"Crowdsourcing" the dz.com BS detector

A definition, from Wikipedia: "Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers."

This is a message, and some advice, to those who may post to dropzone.com for the first time, or for those who seldom post until there is a perceived problem.

On occasion there is a person who posts a question or comment that seems a bit suspicious to those of use that have frequented dz.com for some time. The wording of their question leads us to believe that they are posting the question for a reason that is different than its outward appearance. Often this person does not identify themselves by filling in their dz.com "profile", therefore making us suspicious of their intent.

Usually when someone does this, it creates many questions for the poster, from people trying to determine the reason for the post. The questions and attitude about the questions have been "crowdsourced" so to speak, by taking the collective knowledge of the dz.com community. And there are some pretty darned smart people here, as well as being very knowledgeable about skydiving.

If you make such a post, please do not get offended if people ask a lot of questions, and question your motivation. The collective questioning and suspicion is legitimate and reasonable. What seems to be the questions of an individual are most often the questions of the community. That individual just happens to be the first person to ask those questions.

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Damn you got me

You forgot to add that we see a ton of trolls, hence our healthy scepticism.

Remember the guy who asked a ton of questions in "General Skydiving Discussions" like "How did you get into skydiving" and "How do you know when to pull" but only used his account for 3 days.

Or guys blatantly engaged in drug running?

If you wanna troll someone go troll r/skydiving, they actually seem to fall for it

Beginner canopy JVX 34, Velo 29 or Petra 330 opinions wanted.

Definately the Petra 330 because what is swooping if you cant take 2 friends along for the ride

I'm suspicious of the guy who posts about the fake passports for sale. Does anybody else agree, or am I alone here?

JeffCa

I'm suspicious of the guy who posts about the fake passports for sale. Does anybody else agree, or am I alone here?

You're alone. My order was delivered faster than a Freefall Suit.

Andy9o8

***I'm suspicious of the guy who posts about the fake passports for sale. Does anybody else agree, or am I alone here?

You're alone. My order was delivered faster than a Freefall Suit.

Mine too!

Hi Andy,

Quote

My order was delivered faster than a Freefall Suit.

You obviously did not use the Express Service. Mine was delivered before I even ordered it.

So there,

JerryBaumchen

PS) Maybe we need to be back on topic; just sayin'.

JerryBaumchen

Hi Andy,

Quote

My order was delivered faster than a Freefall Suit.

You obviously did not use the Express Service. Mine was delivered before I even ordered it.

Concrete Rebound Hammer delivers faster

Andy9o8

***I'm suspicious of the guy who posts about the fake passports for sale. Does anybody else agree, or am I alone here?

You're alone. My order was delivered faster than a Freefall Suit.

I'm doing really well re-selling his crap on E-bay.

Thread of the year.

The sage advice in the original post is priceless and worthy of a sticky.

And - for once - I am all in favor of non-Bonfire humorous thread drift. I am laughing my ass off.

And . . . . . . . . . . DODGEBALL!

slotperfect

Thread of the year. The sage advice in the original post is priceless and worthy of a sticky.

Well isn't that a coincidence! I was thinking of requesting that it be made a "sticky".

Thinking of changing my signature line!

Trolling here since 2001

I disagree. Tunnel time should be allowed to make up for at least a significant portion of those jumps.

Backsteen beat me to it!

Baksteen

I disagree. Tunnel time should be allowed to make up for at least a significant portion of those jumps.

but only if the question concerns canopy control

So when somebody posts, let's say, 31 threads about downloading movies within a couple of hours, what's the best way to get that taken care of as quickly as possible? Should we be PM'ing the mods to get their attention?

JeffCa

So when somebody posts, let's say, 31 threads about downloading movies within a couple of hours, what's the best way to get that taken care of as quickly as possible? Should we be PM'ing the mods to get their attention?

That's probably the fastest way to get them canned, provided they check their email/PMs often.

I and I'm sure others have floated the idea of a 'report' button, but while it doesn't sound too hard on paper (at least for me looking at it), I believe there was worry it would end up getting abused. The irony being that the abuse flag button would be getting abused.

theonlyski

***So when somebody posts, let's say, 31 threads about downloading movies within a couple of hours, what's the best way to get that taken care of as quickly as possible? Should we be PM'ing the mods to get their attention?

That's probably the fastest way to get them canned, provided they check their email/PMs often.

I and I'm sure others have floated the idea of a 'report' button, but while it doesn't sound too hard on paper (at least for me looking at it), I believe there was worry it would end up getting abused. The irony being that the abuse flag button would be getting abused.

I'd say a report-abuse button would be ok as long as it's not in Speaker's Corner, where... well, let's face it: abuse is a requirement of admission.

Bad enough that Incidents is already sanitized to the point of silliness; if they did that to Speaker's Corner, too, I'd just put my head down and cry.

Quote

I think that I've decided that people need to have at least 30 actual jumps before advising others on skydiving.

Now you are seriously underestimating the power of crowdsourcing on the internet. With my mad computer skilz & google & wikipedia I often find the right answers online even before you have formulated the questions!

Its a gift.

wmw999

I think that I've decided that people need to have at least 30 actual jumps before advising others on skydiving.

Wendy P.

I think people should have more jumps than posts, but that's just me, I guess.

Thank you, all. This has been the best thread for quite some time.

Continue on!

eta: and yet again, posting the last post on a page.