TromboneChat

You all see a pattern of ridiculous questions or situations recently? The forum is being toyed with. I don't believe these are legitimate good-faith posts made by naive debutantes. I believe someone is just posting a lot of AI questions. A lost trombone? Mouthpiece jammed with wax being treated as a legit response? No shrug after comments about taking lessons from Gore Vidal or triassic waves from heated titanium? C'mon, you smell a bot, don't you?

We need a better way to flag this junk and I think need to be more proactive about removing it. People ask stupid questions, but it takes a machine to take that stupidity to the next level. I don't think playing along is the right thing to do.

Agreed... though there have also been a couple recently that I assumed must be synthetic idiocy, but which 30s of FB stalking or email divination revealed to be genuine human nincompoopery. (Nor do we want to move towards a group behavior of pouncing on non-native English speakers.)

In general, though, I think the ban hammer could be wielded with greater extremity of prejudice... even when it might be a person. If it's that hard to tell, we won't miss them either way.

As always, thanks to Matt and co for all they're already doing.

ithinknot wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 9:35 am As always, thanks to Matt and co for all they're already doing.

Adding my thanks to Matt and all the folks who keep TC up and running!

I have generally tended to lean more towards human stupidity than AI stupidity. Sometimes the Noob questions can try ones patience, but we are a valuable resource for the beginners out there and they deserve forbearance. I realize that AI is getting smarter and sometimes can pull the wool over my eyes, but I'm not expecting to have to deal with that for long, living in a nursing home as I do.

I have disapproved a lot of posts clearly by 'bots that have no idea what they are posting to. I had one that posted a bunch of "hello" messages into discussions with real content. If you are unable to recognize the introductory threads as a location for "hello" messages, I won't approve your post.

Gosh, if nobody's injured or insulted and they're not dominating the site, I think it provides a little humor to the oftentimes dead serious "Mr. Know it Alls" and "I know what I would do's" that come gushing out...besides today's world is full of inanity....which is preferable to insanity.

henrysa wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 11:41 am Gosh, if nobody's injured or insulted and they're not dominating the site, I think it provides a little humor to the oftentimes dead serious "Mr. Know it Alls" and "I know what I would do's" that come gushing out...besides today's world is full of inanity....which is preferable to insanity.

AI?

Didn't AL Rash play 3rd trombone with the Jimmy Dorsey Orch. Back in the 40s?

Ex-Kenton?

I brushed against an AI plant and now I have an AI rash

I can add a flag for stuff that seems to be trolling, rather than spam. I often ignore a lot of stuff that doesn't interest me and so I might just not be seeing it. I completely missed the wax mouthpiece thread lol

Put me on your troll list, Matt. I suggested the mouthpiece plug as a joke (even put a Smilie after it). I had noticed that a lot of the other replies weren't serious either.

georgejohn12 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 5:25 pm It does sound like there might be a pattern of unusual or nonsensical posts, potentially driven by bots or spam... It's important to have clear guidelines ... moderators should be vigilant in enforcing these standards to keep the forum useful and engaging.

Why are my alarm bells ringing here?

Thanks I forgot to ban the username in addition to the email. PhpBB doesn’t give you the option to ban both at the same action which is kind of funny to me so you have to do both. Otherwise they can change their email or just register with the same email

I read it as AL RASH too, lol. Who's that?