About "private messages" to the DT team

[Nordoelum]

People can't read english anymore. How annoying!

[Zodux]

I agree.
Lots of todays computer-users doesent understand the written rules on any board or written chat-services on the net. I think that those people is those people that needs to read the rules in company with their moms and dads, so they can tell him\her exactly what the rules means. Offcourse, they are those who refuse to understand them. Those people will allways, and I mean ALLWAYS be annoying. I have been to lots of forums in my life and I have seen lots of those people. It is scary. But I have one sickass solution to this problem though: Gather them all in a HUGE hall and blow the motherfucker up!

Problem solved.

Yours sincerely
Zodux

[Kinlaadare]

Gather them all in a HUGE hall and blow the motherfucker up!

Problem solved.

Yours sincerely
Zodux

Kindda violent but efficient way to solve that problem

[johngalt]

I agree.
Lots of todays computer-users doesent understand the written rules on any board or written chat-services on the net. I think that those people is those people that needs to read the rules in company with their moms and dads, so they can tell him\her exactly what the rules means. Offcourse, they are those who refuse to understand them. Those people will allways, and I mean ALLWAYS be annoying. I have been to lots of forums in my life and I have seen lots of those people. It is scary. But I have one sickass solution to this problem though: Gather them all in a HUGE hall and blow the motherfucker up!

Problem solved.

Yours sincerely
Zodux

Actually, I believe that the problem is much more basic. I first learned this particular acronym back in the days of 2400 baud BBS systems - RTFM. (Note: - the rest of my diatribe applies mainly to American society, as I live in the US, and consequently can only speak for what I myself have experienced in th US).

It is not so much that they don't understand, it is more so the fact that they don't bother to read - they want answers yesterday, and think they are *entitled* to instantaneous responses and answers and solutions, regardless of the fact that, not only are they not paying a dime for the program *nor* support*, that half of them are even using ad blocking software, reducing the partial income that websites like this need to have to just break even.

This generation (and I refer to the one following mine, as I am technically at the end of Gen X) grew up with the Web at their fingertips almost half their lives now, and they expect things to be handed to them on a silver platter. Add to that the fact that many of these kids have been taught by their elders and the prevalent 'medical opinion' that they have diseases that allows them to say that they have a medical condition, which basically amounts to "I don't want to spend the 35 minutes that it takes to read the manual, I want someone to tell me how to set it up and then I can go on my merry way and use the software the way that I want to" - aka ADD / ADHD. My personal opinion is that this 'condition' was developed so that the drug companies could make billions of US dollars foisting products that are basically mood-enhancing drugs upon the populace under the guise of 'treating a medically condition' that in effect have no real cognitive benefits, and in some cases have actually exacerbated existing problems and / or created them. Granted, I am not of said medical community, and perhaps I ma wrong - but to tell you the truth, when I was growing up we didn't have Playstations and X-boxs and games left and right where we were destroying (virtually) bad guys and monsters and fragging each other to death. I blame the majority of the problem on the disintegration of the nuclear r family, in that Mommy and Daddy have to work, to provide for their families, or simply because Mommy and Daddy are too selfish and had their kids when they were way too young, and now have no education and few skills which to use to support their families, and thus they are not there to spend time with their kid(s), and the kids are growing up more and more twisted. IMNSHO ADD / ADHD may be a real medical concern, but for only an *extremely* small percentage of the population, not the millions that have been 'diagnosed' and 'treated' for it - and to be quite honest, how many kids do you know and that you *ever* knew that have willingly done their homework day in and day out when they are adolescents, especially when all their friends are going out to play?


Of course, as an IT professional, *dealing* with these very same kids (and now young adults) is an even greater challenge - and infuriatingly so, because I have the wherewithal to go *looking* for the answer before I start asking, whereas most of the kids are like

Help! i fscked my install and now i can;t do anything and i really need this to work because I cant play cnc without and my cd is scratched and this is my only copy and i want to play it now and my team is going to kick me if i dont play tonight and what can ido?

Yes, I am generalizing, but the fact remains that, back in the day, when I first started getting online and hitting the wonderful world of the BBS there were folks like that - but FIDOnet users had no problem telling folks to RTFM and PLONKing them if they became all riled up. Granted, flame wars broke out (having been involved in many myself) but it was still generally all verbal abuse, with nothing else to back it up. These days, however, a lot more can be done - forums / web sites can be hacked, client computers can be compromised and personal info can be stolen and exploited. Not only can those kids annoy you with personal messages, but they can start defaming you and actually get in and do things to get you in trouble.


I know, cause I broke the rules here before (even though I was not trying to) and I faced the consequences. But the blatant abuse of the PM system is simply in bad taste - of course, the underlying problem is that these kids *have no taste* to begin with.

Ah, well. I applaud your moves to try to contain / prevent / prohibit any activities that are detrimental not only to your development but also to your reputation, and suggest that, if not already implemented, that you consider the following:

• Restrict PM to registered forum users;
  
• Make the login process also include a 'verification' system - wherein every time you log in you have to enter a random string that is displayed on your machine. Yes, I know I am going to catch a lot of flak for this, but I say it will serve as a large deterrence to those script kiddies out there that want to try to automate this process over and over again....
  
• Similarly, make the registration process more intricate, in that you have a 2 step registration, so that folks registering have to respond to an email verification (sorry, it has been a *very* long time since I registered, so I have forgotten if this is the case) combined with the method above to prevent bot / script registration, and *finally* restrict new accounts to only log in from the same IP address used to verify the registration for the first X number of posts (something like 10 should do it), allowing for a quick and easy IP ban of a user that registers only to SPAM / promote discontent / harass the devs / etc.
  
• Disallow posting / PM from anyone using proxy software, or, to be more specific, something like the Gentoo forums have done - they have restricted use of the forums to read only for anyone using the TOR proxy system.

If I had other suggestions I would make them, and again I am speaking off the cuff, without having verified whether any of these is already in place or not.

EDIT: Added the following
spell checked

[Underheaven]

Just a note... this site does not display advertisements (now)

[NetSoerfer]

@ john:

I loved your post, it's reflecting my thoughts to the point. Here in Germany ADD/ADHD is not nearly as commonly diagnosed as in the US, but believe me, you don't necessarily need that diagnosis to grow spoiled kids. There are hundreds of thousands of examples for that, and I'm only speaking about Germany, not about the rest of the world.

Concerning your suggestions, I can happily report that most of them are already in effect. (Well, maybe I shouldn't be so happy about it considering how many annoying kids are still around here.) PMs are restricted to forum users, you'll need to enter a confirmation code and click a confirmation link in an email to register. You don't need them to log in, but I don't think that's too important, seeing that we don't have many bot-messages in this forum.

However, binding an account to one IP after registration doesn't work - many (if not most) users have internet providers that dynamically assign IPs every time you log in. So our users would be locked out as soon as they're offline. (Granted, no more rule violations, but still I don't think that's the right way )

[johngalt]

Just a note... this site does not display advertisements (now)

lol yeah, my gripe about the advertising wasn't against your displaying but against the kids who want them removed from their viewing experience - none of them has any clue about how much bandwidth costs, especially at a high traffic site - it is not some measly $25 / month account that we are talking about here, that barely covers 1 GB of data transfer / month in most places - and high volume sites are doing into the hundreds of terabytes of data per month....and if the kids knew how to do the math as well...

@ john:

I loved your post, it's reflecting my thoughts to the point. Here in Germany ADD/ADHD is not nearly as commonly diagnosed as in the US, but believe me, you don't necessarily need that diagnosis to grow spoiled kids. There are hundreds of thousands of examples for that, and I'm only speaking about Germany, not about the rest of the world.

Concerning your suggestions, I can happily report that most of them are already in effect. (Well, maybe I shouldn't be so happy about it considering how many annoying kids are still around here.) PMs are restricted to forum users, you'll need to enter a confirmation code and click a confirmation link in an email to register. You don't need them to log in, but I don't think that's too important, seeing that we don't have many bot-messages in this forum.

However, binding an account to one IP after registration doesn't work - many (if not most) users have internet providers that dynamically assign IPs every time you log in. So our users would be locked out as soon as they're offline. (Granted, no more rule violations, but still I don't think that's the right way )

I figured they were, but it has been so long since I actually registered, and I wasn't about ot create a dummy account just to test :P

re: the single IP use - well, yeah, the dialup users have this problem, but if the broadband users were anywhere near smart they would realize that a direct connection to their broadband modem device is a very band thing - having a router / firewall in between the computer(s) and the modem makes things a lot smoother, with connection sharing enabled, *and* also ads an extra layer or 2 of protection to the machines behind the firewall. Since this is the setup I used, I mistakenly forgot to take into account that there are those who still just connect directly.

But glad I am not the only one who is completely annoyed with the whiners that run around.... :P

[NetSoerfer]

re: the single IP use - well, yeah, the dialup users have this problem, but if the broadband users were anywhere near smart they would realize that a direct connection to their broadband modem device is a very band thing - having a router / firewall in between the computer(s) and the modem makes things a lot smoother, with connection sharing enabled, *and* also ads an extra layer or 2 of protection to the machines behind the firewall. Since this is the setup I used, I mistakenly forgot to take into account that there are those who still just connect directly.

I don't connect directly either, I'm using a router to share my internet connection with the rest of the family. Still, I get dynamic IPs, as most people with DSL connections do - and most of the broadband users in Germany (probably Europe, but I'm not sure about that) have a DSL line. Cable is actually quite rare here. So even with ever more users changing from dialup to broadband, most users (from Germany at least) will still have dynamic IPs.

[Underheaven]

DSL

Because of DSL where I live I was brought to the trouble of writing a windows service to keep track of the constantly changing IP so I could give myself remote access (relying upon my own server and no external tracking service like dyndns.org). I'm back on cable again and am very relieved to be able to memorize my ip address.