Since we are a small company (ONE THAT IS HIRING), everyone needs to do a lot of things. In addition to being the business intelligence lead, and the (homework) BugMaster and triaging all the job applications that come in to our open calls, and helping out with assorted things in the school, I am also in charge of keeping our online community (message boards) from exploding into Lord of the Flies style chaos. (And that really is the right metaphor since most of the participants on our message board are 12-year old boys.)

  1. The MAA still has not released the cut-off scores that determine which students are invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Exam on Tuesday. That is right, right now it seems like many students will not find out until Monday whether they will be taking a 3-hour exam on Tuesday that they perceive to be important for their future chances of attending Harvard University. Now imagine all these students participating in an internet forum under the cover of pseudonyms.

  2. A user from Kazakhstan was bullying other users on the forum. I cut off that user’s ability to post, temporarily. The user complained. I replied that we just do not allow that sort of behavior on our message boards. He responded with profanity. I extended the ban and also set up restrictions that forbid any new account registrations from just about every IP address in Kazakhstan for the near term.

  3. While updating the notes on a user whose posts get flagged a lot, I wrote, “This user is either as masterful at trolling as Andy Kaufman or else he really is as clueless as he presents himself.”

  4. Relatedly: There are some enthusiastic 11-year-olds who don’t speak English very well who would quite possibly fail a Turing test.