For once I totally agree with splitting and moving topics. Good job Moderators.

There does come a point where obsessive back-and-forths get so far out of hand they cast a grey pall over the Board in general. In this particular case it's this Gone Fishing / John / Botting / And all 'Others' battle which has lowered itself into a sewer of it's own making, for little apparent reason or enlightenment, except perhaps ego and pointmanship ( http://www.sawatdee-gay-thailand.com/fo ... 15230.html ) .

The pall is added to ~ in other threads and topics ~ by the appearance of obvious trolls. They pop up out of nowhere, often in groups (coincidence? I doubt it), and spray shit bombs in every direction ... never adding to the Board's general interest or general intelligence, never adding decent topics of their own, always (without exception) concentrating on denigrating, insulting, winding up, and generally using posts to create annoyance, hatred, and unease on the Board.

I was for many years of the opinion that trolls are inevitable on message boards and that often they add touches of humour, and ~ specifically here ~ add to the general tinge of edginess which has come to characterize and make Sawatdee stand out a bit from the rest of the Boards: Ting Tong is so happy/happy and One-Big-Family at times it makes me cringe (and I do like the Board). It stands for trolls not at all, and bans them immediately. GayThailand is 300% over moderated and postings dominated by 4 or 5 folks. Trolls banned immediately. Baht-Stop is a Hedda vanity experiment, weighed down heavily by pseudo intellectuality, and frankly, an uneasy "things-I-hate-about-Thailand" superiority complex ... trolls are unknown there as there is not even a pinch of humour there.

So Sawatdee attracts trolls because of it's very nature: i.e. open all the time, to all, post what you want, and employs the weird, eccentric, the over-sensitive, the thin-skinned. Although some folks have in their mind that a member who posts a point of view opposite to their own thoughts ~ and pushes that opposition sometimes to extreme ~ are trolls . . . that is not the case.
Trollism has nothing whatsoever to do with members getting into arguments, or displaying bad tempers. Trollism is specifically about registering on a message board ~ any message board ~ with the intention of winding up it's members by posting replies which they know are bound to attract re-replies of horror and angst among a certain number of other members who are fully open to being manipulated in that way. Trolls smell this type of member intuitively. They read the Board for awhile seeking out this type of member. Then, soon, they zone in that type and troll their messages every which way. They create bad feelings among other members ... they watch their trollings line people up on opposing sides ... they disease the Board with rancour. And they do it all on purpose.

Anyway, I've come around to the feeling that it might well be time to ban trolls outright, right off the bat. I didn't necessarily believe it before (baring some very obvious trolls who had destruction in mind), but I think now that in general it's better for the Board as a whole.

I enjoy a Board where folks speak their minds about gay Thailand (and other issues in other Forums) with no holds barred. I wouldn't wish that 'philosophy' to change.
But trolls don't care about Thailand (ever see a troll start his own thread on some topic of general interest about his experiences in Thailand?) They don't care about 'issues'. And they don't care about fellow members of any Board. So it's no skin off any of our asses to fire their asses outta here . . . every time they fart.


Cheers ...

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