Deception at online.degree.net

[Little Arminius]

Someone is trying to pull a quick one at online.degree.net. Their homepage is currently (10/10/08; 11:50PM EDT) showing 3 members and 80 guests!!! Right off the bat that sounds as fraudulent as Gordon University. Upon closer examination, it shows 7 current viewers, probably guests who can't post, in their General Chat forum - the problem is that there is no "chat" taking place. The only post today was a one line unpaid ad by some shill for "Jorma Bridal" using the screen name xiaohx08. WTF would the 7 viewers be viewing? The situation is similiar in their Accredited/Unaccredited Forum with an even higher number of viewers.

Now as for who is responsible ...

DL Truth thread questioning online.degree.net

I was suspicious about this forum several weeks ago but no one else seemed to share my misgivings so I publicly let it drop. I've been keeping tabs on them a bit and the number of guests they continued listing as visitors to their site seemed awfully high considering that there were few legitimate posts. Those few posts are generally from the same handful of posters, hard to believe since they list 2938 members, almost all of whom have either 0 or 1 post.

This needs to be the work of the administrator. It is not Johann or scaredrain, nor, of course, our own Dennis Ruhl. I believe it is the skunk I identified in my earlier post but I'll wait to see if someone else knows definitively before I use his name again. It is one thing to be a pompous asshole (which he most certainly is) and quite another thing to be a lying fraud. (though they are not mutually exclusive activities)

[ham]

Those few posts are generally from the same handful of posters, hard to believe since they list 2938 members, almost all of whom have either 0 or 1 post.

Sorry if I offend you, but: welcome to the world of the internet!
About time you understood how it works...
Registered users mean little: they can easily be faked by some 'go up one/make up one every minute' script...or (as in most cases it is) be junk members registered to peddle viagra, replica rolex, porn etc...
The rest are uninterested lurkers or gregarious morons ready to do anything to be initiated into the 'secret society' that dominates the forum.

I knew of another once famous site where the owner and the super-moderator (whom I believe were the SAME person ) accounted alone for 45% of the total posts.
The vast majority of fora are -upon closer inspection- run or populated by the usual bunch of people, maybe using different aliases as I had the chances to forensically document in the past; in one case one mental case ran five parallel aliases with conflicting personalities.
Forget the backdrop of dead usernames, spammers and the few lurkers and gregarious people.

Among the cliques that dominate most conventional fora (forget 'wild west' chat rooms and generic sites swamped with dumb teens trying to look cocky ), the core members typically throw up posts BY THE THOUSANDS...
I read 'post per day average' of 30, 50...even 200...needless to say these psychotherapy candidates are also the ones who use the 'get a life'/'I got a life' punchline...
Since 2002 I may have contributed say around 4000 posts, counting ALL websites I ever joined...some of them post 4000 times in one year on ONE site.
The typical person  who is a zero in real life, the butt of all jokes among his friends, who turns post-a-holic and cocky sheriff in town online...

The internet IS the realm of the fake, the distorted, the janitor turned principal and the burger flipping guy turned neurosurgeon...where the butt of all jokes in town can serve justice like a Scwarzenegger movie character...
PFFT!

[Fort Bragg]

I've wondered about the stats at different forums. As different programs are used and their parameters are set differently there can be wide variations. Some may list current guests, others guests in the last 15 minutes, yet others in the last week.

I don't get the feeling that homeless Gus fakes his stats as they are the lowest, battling out with this site for last place. I suspect degreeinfo has some issues with the record it used to show in the hundreds. Degreeboard looks reasonably believable.

online.degree.net is clearly faking it.

[Little Arminius]

Those few posts are generally from the same handful of posters, hard to believe since they list 2938 members, almost all of whom have either 0 or 1 post.

Registered users mean little: they can easily be faked by some 'go up one/make up one every minute' script...or (as in most cases it is) be junk members registered to peddle viagra, replica rolex, porn etc...

This type of thing only takes place when the administrator makes a concious effort at deception.

I knew of another once famous site where the owner and the super-moderator (whom I believe were the SAME person ) accounted alone for 45% of the total posts.
The vast majority of fora are -upon closer inspection- run or populated by the usual bunch of people, maybe using different aliases as I had the chances to forensically document in the past; in one case one mental case ran five parallel aliases with conflicting personalities.
Forget the backdrop of dead usernames, spammers and the few lurkers and gregarious people.

The difference is we are supposed to be discussing distance education, not yakking about Harley-Davidsons or the merits of 80s rockers like Great White.

The typical person who is a zero in real life, the butt of all jokes among his friends, who turns post-a-holic and cocky sheriff in town online...

The internet IS the realm of the fake, the distorted, the janitor turned principal and the burger flipping guy turned neurosurgeon...where the butt of all jokes in town can serve justice like a Scwarzenegger movie character...
PFFT!

I think that it our collective duty to expose such social deviates.

I've wondered about the stats at different forums.  As different programs are used and their parameters are set differently there can be wide variations.  Some may list current guests, others guests in the last 15 minutes, yet others in the last week.

I don't get the feeling that homeless Gus fakes his stats as they are the lowest, battling out with this site for last place.  I suspect degreeinfo has some issues with the record it used to show in the hundreds.  Degreeboard looks reasonably believable.

online.degree.net is clearly faking it.

At least we have the integrity not to create pseudo-members to inflate out stats. I'd rather be part of a small forum that stands for something, in this case exposing the hypocrisy and bullshit found on other DL fora, than be part of some phony cyber-empire run by some some loser looking to compensate for the litany of failures in his life.

[ham]

The difference is we are supposed to be discussing distance education, not yakking about Harley-Davidsons or the merits of 80s rockers like Great White.

I met the same nonsensical behaviour (chipped shoulders, red herrings, character assassination, ruling cliques made of the kind of people you try best to avoid in real life...) in various, unrelated niche fields.

I'd rather be part of a small forum that stands for something, in this case exposing the hypocrisy and bullshit found on other DL fora, than be part of some phony cyber-empire run by some some loser looking to compensate for the litany of failures in his life.

The problem is that most sites are like that, no matter how they were started, or the minute, irrelevant argument they may discuss. I only met chipped shoulders running sites for their egos, or chipped shoulders running sites for their egos AND to make money (the Bear's guides connection; the 'recommended providers gold list' items, request for donations etc ).
In fact some psychotherapy rejects found it's much better to boss the unwashed around AND to have them actually PAY for the bullying than otherwise.
Don't laugh: a very popular bodybuilding forum was sold for ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS DOLLARS, and the vast bulk of the membership were/are demented teenagers going there to pull their multiple aliases, to look cocky or to do their stupid internet stuff...while being bossed around like the dirtbags they are...lists of the banned there look like WWII casualty reports...
Still they came back for more and the owner laughed his way to the bank...