Fun for the whole family!

...I'm sure:

Obnoxious net personalities

Stacy Horn founded Echo, an NYC online bulletin board service, in 1989, predating the World Wide Web by many years. Her book Cyberville is a collection of her reflections on the experience.

In the chapter "Banished!" on users who were so obnoxious that she finally had to ban them, on page 164-165 is an basic description of the common characteristics of all of them. I thought it useful to share. See if it sounds like anyone you've run across in your time online:

God knows what these people's problems were, what their motivations were - that kind of knowledge is beyond me, and beyond the scope of my role as proprietress of Echo. The people who finally become unbearable have three common characteristics:
1. They all believe they have the truth. They know. We don't. And they must tell us.
2. They are unresponsive. They don't really have conversations with us, they talk at us. At best, they pretend to listen.
3. They love rules. When we complain about their bad manners, they ask for more rules. They are uncomfortable with the flexible structure of Echo's policies; they want all the do's and don't spelled out.

John Gabriel, another long-time Echoid put it best....

"Explaining a situation and asking him to figure out what is right or wrong won't do any good, because his sense of empathy is skewed at best, since empathy requires an understanding of how other people feel. He's probably never had the same kind of emotional development as most people, so he can't extrapolate from his own experience to understand the experiences of others."
"That's why he asks for rules so often. And as Marisa pointed out, he's not innocent, cause when he's told the rules he tries to find loopholes he can exploit to get his own way. It's like a little kid saying 'But you told me I couldn't hit my sister, so I didn't, I pushed her. You didn't say I couldn't push her.'
"It also explains why he usually listens when people tell him to stop doing something. He doesn't necessarily get what he's doing wrong, but he recognizes a rule."

They don't understand the spirit of a policy that frowns on abusive behavior, they need a list.

Whenever I see someone confronting an admin, more often than not at least some of this behavior is on exhibit.