Don't feed the Troll! Be forewarned!

I realize that this post is off-topic but it has to be said as I am deeply affected by the troll under the WD Bridge as I’m sure that many forum members are also. New members has to be warned about the Troll under the bridge.

We have only one even though it feels like many!!

Over the last month or so, I’ve gotten to know one Troll that lives under the bridge of the WD forum through private message. He began this private messaging by first asking me to join together posting up problems, to unite together. At that time, I told him that I prefered posting up solutions rather then posting up complaints to a problem. Subsequent posts became more and more frequent as I told him once to stop trolling and he began to play the game with me that he and the troll had no relationship even though they both made references to the same info. Gradually, different users would be messaging me once he knew that I knew of his many nicks. 

I told him once that I will write about him and today is the day.  I write about him because I’m affected by his trollish manners and I’ve told him that because of him, I won’t be frequenting this forum as much. He delights in this as he felt that he has won…

Normally I don’t have any problems with trolls as I simply ignore them. After all, my main purpose on this forum is to either gain knowledge to use with my WD device or to share my knowledge that I’ve acquired; however now that my WD Cloud is working normally, I will be avoiding this forum as much as possible; and it is all because of him.

The problem with trolls

…  is that many of the users that I’ve been answering to, has been that of the troll; I don’t know for sure but in the end it felt trollish.

Although you can almost recognize a troll post, I’m sure there are many real users with real questions that have been left unanswered simply because they are trollish in nature; however I cannot tell anymore and I will no longer be baited.

How does a post feel trollish?

I’ve spent time answering many questions that the user never returns to aknowledge the answer simply for the reason that the question has become the headlines. “Most worthless purchase ever!”, “Slowest device” and so on. I have no idea whether these are real users or the work of the troll. However I do know that whomever visits this forum will have the general idea that the WD Cloud has many problems.

More trollish feelings

You keep helping a user trying to solve a problem to find out that no matter what answers you give them, it is the wrong solution because in the end…  the answer to a troll question is no answer.

How can you almost tell?

You really cannot, but over time you get a feel of a trollish post…

  1. Most of the troll posts will be of that of a first time user with a post count of 1. This is to create many users with similar problems.

  2. It will be usually a topic that seems controversial, like no remote access.

  3. There will be a general influx of the same problems in that same week because they want to hype it up.

  4. everything will be riding on that one feature such as this is the most worthless device that they ever bought because it could not stream MKV; although that one user that couldn’t stream MKV could have been a valid user :P 

  5. blaming other problems that is unrelated to the product itself to make it look like a company problem, like user registrations, email notification, slow wifi connections. 

  6. some post will begin with brand new user, been reading all the problems, will be returning it as now.

  7. in the morning you will also notice that the troll will have dredged up every problem post that the forum has; most of them he wrote himself. Even though the mods bans this new ID, the damage is done, because all the problem posts are now at the top of the forum. So as new users visits the forum each day, all they see is problem posts.

  8. worse offense is assuming a nick that is similar to a real helpful user and answering in a trollish manner by giving the answer that makes the product looks bad.

  9. every answer is that the product is beyond help and the user should return it for a refund. 

My Trollish Conclusion

Many times I suspect he is from another rival NAS system because I cannot believe that someone can be so tortured about a WD product that he must haunt the WD forum everyday.  

Samsung did this by hiring people to post in every forum about troubles they had with their iPhone and iPad and how they were going to change over to Android. 

The bottom line… “Don’t feed the troll!!”

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WD Moderators: please lock and sticky this post so all will see and trolls won’t attack!

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Thanks a lot for your post. This one user is extremely going my nerves

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All should KUDO Ralphaels post for saying it and speaking up.

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@ Ralphael

I commend you for posting this as I was ready to do the same yesterday. I thought that if I did I would start a war and that is not the purpose of this forum. I know the Mods and Bill_S are aware of this person.

Yes, I have had my issues with my MyCloud, but due to the help I have received here from yourself and many others I have overcome those issues and now trying to help others. The person you are talking about is basically here to drive discontent and havac. I also have been pm’ed by this person to join in on some of his posts, for which I have ignored. I have stayed away from the forums in the morning as he is so active, and then will post after the removal process has taken over.

Thank You  Ralphael for posting this thread and if I could Kudo you more than once I certainly would.

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I’m sorry, but I find this post absolutely hilarious. “It will be usually a topic that seems controversial, like no remote access.” We just finished up a weekend in which the wd servers were all down and tons of people didn’t have remote access. In addition, please remember this is marketed as a cloud device, so yes, no remote access would be “controversial.” There are so many issues with this product. Labeling everyone with an issue as a troll will make this a community of trolls.

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headache wrote:
I’m sorry, but I find this post absolutely hilarious. “It will be usually a topic that seems controversial, like no remote access.” We just finished up a weekend in which the wd servers were all down and tons of people didn’t have remote access. In addition, please remember this is marketed as a cloud device, so yes, no remote access would be “controversial.” There are so many issues with this product. Labeling everyone with an issue as a troll will make this a community of trolls.

Headache:   No doubt.   This really isn’t about the folks with very specific issues, and certainly isn’t directed (as far as I can tell) to folks that obviously did have problems during the long outage.

Suffice it to say:  If you’re still online here, you’re not the troll or behaving anywhere close to how the troll behaves.   :laughing:

I think Ralphael is likely calling out the Once- or Twice-Nightly person who logs in as a new name, posts 20-30 posts in rapid succession all saying pretty much the same thing, and is banned / deleted within the half hour.

Folks like this:

http://community.wd.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/user?advanced=true&one_or_more=LinAdmin+Dooku&search_page_size=48&sort_by=-reg_date

…and the meriad attempts to confuse others by registering with VERY SIMILAR names to established users, like:

dog0w mimicking cat0w

OneEyedMinion & TwoEyedMinion mimicking ThreeEyedMinion

and even names that mimic the moderators.

So in other words, if it isn’t you, then it’s not you.  ;)

DISCLAIMER ON:  To avoid violating WD’s “Not a Legal Venue” term of service, I must say that I am not an attorney and do not practice law.   WD’s ToS state that we cannot discuss "… litigation (past, present or future) … "  Since no litigation is proposed, pending or current that I’m aware of, I only speak of this conversationally.   Conversationally speaking, the habitual troll once professed a familial relationship to an attorney with whom this could be discussed.

Deliberately bypassing a “ban” is a form of civil trespass;  Once you are told to leave an establishment (tangible or otherwise), it is a " Trespass to Chattels" to come back anyway.   That is a violation of law.

DISCLAIMER OFF.

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I wasn’t concerned that he thought it was me. I’ve been a bit trollish by his definition. I’m just irritated that I spent about $40 more than I should have and now I’m having to spend more time researching a way to best utilize this thing as simply an external hard drive with remote access. I spent A LOT of time on this over the month or so, and that’s time I don’t get paid for and time that is now wasted. So I’ve had my say and now I’m done. They won’t be updating with a magic fix any time soon (I kept hoping) and I can’t get my money back because I waited too long to set up this thing after I got it. So, one troll down, couple hundred to go :slight_smile:

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headache wrote:
I wasn’t concerned that he thought it was me. I’ve been a bit trollish by his definition. I’m just irritated that I spent about $40 more than I should have and now I’m having to spend more time researching a way to best utilize this thing as simply an external hard drive with remote access. I spent A LOT of time on this over the month or so, and that’s time I don’t get paid for and time that is now wasted. So I’ve had my say and now I’m done. They won’t be updating with a magic fix any time soon (I kept hoping) and I can’t get my money back because I waited too long to set up this thing after I got it. So, one troll down, couple hundred to go :slight_smile:

Hi headache,

You were escalated to support for further help.  Someone should be in touch with you soon.  Let me know how it goes.

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People, you need to understand that what Rafael is talking about doesn’t include everyone.  Actually, it is aimed at any individual(s) that come into any community with the intent of causing disruption.  Understand from our part, as moderators, that we don’t ban anyone for coming into the community to complain about issues they are having with their products.  As a matter of fact, we try to help them. And that includes everyone.  However, there are certain parts of the community guidelines we enforce diligently.

  1. We do not allow spamming.  That includes posts saying the same thing over and over again.  Even if it is innocuos it’s still spamming, especially when it’s not relevant to the topic of the thread.  As many of you know, we don’t allow cross-posting for that reason.  
  2. We do not allow users to harrass other users, whether it’s flaming them, calling them names, or even the more subtle type of contradicting or challenging them whenever they post. 
  3. We do not allow users to say things about the products or the company that are plainly not true. That is being misleading. It is entirely understandable when users are frustrated, but all you have to do is read to see that we are obviously not just pulling posts with complaints. 
  4. We do not allow users to bypass our profanity filters.  It should be obvious when the obligatory **bleep** comes up that you are not allowed to cuss on the community.  To try to cuss even after that, by bypassing the filters creatively, may get your post pulled.

Now, just doing some of these won’t qualify anyone for being banned.  However, once a user refuses help and refuses to modify his/her behavior to comply with the guidelines, especially in the above cases and after several warnings, then yes they can get banned.  However, that is much more infrequent than some people may lead you to think.  We want people here.  We want the community thriving.  We want to see people get all the help they can get with our products, especially when they are frustrated.  However, having said that, this is a user to user community.  So, being nice to the other community members will get you much further along than not being nice. 

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