Date: 22 Aug 92 00:01:17 EDT
From: Bob McClenon <76476.337@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: File 1--Electronic Pests - Whiners, Thumpers, and Others

This is a draft think piece for now.  I have been thinking in the last
few weeks, based on experience on various bulletin board and mail
systems, about a taxonomy of electronic pests -- people who make
bulletin board systems unpleasant.  I propose four categories for now:
whiners; thumpers; snipers; and dumpers.

Whiners are unhappy people who complain a great deal.  Some whiners do
nothing but complain; they never ask for advice (which they wouldn't
accept anyway); offer advice; or engage in pleasantries.  A few
whiners ask for advice but don't like it.  There is no hard and fast
line between acceptable behavior and whining, but "you'll know it when
you read it".  Whiners are unassertive unhappy people.  (Bulletin
board users who are assertive about their unhappiness become other
types of pests.)  In my experience most whiners have been female,
possibly because they have been socialized to be unassertive.  Whiners
are the least destructive class of BBS pest, because they can
generally be ignored, and will usually heed a sysop warning to cool
it.

Thumpers are doctrinaire or ideological people who believe that all
the answers that matter can be found by reference to a holy book or
similar authority.  The prototype for a thumper is a Christian
Bible-thumper.  Objectivists thump the works of Ayn Rand.  Communists
thump the works of Marx.  Pseudo-scientists or adherents of
pseudo-scientific cults are sometimes thumpers, if they have accepted
a single truth rather than pursuing bizarre truths electically; for
instance, Velikovskians are thumpers.  I have also seen thumpers
holding subviews in the true sciences.  Thumpers are a common problem
in the comp. newsgroups of Usenet, and are one reason why the number
of issues of digests constantly increase, to deal with their constant
counter-flamings.  One difference between thumpers and other believers
is that thumpers habitually denigrate other views, rather than
ignoring them or engaging in real dialogue.  Their usual objective is
to win converts; however, they generally do not succeed, because they
do little to persuade the unpersuaded.  Telling a skeptic to read the
Bible is not useful; he may have already read it and find it complex
and requiring difficult interpretation.  Telling him to read the Bible
and understand it is empty unless one already understands a particular
interpretation.  Telling someone to read Atlas Shrugged who finds it
flawed literature is not helpful.  Thumpers are common in religious or
ideological sections.  They may be harmless there.  But their
intolerance may cause others to lose faith, especially if the faith is
one, like Christianity, that has a tradition of tolerance.  They often
engage in internal quarrels.  However, I have seen that a few
Bible-thumpers in a political and general section can be destructive,
because they squelch questioners by their thumping.  They are very
difficult for a sysop to silence because they are convinced of their
own rightness.  The best way to deal with thumpers, if possible, is to
isolate them.  This is not always possible.

Snipers are angry people who lie in wait for the unsuspecting and lash
out at them.  Sometimes they do so briefly and obnoxiously, sometimes
at length.  Unlike both whiners and thumpers, they are usually silent,
but when they are aroused they can cause great unpleasantness, and can
even be slanderous.  Snipers are difficult to control because they
snipe at sysops.

Dumpers are a special class of whiners.  They complain, but they also
attack people or classes of people whom they believe (rightly or
wrongly) have made them unhappy.  They in particular "dump" torrents
of abuse on people and classes.  They are difficult to control because
when admonished they dump on the sysop about the unfairness of
censorship.

Does anyone have any comments?  Has anyone experienced other classes
of pests or unpleasant users?

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