/meta/ - site discussion

Excuse my autism, but I've noticed posters sometimes seem to mix up the following terms. I see this on other websites, too. This is understandable, since the terms are vague and not widely known.

These are subjective to some degree, but here is how I personally define them.

Samefagging

This is a general term for deceptive posting. It can mean the following things:

- Taking on more than one persona in a thread to make it seem like your view has wider support than it actually does. This is also called sockpuppeting. May involve replying to your own posts agreeing with yourself, or significantly changing writing style to make it seem like a different person is also giving similar positive or negative remarks. Particularly dedicated samefags may try to use a different IP address as well.

- Making multiple posts back-to-back, without obvious indication they were all made by you. This is not always deceptive, though is often annoying.

- May also apply to general false or omitted self-identification. For example, if the subject of a /pt/ thread started secretly and anonymously posting in her own thread to disagree with people or defend herself, this may also be called samefagging. There may be a better term for this, but if there is, I'm not yet aware of it.


Self-posting

Posting about yourself in any way, whether anonymous or self-identifying. For example: posting a picture of yourself, linking to your own profiles, giving excessive details about your life, etc. Self-posts are completely acceptable in some threads and some contexts, but they usually are frowned upon otherwise. You shouldn't try to make yourself stand out on an anonymous board. Valid spellings also include self posting and selfposting.


Vendetta / vendettafag / vendetta-posting

Posting about someone as if you are a random person who happens to dislike them, when in reality you have some sort of personal connection or grudge. Often involves samefagging. Generally has no relation to self-posting, except in cases of self-victimization. In cases where you present the chan with an implicit or explicit "call to action", to further your vendetta, this is also called a personal army (PA) request. It often involves misleading or deceptive information.

An example of a vendetta post would be arguing with a girl on social media, and later posting a thread calling her a whore. Asking people to send things to her parents, or falsely claiming she's violated some site's terms of service and requesting people report her, or including her address and phone number in the post, would be a vendetta post as well as a personal army request.


Self-victimizing / false flagging

Anonymously posting negative remarks about oneself while pretending to be other people. A rather humorous combination of self-posting, samefagging, sockpuppeting, and vendettafagging.



Other terms

Derailing

Derailing means causing a thread to go dramatically off-topic, often intentionally. It does not mean merely disagreeing with the OP, others in the thread, or the premise of the thread. That kind of disagreement is perfectly on-topic. Derailing is off-topic and distracting.

Please do not send reports just because someone is taking a stance opposite to most of those who've been posting in the thread. This is not against any rules. People are allowed to disagree.



If you think there are valid alternative definitions for any of these words, please discuss them. Also feel free to submit definitions or suggestions for any other terms, acronyms, or jargon.