How to discipline our "children"?

[ronpaulitician]

I'm getting very tired of seeing online users misrepresent Ron Paul's principles by calling anyone that disagrees names and by spamming sites.

We seem to be organized enough to go out and vote in (relatively meaningless) online polls. I believe that we MUST make an equally organized effort to discpline our "children" and prevent them from leaving a bad "Ron Paul" taste in the mouths of likely voters.

[mdh]

Can you please let us know who has spammed a site, and post links? I'm curious who is supposedly doing this, and I've seen loads of allegations, but not a single ounce of proof.

[MsDoodahs]

Um...

Individual personal freedom REQUIRES individual personal **responsibility.**

I have no desire to "discipline" anyone other than myself.

I understand that some may be taking off in directions I wouldn't personally go.

But the choice of how to express their zeal for Dr. Paul is not my choice.

It is their choice.

[angelatc]

Absolutely - what she said. Spamming isn't turning political discussions into discussions of how Ron Paul's ideologies would be superior. That's what they want you to believe.

I can show you proponents of every candidate out there who will use profanity instead of logic.

[enan]

We can't libertarian in our approach to winning the web. If we keep letting some folks spam the hell out of sites, we're going to lose a major support base on the internet. And as far as Ron Paul is concerned, it's one of the few things he has going for him. If we don't act on these people, we'll butcher the campaign effort.

[ronpaulitician]

Can you please let us know who has spammed a site, and post links? I'm curious who is supposedly doing this, and I've seen loads of allegations, but not a single ounce of proof.
ABCNews forums. I was posting there, and noticed someone posting three "Ron Paul rules" posts within a minute. I tried explaining to the poster that spamming will only aggrevate other users, and that the moderators would remove the posts anyway. "Are you threatening me?" was the reply. Fifteen minutes later, the user's threads were removed by the moderator, along with a couple of legit Ron Paul threads.

[ronpaulitician]

Um...

Individual personal freedom REQUIRES individual personal **responsibility.**

I have no desire to "discipline" anyone other than myself.

I understand that some may be taking off in directions I wouldn't personally go.

But the choice of how to express their zeal for Dr. Paul is not my choice.

It is their choice.
Have it your way. Just know that the voice of reason is increasingly drowned out by name calling.

[ronpaulitician]

I can show you proponents of every candidate out there who will use profanity instead of logic.
And therefore we should follow that approach?

[angelatc]

ABCNews forums. I was posting there, and noticed someone posting three "Ron Paul rules" posts within a minute. I tried explaining to the poster that spamming will only aggrevate other users, and that the moderators would remove the posts anyway. "Are you threatening me?" was the reply. Fifteen minutes later, the user's threads were removed by the moderator, along with a couple of legit Ron Paul threads.

It's possible that the opposition is actually spamming "Ron Paul" for the whole point of ticking people off.

[MsDoodahs]

It's possible that the opposition is actually spamming "Ron Paul" for the whole point of ticking people off.

Exactly.

:)

[angelatc]

No, of course we shouldn't follow profanity with profanity. But i'm not about smacking down anybody who says something I don't agree with either.

[ronpaulitician]

It's possible that the opposition is actually spamming "Ron Paul" for the whole point of ticking people off.
Definitely possible. And nothing we can do about that. But I frankly do not believe that Ron Paul is enough of a threat yet for our opposition to spend time trying to hurt us like that. The childish behavior that I am starting to see more and more frequently is most likely coming from amongst ourselves.

And if it's ticking me off, just imagine what it's doing to people who not yet support Ron Paul.

[mdh]

We can't libertarian in our approach to winning the web. If we keep letting some folks spam the hell out of sites, we're going to lose a major support base on the internet. And as far as Ron Paul is concerned, it's one of the few things he has going for him. If we don't act on these people, we'll butcher the campaign effort.

I see strong words here like "letting" - personally, I don't know about you - I haven't let anyone do any such thing. I'm not sure that any of us have any power to stop them anyway. So I think this discussion is largely moot, since it's next to impossible to even identify these individuals, much less take action against them. If they exist at all. I've still yet to see proof. Anyways, people like this are trolls and you can never win by arguing with a troll on equal footing. The best we can do is allow site mods to maintain decorum and remove them, and let the site mods know that these folks don't represent us or our candidate.

[Bryan]

Definitely possible. And nothing we can do about that.
That's not entirely true. These are unsupported accusations, unless there is some proof corroborated by independent and neutral parties that the IP addresses of the spam posting match that of known Ron Paul supports. Is anyone doing this? No. So the accusations are entirely without merit.

Do two things:

1) When possible, point this fact out, also point out that message like these can be coming from those against Dr. Paul.
2) List the unsupported accusations in our "Ron Paul Media Matters" forum here:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=29

Just read the guidelines carefully before posting.

[ronpaulitician]

That's not entirely true. These are unsupported accusations, unless there is some proof corroborated by independent and neutral parties that the IP addresses of the spam posting match that of known Ron Paul supports.
I'm certain the poster I caught spamming on ABCNews was a Ron Paul supporter. I'll keep that in mind though.

[NewEnd]

You are going to have to live with it, ronpualitician.

People are out of control, all the time, when it comes to political discussion.

And believe me, most of the people whining about Paul's "spamming" actually are very set in their political views, (many very left, or neocon).

His "spamming" really only effects the 2008 elections section of digg.com, and yet peopel are flooding from other sections, trying to discredit paul, and call it a spam campaign. I think your user name alone shows that at Digg (Ive seen you there.. ;) ) you would actually be considered a "spammer", when indeed, you are not.

Also, the claims of "spamming" are only making the Paul suporters more defensive, because they are being unjustly attacked, and this is healthy for the movement... it will dig them in more into defending and wanting to help Paul.

[garywatson]

It's possible that the opposition is actually spamming "Ron Paul" for the whole point of ticking people off.

One way to look at this is that to many people, Ron Paul is the "Up Yours!" candidate for President. So, we end up with a disproportionate number of angry people participating on our side, and sometimes this shows up in online forums.

It's possible that some of the most extreme posts are "joe jobs" but odds are that these are the minority.

As far as the question raised by the initial post, the only way we can police our troops is if they are members of a voluntary association which has a leadership, formal rules, and discipline/reward capability. Some of the competitive campaigns have this, where for example in order to get to the next level in the Clinton campaign (being a ward supervisor for example), you have to put in your time, follow the rules, do what they tell you, and eventually get your reward. Stray from the message, and they demote you or boot you out of the official campaign.

I'm not sure how this would work for Ron Paul supporters at this stage of the campaign. I also don't think that the so-called "spamming" is really having a long term negative impact -- news organizations are giving him much more time than ever before, seemingly one or two major appearances every day. Much better than we could have hoped for, really. I also think these news sites have long experience with ignoring Internet crackpots, as they frequently cover all sorts of controversial stuff, like when Israel invades its neigbors. The "spam" from RP supporters must look pretty tame compared to the pro- and anti-Israel activists.

In summary, I don't think we need to worry too much about the extreme actions of certain supporters. They will ultimately be seen as what they are, and we won't be tarred by the same brush by anybody who understands how the Internet works.

[Therion]

How's this? Tell me if anything needs to be changed.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y224/FortOven/vote-once.png

[p00k13]

And I've been looking too. There's a lot of user comments everywhere one can leave them, but most of the comments I see were left by indivduals. I think on the most part, they are personal notes, not copypasta spam.

Of course the mainstream wants to discredit Ron Paul's campaign in any way possible. They don't believe he can be popular, so they assume that it's a prank someone pulled...

[ronpaulitician]

How's this? Tell me if anything needs to be changed.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y224/FortOven/vote-once.png
Love it!

I'd get rid of the exclamation marks (Ron Paul doesn't shout! :)).

Don't spam,
be polite,
and only vote once.

[mdh]

How about "vote early, vote often" in the text bubble? :)