Comments on: How to tell the age of a commenter

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:37:18 +0000

He he — sorry, I had gotten off topic with the specific question about how all caps indicates age. I think your poster is definitely less than street-legal. And female.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:32:46 +0000

A 50+ UNIX user who likes Nintendogs?

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:01:17 +0000

I’m not over 50, BTW — but it isn’t too far off.

By: Sterling Camden

Sterling Camden — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:00:16 +0000

…or a long history of unix use. Funny, “UNIX” is almost always *upcased*.

Sometimes, all upcase means an over-50 geek (or ex-geek, not adequately maintaining his membership in good standing). Back in those days they didn’t have lowercase. Remember Hollerith? Even the early CRT’s didn’t (I remember when we upgraded the DG 6050’s to 6052’s and got lowercase characters — it seemed so gratuitous).

By: derek

derek — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:56:42 +0000

is it laziness? i just think consistent lowercase letters look better.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:55:43 +0000

Laziness, derek?

By: derek

derek — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:41:48 +0000

i would have guessed in the 10 - 13 age range but i unfortunately remembered that many of my similarly aged friends type in the same style. by the way, you mentioned something about comments left in ALL CAPS… what does all lower case letters signify?

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:20:10 +0000

At least there was no a/s/l in those comments

By: darkmoon

darkmoon — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:10:16 +0000

Well, the latest poster typed in all caps, but was making sentences and didn’t have super exclamation points. She started with: “I am a 14 yr old girl.” so I figure that past 12, you can probably create sentence structures instead of the usual 5-7 word phrase. And they quit using IMspeak at about that age.

What can I say, I’ve been doing chatroom moderation for WAY too long for my own good. *laugh*

By: TDavid

TDavid — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:01:38 +0000

I was thinking in the 10ish range. Good guess, darkmoon.