Confessions Of A Moderator

I search here and there,
High and low,
Where others stare,
And fear to go.

 

The posters...

First are the one time wonders. These are the people who post once or twice and the for some reason bail, never to be seen again.
I believe they are the smart ones, as evidenced by their behavior; and what's been left behind.

Next we have the Newbies. This is a term for anyone signing up after 2003. Ha Ha, just kidding.
Anyway the Newbies are the ones still testing the water. They submit a post or two and if they can stand the onslaught of criticism, the slings and arrows, and the ridicule by the regulars of their first two posts, they hang around for more punishment, which will surely arrive in due time.

And the remainder of my time will be devoted to everyone else. That would be those of us who tested the water and then found, to our horror, that this place is not a cool mountain lake, but in fact, a hot sticky tar pit and we have been stuck here ever since, trying to lift our feet free of the pull of the black goo, struggling in the sticky morass, sinking deeper and deeper into the mauls of hell until nothing remains of us but a nostril or two sticking upward in the clean air...and a hair or two on top of our head.

Perhaps some day, the bones of our posts will be found on some long forgotten server by what remains of the human race or maybe the aliens that guy with the crazy hair is always talking about.

But I'm getting carried away. It must be the long 24 hours of daylight down here at the southern pole.

 

Now, the regulars. You know who you are.

Let me divide them up in to groups...let's see....

We have the old time freaks who are now called hippies.
The neohippies.
And then......

Hmmm, who else?

Well....that's enough for now.

Let's do it another way.

Let's jump to the wild side. No not the sex forums yet, I'm thinking of the off posts. The strange ones. You know which ones I mean, the ones that don't make any sense. I'm not talking about the political ones you just don't agree with. I'm talking about that ones that lack syntax or basic sentence structure. The ones that look like your cat just walked across your keyboard.

These are the ones that really interest me.

I'll have to think about this. I'm getting into some serious stuff here and have to present it correctly.

I'll be back.

 

There are several Asmo.

 

At one time several members had developed a theory that we were being visited by AIs that were posting as members. The theory was that someone, somewhere was using the forums as a Turing Test, to see if they could pass off a computer program (known to you youngsters as an "App") as a real live person.

This would account for those strange posts we see from time to time that seem, well, strange.
A pattern developed where the posts seemed to get better as time went on. A rival theory was that we were getting dumber. Whatever.

Pondering these two opposing theories I started digging deeply into the archives and discovered, lo and behold, the earlier posts did seem to have more intelligence to them, a certain capacités intellectuelles, if you will.

In addition some of the more intelligent posters seemed to have disappeared all together. Where did they go?
It was then that I put two and two together and began to think that as the most intelligent members were identified their accounts were taken over and they were replaced by AIs.
The "crazy" AIs were merely the "baby" programs that needed to interact on the forums to "learn" how to respond correctly to others in the thread in which they appeared. As they improved, someone's account would be hijacked and the AI substituted. This can be easily done by just altering a line of code here, a few bits there, and maybe a hexadecimal address over there.

The sex forums are a major breeding ground for these AIs. As they reach maturity they wander over there and flood the place with all kinds of juvenile virtual hormones. I used to think all those posts were two or three 13 year old males somewhere in Jersey, but I have come to realize that they are in fact AIs. Just recently I saw that Apple has developed this Siri deal that has a female voice. Here is an actual headline from WIRED.

Need I say more?
Obviously our forums are being used in Siris' development.

Now as I thought deeply about this situation, it occurred to me that more and more accounts were being "converted".
How could I know who was real and who an AI? It became more and more apparent as I realized that I could almost predict the responses I would get to my posts from many members. They were so predictable.

Push this button and get that result, push that button and get the other result.
I began to see the pattern.
I developed a spreadsheet of posts made by every member over the last 10 years. Then by means of manipulating certain cells, crunching logo-metric formulas, and fancy dancy footwork, I identified (within an error margin of +/-.3%) all of the various AIs present on the site and their currant "intelligence".

Oh, I know who you are! Which is which and who is who.
Those of you who are still human out there start paying attention to the reply's to my posts in particular, now that I have called out the demons. I'm onto Selmer Bringsjord's "E" program.

....Then I thought geez, I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy nut!

So I had to think some more.

Now, I may be offline for awhile in a day or two as my batteries are running down and I had to eat one of the dolphins. You remember the dolphins, right? It may be time to lay low for a little bit to see if I've stirred up the hornet's nest too much.

I may post in here again once or twice but don't be alarmed if I go underground for awhile.
Us old hippies are used to that.