Topic: What is the average IQ of a Three Stooges fan?

[JazzBill]

Please delete my account as I no longer want to participate on this site

 Your wish is my command, you're gone. S#1

" Alas poor CurlyFan, I knew him well " 

[Gorilla Watson]

What I'd like to know is, what's up with the name-calling?

I have perused this fine board quite extensively and seen many examples of how moderating is done here. I am a global mod as well elsewhere, and would like to compare notes sometime. Being a global moderator, you are in a position to be respected and obeyed, but we must act in a respectable manner to be respected. This goes for everyone, whether in a position of authority or not. There were Germans during WW2 who weren't Nazis and weren't supportive of their beliefs and actions. They had no respect for Hitler because he was most definitely not acting in a respectable manner. Am I comparing you to the fuhrer? No, just using him as an example. He "banned" people just because they disgusted him or angered him, or somehow went against how he thought all Germans should live. Unfortunately, I see that here. Please keep in mind, I'm saying these things as a friend  and a peer. If I'm angering you, I deeply apologize and I'm also deeply saddened, because you don't understand and are probably just going with your first feeling about what I am saying.

I also hope I don't come off as telling you how to do your job or preaching. I'm simply offering peer-to-peer support. I meant what I said about my being a friend and friends don't tell others what to do or how to do their jobs or preaching at them.

My philosophy is to treat a offender how I would like to be treated if I was the offender. I would not like to be told to "fuck off" or be called a "fuck face" or an "asshole" or "gay/ghey". I would however like to be leveled with about what I did, what I'm getting for it and how I can do better if I'm just being warned. That will get you mucho respect and admiration. And you know what? The offender will never leave and/or ask to have the account deleted because of your actions toward them. They will never plot and scheme to get back on under another handle to still be a regular poster and they definitely won't hate you. If you practice being slow to anger, all your confrontations with offenders will go more smoothly and you won't feel pestered by them.

It is my personal feeling that offenders who aren't outright trolls are not the scum of the earth that you have treated all or most offenders as. Again, please don't be angry, as I don't mean to pick on you, and how you choose to moderate in the end, I couldn't care less. I'll just be sure to stay on your good side. But going back to the "scum of the earth" thing, if someone just has questions that you are sickdder of reading on here, that's when I would really take a deep breath, relax and remember that I have asked questions to people who were sick of getting the same ones all the time as well. Did I do it to irritate the one I asked? No. Did I even know that they got that question so many times before? No. I just wanted the info. To catch hell for that is to be a victim of circumstance! Moderators need lots of patience and understanding, my friend. I know these frustrations that moderators face, and we can't let ourselves take it out on anyone, even the offenders. Most of the time, they are unaware of the frustrations we face and don't know any better when they add to them, unlike how they should know better than to use bad grammar, punctuation (etc) around here.

I give you tons of credit for sticking with the job, with all it's frustrations and time-consumation, as well as for having the best interests of this site in mind. You make it abundantly clear that you do. I'd like to see you
dwell more on the rewards of good moderating than on the negatives about it. Taking any of the negatives out on offenders will just stir things up every time. I've been there, I know. I've learned.

Once again, if there is any way you might possibly be angered, offended or otherwise upset about this post, I deeply apologize and I'll drop it right now. If you're okay with it (as I intended for you to be), I'm here for you. Anytime you want to release those frustrations, drop me a line and feel free to bitch about so-and-so being someone else who is doing such-and-such again. Feel free to bitch about someone who "just doesn't get it" when you are confronting them. Any other frustration issues? Feel free to bitch about those too. I've been down all the roads of moderator frustration. If you want some advice, I can do that as well, friend. May you find this post helpful and not negative or condescending. If you firmly believe that you have it all together and don't need anything I'm offering, so be it, and I will drop it now.

And I will hope you "get it" someday, friend.

 There is nothing that I need to "get". S#1

[xraffle]

I understand what you're trying to say, but you can't blame shemps#1 for losing his patience. CURLYFAN kept on complaining about the rules. Asking someone to type properly isn't so much to ask. But he still kept on complaining, which didn't make sense. There are a lot of jerks out there, especially on message boards, so sometimes you have to be hard on people and put them in their place.

Also, for someone who claims that they don't mean to offend anyone, your last paragraph and your last sentence came out kind of harsh, in my opinion. If I were the one you were talking to, I would get offended.

[Gorilla Watson]

You are probably right and I'm sorry if it offends him. I do have my beliefs though (which I will be willing to drop instantly). And I do understand why he was getting impatient with CURLYFAN.

[Pilsner Panther]

I'm going to step in here and call a "time out," for everybody (we need a smiley of a referee blowing a whistle, but we don't have one).

Maybe it's the Summer heat— even in San Francisco, it was 90 degrees today— but people sure seem to have short fuses lately!

For those of you who are fairly new to these boards, shemps#1 and I have been the moderators for several years now. He tends to come down harder than I do on spelling-grammar offenders, but the rules for posting are clearly stated, and S#1, Dunrobin, and I all agree that writing coherent, understandable English is important.

Our styles of moderating are completely different; I hardly ever use profanity, since I don't speak that way in personal conversation. I don't need to use George Carlin's "seven words you can't say on the radio," because I can express myself adequately enough without them. Someone once said of Mark Twain that he wrote with "a pen warmed up in Hell;" so can I, if need be, and I can do it without using any Anglo-Saxon invectives at all. I usually write as if I'm writing for publication, since I'm used to dealing with newspaper and magazine editors, and I know by now (only too well) what they'll cut.

It really is just about style... I saw an HBO comedy special with Lewis Black the other night, and practically every other word out of his mouth was "fuck." It struck me that if you'd edited out all the "fucks," his material would have been just as funny, and the guy is very funny. But that's his way of expressing himself, and the same is true of shemps#1. If he chooses to use profanity and I don't, that's just a matter of personal choice.

I think that we've all done a fine job of keeping the quality of the posts here above average... I could point you to a dozen discussion boards where that's not the case, and the illiterates are allowed to run wild. On the other hand, there are some other boards where the mods overdo it, and get too anal-rententive and arbitrary about having the power to edit, warn, and ban contributors.

My personal feeling (biased, of course) is that we've managed to strike a pretty good balance here between coming down too hard and letting illiteracy and chaos get the upper hand. I can't think of a single ban over the last four years or so (mine, Dunrobin's, or shemps#1's), that wasn't justified.

[shemps#1]

I'll have to take umbrage with just about everything you say, GW.

I've been a part of this website for six years, and have been a moderator/administrator for two or three of those years. This website is the greatest Three Stooges resource on the Internet, and for that I take no credit whatsoever.

Alot of hard-working, knowledgeable folks have busted their ass to make this website what it is today. Guys like Dunrobin, BeAStooge, and so on. What I am is the hired muscle, an Enforcer of sorts. It is my job (along with Pilsner Panther) to weed out the trolls and idiots; to "take out the trash" as it were.

Having moderated this board as long as I have, and having dealt with as many "gay/ghey fuck faces" as I have, I have weeding the idiots and trolls down to a science. I can spot them a mile away, and I dispose of them when the time is right.

In the case of CURLYFAN, he pointed out his disdain for the tight rules on punctuation/grammar/capitalization and the loose rules on cursing in not one but two threads. He even had something to say on an old issue that had long since been resolved between myself and the offender. Was I hard on him? Yes, but that served a dual purpose. The first purpose was to try to convey to him that the rules are not up for debate, and the second purpose was I knew he was an idiot and it would be in the best interest of this website if he were weeded out.

I really take offense to your comparison of me to the Nazis. You say you are not doing so, but step back and read that paragraph again and perhaps you will realize you are.

I resort to name calling when my patience is gone. You may not like that, but you are not a moderator of this website and I am.

I'll say this only once so you may want to read it a couple of times so that it might sink in: I do not give a shit how the offender wants to be treated. The offender is the one in the wrong, and as I said awhile back he/she is up for flaming. It is not my job to be compassionate, it is my job to make sure the site runs smoothly and the rules are being followed.

If you are half as smart as you think you are I'd drop it right now. I do not want or need you as a friend/confidant/shoulder to cry on/whatever. I am confident in and feel just fine about the job I am doing. The only people whose opinions count as far as my tactic goes are my fellow administrators and perhaps a couple of the elder statesmen on this site.

I'll be watching you GW, I have a sinking feeling we've met before.

[shemps#1]

Ya know, I read this post by "Gorilla Watson", which is chock full of patronizing bullshit and weak attempts at pot shots by the way, and I said to myself "this is probably the King of Trolls, a sorry excuse for a man who can't take a hint that he isn't wanted on this site in any way, shape, or form". Then I said "perhaps I'm wrong and jumping the gun". Well I've analyzed this post and I am even more convinced than before that it's you, Islipp.

That message board you moderate is a wrestling message board, you sit in your parents' house and jerk off to Scooby Doo reruns, dreaming of a threesome with Thelma and Daphne (or perhaps Shaggy and Fred). You've made idiotic comparisons before, such as comparing Sickdrjoe to Osama bin Ladin. You've also droned on and on before, taking 500 words or more to say what could be said in 50 or less.

For those of you who are lucky enough to never have encountered Islipp, to make an oh-so-long story short, he is a troll who has been banned from this and other Stooges message boards under many names.

Your #1 problem Eric is that you can't shut up. You just have to keep showing up where you're not wanted and throw your two cents in everything. If you were able to keep your mouth shut and stay out from under my radar I might not have caught you yet again. Much like a serial killer you just have to be caught, have to be recognised (how's that for an analogy?).

So that leaves us with a dilemma: what should I do with you? Should I allow you to come out and admit that you are indeed Islipp and leave your fate to a jury of your peers? Or perhaps you will lie and deny you are Islipp. Then shall I allow you enough rope to hang yourself as you unwillingly reveal yourself to everyone else who was around long enough to remember you, then ban you? Or should I just ban you yet again right after your denial?

I eargerly await your response Eric: and just remember that you've been busted yet again. You can't hide from me.

[Pilsner Panther]

I do have my beliefs though (which I will be willing to drop instantly).

Now, that's what I admire— integrity!

[JazzBill]

Rules and guidelines are what brought me to this site in the first place. Before I came here I used to post in the guest book of the so-called Official Stooge Site. I finally got fed up with all of the nonsense that was going on over there. Spam and all kinds of garbage from some of the biggest idiots I've ever come across. There were a hand full of decent people, but you had to wade through pages of garbage to find them. I knew about this site but I was a little nervous about coming here because I wasn't sure I would be able to cut the mustard. Now I only wish I would of came over sooner.
So, as far as weeding out the idiots, I say go for it. I would rather post at a site with a few good people, than insult my intelligence by having to listen to hundreds of assholes talking nonsense.   

[shemps#1]

So, as far as weeding out the idiots, I say go for it. I would rather post at a site with a few good people, than insult my intelligence by having to listen to hundreds of assholes talking nonsense.   

Hell yeah! That's I've been saying for I don't know how long now.

[Bruckman]

Normally I can't stand rules, restrictions, conventions; they're a red flag.

However, in the case of this website, I not only follow the guidelines, I back up anyone who wants to raise or even maintain standards of good ol' English composition. Nor do I have a problem w/Shemps#1's use of profanity. I confine most of my 4-letter words to when I'm working on cars where no one can hear me; if I happen to use one in written or spoken discourse, it means I'm severely pissed off and you'd do well to stay out of my path. With Jim, it's his personal mode of expression, and a lot less offensive to me than the poorly-written and punctuated sentences which some posters grunt out and which appear to have been typed with one finger in a dimly-lit room. (If you have a friggin' computer, learn to type for pete's sake. I use only 4 fingers to type because I'm self-taught, but it's fast enough and accurate enough - probably because I've been doing it for 25 years, that I score around 55-60 wpm on typing tests). With all the electronic aids available on computers (which didn't exist when I learned to type on an old Underwood manual, a broken down machine which was all the high school would permit to those of us on the school paper or lit magazine - I wrote copy for the first and edited the second) there's just no excuse for inaccuracy and misspellings. Yeah, I'm not perfect, but when something gets by me it's usually in the form of a typo; but once, on this very board, Dunrobin himself took me to task for screwing up "simulacrum". (I deserved it).

If old Mail-Order Writing Course Eric insists on posting, I say we let him under the above criteria.

Anyone who objects to the posting guidelines, TS and it's no great loss.

I'd say, too, that the IQ of the valued posters on any Stooge site has to be well above average, though I agree w/Pils that public-school standards are now far below what they were when he and I were in school. When an adult woman with 2 kids in tow drags a fully loaded shopping cart into the "10 Items or Less" lane, while I'm standing there with a couple quarts of oil and a filter, then whines she didn't see the sign, I despair over her kids' futures. (The fact these kids will be adults when I'm a doddering old wreck puttering around a retirement colony in Florida really scares me).

[Bruckman]

Being a global moderator, you are in a position to be respected and obeyed, but we must act in a respectable manner to be respected. This goes for everyone....That will get you mucho respect and admiration. If you practice being slow to anger, all your confrontations with offenders will go more smoothly and you won't feel pestered by them.

BTW I got a good laugh out of Jim spending his life in pursuit of "mucho respect and admiration". Fact is, if I have any respect for him, it's because he doesn't respect very much. [Also he's a Patriots fan, but we'll leave regional factions out of this).

I liked GW's little Bible-class homily on being "slow to anger" too. Just the thing for an atheist to live by.

[biteme]

I  do not  understand  this shemp #1  you get mad over someones grammer but you can  call names and cuss even bann them well i think you as a moderator well i have to say  you are the  sorryest  moderator i have ever  come  across  so you can just  ban  me    write now because you suck   andmygrammerisntperfectneverwillbedontcareifyoulikeitornot

 Ok!

[xraffle]

I  do not  understand  this shemp #1  you get mad over someones grammer but you can  call names and cuss even bann them well i think you as a moderator well i have to say  you are the  sorryest  moderator i have ever  come  across  so you can just  ban  me    write now because you suck   andmygrammerisntperfectneverwillbedontcareifyoulikeitornot

Well look at this. We have another knucklehead who decided to join the site and cause trouble.

[Pilsner Panther]

...And joins the site just to cause trouble, and nothing else. I'll save shemps#1 the trouble and ban him myself; I haven't banned anyone in a long time, so I don't want to get rusty.

Bruckman was talking about all the stupidity he runs into, and heres's yet another example of it. Sometimes I think there's something wrong with the gene pool, either that, or a lot of indbreeding going on that produces all these mental defectives.

 

[shemps#1]

Oops, sorry Pils I didn't see your post, now this douche is banned twice.

[JazzBill]

I  do not  understand  this shemp #1  you get mad over someones grammer but you can  call names and cuss even bann them well i think you as a moderator well i have to say  you are the  sorryest  moderator i have ever  come  across  so you can just  ban  me    write now because you suck   andmygrammerisntperfectneverwillbedontcareifyoulikeitornot

What a big suprise,someone that goes by the name "biteme" is causing trouble. When I first saw the "Please welcome "biteme", our newest member", I knew you were a member all right. If this were my joint I'd throw you out of it. Where's a cop when you need one?  

[Pilsner Panther]

Oops, sorry Pils I didn't see your post, now this douche is banned twice.

I figured you might have beat me to it, since I didn't put that "ok" in there. You realize that this is a historic moment, don't you? The first simultaneous banning in the site's history!

[JazzBill]

While I was typing my post I see that you and Pils had already taken care of it. But seeing as how I had taken the time to type it (not an easy feat for me) I posted it anyway.

[shemps#1]

I figured you might have beat me to it, since I didn't put that "ok" in there. You realize that this is a historic moment, don't you? The first simultaneous banning in the site's history!

We're a regular cohesive unit, either that or we've been on the beat together too long! 

Actually, that was a fun one and I couldn't ban him soon enough. His "I'm proud to be an idiot post, go ahead and ban me" post was quite amusing. My guess is he's a disgruntled ex-member, perhaps.

[Shemp Shady]

Great stuff! Makes me wax nostalgic.

[Pilsner Panther]

Great stuff! Makes me wax nostalgic.

It makes me wax nostalgic to see you back, Shemp Shady... it's been while, hasn't it?

I waxed my Nostalgic with Brighto and it took all the paint off—

[Jamison]

I see a lot of familiar names here. Even Slipp seems to be around, using one of his many personas. I've been pretty much off all boards for the last 4-5 months because of a (unasked-for) change in my job. But this week I've moved back to my old hours, duties and desk so maybe I can start contributing in my own meager way again.
And I will NOT try to answer that IQ question! I think I took an IQ test in 3rd grade and can't remember what it was. I assume it's slipped several points in the last 42 years!

[Pilsner Panther]

I see a lot of familiar names here. Even Slipp seems to be around, using one of his many personas. I've been pretty much off all boards for the last 4-5 months because of a (unasked-for) change in my job. But this week I've moved back to my old hours, duties and desk so maybe I can start contributing in my own meager way again.
And I will NOT try to answer that IQ question! I think I took an IQ test in 3rd grade and can't remember what it was. I assume it's slipped several points in the last 42 years!

Yeah, Jamison, Slipp's been around, all right. It's been interesting watching the dynamics of the board over the past few years: the old regulars sometimes disappear for long periods of time, but of most of them come back. Just like the hardcore fans always go back to watching the Stooges!

Bruckman and metaldams don't post as often as they used to, but they're still around. On the other hand, sickdrjoe seems to have gone away for good, for reasons known only to him. So, I ended up taking his place as a moderator... I didn't even volunteer for the job, Dunrobin appointed me. The moderating team has been stable for quite a while: shemps#1 and yours truly, and we work together very well, if I do say so myself.

Speaking of Dunrobin, he hasn't been around much himself lately, but he's made a lot of technical and design improvements to the site (I had some input on the latter), and BeAStooge continues to update the knowledge base on a regular basis, with the help of the other Team Stooge members.

I'd be interested to hear the opinions of any of the early members who've been away for a while and come back— what you think of the site now. I can tell you this much, we've all done a lot of work here.

The Stooges deserve nothing less!

[Gorilla Watson]

Is there a disease going around for you long-timers? Maybe it's more like a mental condition where something affects you so badly that you think you see it everywhere. I'd say you are probably just able to see IP#s in Lurkerland, but non-mods see this Slipp too. The only thing I can think of for treatment would be to relax and recite "Slipp is long gone as an active poster" as a mantra, over and over for as long as it takes. It might be a few days or a few weeks, but you'll soon be as good as new.

In the meantime, you mods can still keep your eyes peeled and remain ready to ban any "newbie" who you know for sure is Slipp. He must have been a pretty constant and annoying pest to have affected you so.