmeup wrote: Probably for the same reason I read that as:
Hi! Scarp, a sock is a dummy user .....


still works.

Babs wrote:
Don't be silly , sean & co wouldn't do such a thing

oioioi wrote:
They'll be doing both, I should think.

And if people find PM's that aren't highlighted as unread, which they've never seen before, then it's a definite they're in them.

I'll keep on keeping under the radar as long as possible then...though I do have a slightly devilish plan to suicide it.

oioioi wrote:
try and become a moderator

Now this might be a bit of a dumb question but I am a stupid mong and I can't help it

This IP address thingie well I know it consists of 3 sets of numbers with a dot in between and from what I have read they keep records at DIF well do any of these numbers show your location as in the way a post code does? If you are in your local library will the IP be similar to your home IP? If you are about and about in another town will it be less similar?