[Mike Sagman]

The moderators of this community maintain a zero tolerance policy for offensive and anti-social behavior.

As many of you can attest, over the years, this community has been besieged by one particularly malicious Internet troll.

This cowardly cyber criminal has used dozens of fraudulent names to hide his real identity.

We know who this person is.

Yet because he uses anonymous IP addresses to mask his computer, we need your help to identify his illicit comments so we can delete them as soon they appear.

For this reason, we have created a new feature that will allow you to report any abuse you find within our Forums.

Anytime you encounter spam, profanity, or other offensive posting, please click the new “Report Abuse” link that now appears near the time stamp at the top of each comment.

This will capture and archive all information about the offending user in our logs.

That way, we can then take immediate action to remove his offending comment. And keep a historical record and IP trail of his illegal behavior.

Thanks for your help.

[Mike Sagman]

This thread will remain open to allow you to post your comments and suggestions for a limited time. Thanks again for your help.

[crazy4cats]

Thank you!

[InkedMarie]

I thank you for doing this. Internet trolls can be scary when they cross the line.

[anonymously]

Thumbs up. However, I have seen “report abuse” being used inappropriately on other forums……

[DogFoodie]

Thank you, Dr. Mike!

Anonymously, when an internet troll’s activities become criminal, it’s imperative to put measures in place to confirm their identify and stop them. There should be no question that Dr. Mike always has, and will continue, to do the right thing in an effort to make DFA as safe as possible.

[losul]

I agree with DogFoodie. When the criminal actions of a very bad person, harm good, innocent, people, this “report abuse” feature is ESSENTIAL to quickly notify, so the swiftest efforts can be taken to record, identify, remove, and stop them.

Some may have not seen this type of menacing, cowardly, criminal troll activity, plenty of others have, I know I have, it’s against people other than myself, and often occurring in the very early morning hours.

it’s not completely about arguments, disagreements, personal grudges, name calling, profanity, spam or such, that’s bad enough, but please use good judgement for reporting those things appropriately. It goes further than that, is without a doubt criminal activity. If/when anyone does see such on ANYONE, I urge ANYONE to never hesitate to use the “report abuse” button.

I too applaud Dr Mike in his efforts to keep DFA a quality, safe place to share. Thanks Mike.

[Naturella]

I think it is a great idea as long as there is monitoring of the use of the “Report Abuse” button. There should be a review of the account that was reported as abusive in case a user was just upset at another user and wanted to pettily ban them from the site for no real reason. If such measures were put into place, I am all for it! 🙂

[poodaddy]

Dr Sagman, how do members of your forum know what actions are being taken by those moderators with the authority to “ban”? Yesterday I was admitted to a forum and banned forever in a span of 3 hours – must be a new record. Is it possible to share or highlight examples of these trolls and the actions taken? If that is already done, pardon my ignorance and please share.

The reason I ask is two weeks ago I finally started reaching out to the www and took a step to join dog forums because I had exhausted a search for canine nutritionists interested in working with me on a project, and joined dogforum.com the same day I joined your forum then I was “banned forever” yesterday on dogforum.com within 2-3 hours of posting a reply to an individual seeking help about a dog viciously biting anyone including the owner when the dog had a sock and was approached. The advice being given to this poor lad was so lame it was shocking which was primarily “hide all your socks in the house” so I posted for him to quickly use corrective measures and highlighted one professional who has published techniques that will work (because I have selectively used his techniques for over 40 years) – Koehler for this type of condition. But, if not up to it, to retain a professional trainer who has the capability to deal with it before something really bad happens. I was immediately lifetime banned for posting SPAM and an individual as a “Senior Moderator” with alias “TSTrainer” posted a response requesting “poodaddy credentials” , did not allow a response to his post since when I tried to it was disallowed, and proceeded to post his/her reply to (1) medicate the dog and (2) get an animal behaviorist. Holy cow … poodaddy enters the world of forums and human dysfunction.

[anonymous]

I don’t think the moderators routinely read these posts, unless the report abuse button is pushed.
You could contact them via “contact us” at the bottom of this page.

[poodaddy]

Eh … made me feel good to vent even if the photons went to cyberspace. lol

[anonymous]

@ poodaddy

I was new to the forums (a few years ago). Proceed with caution. You will recognize who is sincere, but it takes a while.
Often people come to these forums and ask a question, but they really just want you to confirm what they already believe, and when you don’t they can become quite angry..

One thing I have learned, is that when someone is rude, disrespectful, or verbally abusive, it is best to terminate all contact with them. Do not respond. Do not report them, it will just keep the party going.
Some folks thrive on chaos.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
Good luck.

[poodaddy]

@ anon101

Yup, your advice is good. I am seeing some interesting communications behavior from people, particularly since I have not been an internet surfer or forum person. It is possible this forum may not be the place for my interests, but it may end up being a good place to converse about the project I am doing or peripheral subjects that arise. I know there some very knowledgeable people I have already met and who provided links that have moved my project forward (sources of data that professional consultants would not even give me), so that is a good thing. My interests are primarily science of the model and industry-leading sources of the data to move the model toward a fact-based objective system that can function as the start of the raw food nutrition planning AND be a source of in-progress implementation of a customized raw dog food menu. I am using the model as an analytical tool to evaluate a menu posted in the homemade section and that should be an interesting dialog once I have the nutrition data researched. If people get weird (unprofessional), I will follow your advice and ignore them.

[anonymous]

Are you familiar with skeptvet? http://skeptvet.com/Blog/

Science-based veterinary medicine. I understand if you are not interested.

I don’t care to try raw ever again with any pets of mine.

But, that’s okay. See, we can agree to disagree 🙂

[poodaddy]

I think this new thread and discussion is probably suited for a different area of the web site, since I think this area is for Reporting Trolls and Spam. If you can let me know where to jump to, we can do that. Perhaps there will be others interested in the “homeopathic” thread, which I have no perspective on, am ignorant about, do not have time to get into at this time, and is unrelated to anything I am doing.

After visiting the link you sent and there appears to be some confusion about what I am doing versus your area(s) of interest. My area of focus has zero to do with homeopathic interests in any way. I am developing a Nutrition Model (computer application) that is based on the latest canine nutrition design criteria I can find, every variable I can find and understand that professional canine nutritionists use for the planning, designing and implementing of “raw dog food”. I am on a quest to demystify the subject using my mathematical, Excel, and research skills to (eventually) open the world of raw dog food menu development and analysis to ANYONE interested in the subject.

In a separate area of interest, I have been cataloging as a test group of two (my dogs) the Vet-identified issues they had one year ago versus the Vet-confirmed mitigation or elimination of those issues as a result of recorded actions I have taken – most of which are raw dog food preparation since March 2017. This will be the subject of personally authored technical articles (for the future due to time constraints).

In short, my project addresses the ingredients, metrics, and nutrition stats associated with self-manufacturing “Raw Dog Food” vs buying “Commercially Mass-Produced Dog Food”. It is a very interesting subject that is also very detailed, analytical, and inter-related with post-feeding data capture such as weekly weigh-ins, trends of grams of food per batch, and documenting observed changes that can be correlated with a raw food diet.

I am already addressing much of this elsewhere on this DogFoodAdvisor forum. Perhaps you would like to participate or not. My next action is the nutrition analysis of KevinB’s post in Jan 2017 asking for comments on his menu. I am testing the veracity of my model (in progress) against his menu and will report out the micronutrition and vitamin information from the model (in a week or so).

I am not selling raw dog food preparation to anyone. In fact, I am cataloging the level of effort, skills, process, equipment, hygiene, and so on, of everything related to raw dog food preparation at home. I am a scientist, an engineer, and businessman addressing solutions to disinformation, misinformation, fog of lack of information, and or professional greed that keeps information from everyday people who need to know how to address their questions and resolve them for themselves related to raw dog food. This will be my contribution this year.

[anonymous]

Thanks for your response, I will keep an eye open for your posts.
Welcome to DFA.

[Mike Sagman]

According to Wikipedia, an internet troll is “a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community…”.

A troll is not simply someone with whom you disagree.

The moderators who manage these forums as well as the Disqus comments are not sitting in front of their computers 24 hours a day — or reading each and every post.

Although we DO read each Abuse Report when it’s submitted, moderators make it a point to almost never respond publicly.

Please keep in mind: Researching and preparing the dozens of new reviews each month as well as updating the more than 1000 ratings representing some 4300+ individual recipes is a full time job for our small team.

The “Report Abuse” button was installed to help guests alert our moderators about spam or threatening behavior only. It was never intended to serve as a push-button shortcut to expect our moderators to act as your own personal umpire.

To those 3 to 5 of you who insist on habitually arguing with each other and then feeling the urgent need to click the “Report Abuse” button, I ask you to please stop. Simply ignore the person with whom you disagree.

Please don’t feed the trolls — the “others” with whom you find yourself repeatedly arguing. For the “troll” you blame for all your troubles here may actually be YOU.

In any case, if you can’t resist the chronic habit of finding fault with everyone except yourself, then please feel free to take your unwelcome disputes to another website.

Dog Food Advisor Comment Policy

We welcome respectful comments. Stay on topic. No politics. Posts in violation of our rules are subject to removal.

Please read our our Commenting Policy before commenting or complaining about the activities of those with whom you may diagree.

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