One of the coolest things about reading Skepchick is learning from the great discussions that arise from posts, news items, and Afternoon Inquisitions. And I suppose that’s true of any blog or forum where the “community” aspect is promoted. Of course, invariably commenters who seem determined to derail threads and who are more interested in disrupting discussions than adding to them or learning from them will arrive and slow down the party.
So today’s Inquisition:
How do you handle so called “trolls” when you encounter them, and what do you think administrators of blogs and websites should do to them?
I tend to either ignore them or mock them, depending on mood.
If they’re on a forum, I expect them to be ignored by the mods untill they become obscene or booring, at which point I don’t mind them being banned. On a blog, I view that as sort of “someone’s house.” It’s their space for their opinion, and they invite us in for tea (or scotch, after hours). If they don’t want to invite assholes to the party, I’m fine with that. Their house, their rules.
I’m all about banning trolls. I mean, it’s a fine line between justified troll-bans and just being a dick to stifle contrary views, but there is a line, and it is possible to use bans reponsibly.
Basically, at some point, it’s going to be clear that a troll is not operating on a reasonable level. Whether it’s resorting to ad hominems or simply repeating the same line of bullshit that’s been repeatedly refuted by other comments, eventually you can point to a pattern of behaviour and say, “You are not contributing to this discussion. Goodbye.”
That’s what happened with the one troll who popped up on my blog. He started off just doing the cyclical reply thing where he failed to address other posts who corrected him, then he descended further into calling me “fatass”. At that point, yeah, obviously you don’t have anything to add.
@Hanes: Pretty much this.
Some trolls can be entertaining for a time, sometimes they aren’t worth the bother, and if they are particularly annoying/idiotic, then banning is fine.
Fire or acid. Anything else, and they’ll just regenerate.
One thing I like about this site is that trolls aren’t tolerated. At least not for long.
No site that I’ve been an admin on has had enough traffic to attract trolls, so I’ve never had the opportunity to deal with one in that respect. And that’s an interesting thing, that trolls show up on popular sites only. They need an audience.
I wonder what would happen if you could mark an account so that they could post all the comments they wanted, could see their own comments but no one else could. Sort of an invisible banning. Would they keep posting even though no one was responding?
I like to insult them, then ban em for good if they keep going.
Ignore them for awhile and if they keep it up bring out the banhammer.
Well, I have had only one troll comment, so I never had to ban anyone, but I would have if he would have kept going. Anyways, I did insult him, as part of the policy. ^_^
Of course, you need to distinguish between trolling and exposing disgusting ideas. However, trolls tend to drive antisense, and you will find them almost always in a destructive dissenting way. It is the destruction not the dissense, that makes trolls so annoyable. The best counsel is not to fed them. Also, trolls tend to accuse everybody else of trolling.
@Didac: TROLL!
I banned one person at the bug blog over a year ago, and he still comes by periodically and leaves gross (sexual innuendo type) comments.
I still have to delete them from the spam que, and I’m sure he knows that.
yuk.
My blog isn’t popular enough to attract trolls, but if it were, I might deal with them by feeding them nibblets of attention in order to fatten them up, and then I’d let my devoted readers gobble them all up like turkeys at Thanksgiving.
If the turkey trolls began to get out of hand, I’d just give a call to Sarah Palin. I hear she’s good with turkeys.
Seriously, though, I like the way PZ Myers handles trolls. He creates a list of the top trolls and has everyone vote one (or two) out. This ritual, performed every so often, keeps the bloodthirsty crowd satisfied, establishes a deterrent, and unhooks at least one troublemaker.
I’ve seen disemvoweling work wonders, but it’s time-consuming and requires a lot of patience before it takes effect. Teresa Nielsen Hayden treats a comment section like a garden that must be tended year-round.
PZ Myers recently hosted Survivor: Pharyngula, in which seven persistent trolls had to survive a week of immunity challenges (e.g., answer “Why are there still monkeys?” correctly) while the regular commentariat got a chance to vote them off the blog. It was a lot of fun to watch. A few of the trolls got sucked right in, but most elected to simply stop coming back.
@Procrustes: Jinx!
What has to be avoided is banning people simply for disagreeing. Some people are just blunt in delivery when writing and may not have meant something to come off in a snotty way.
If they are being an insulting jackass and repeatedly rehashing the same nonsense on a particular topic over and over and over with absolute refusal to see reason (see so-called True Skeptic), then I see no reason not to ban. But then there have been people who were never banned for doing things much worse (i.e., zombie Rystefn’s “I wish you would die” comments to Seth). So…
I suggest a direct link to the code of conduct at the top of the page rather than embedded in the “about Skepchick” link so it’s easier for the casual commenter to find. I also suggest more specific guidelines other than “don’t piss us off” or “don’t be rude”. Some people legitimately don’t know what that means and need examples. I suggest using real examples (perhaps from previously banned people). Finally, I suggest including helpful tips for everyone keeping our cool. Like letting things go, give people the benefit of the doubt (at least at first), etc. Conduct is more than not being “rude”, it’s interpreting the intentions of other people.
The new defensive atmosphere here (possibly due to trolls, I don’t know) has been off-putting to me because it leads to needless, often childish, disagreements. Hence my relative silence here as of late.
Just to clarify: my first 2 paragraphs are general comments and the last 2 are Skepchick-specific, as I interpreted that the inspiration of this question was at least partially related to recent events here.
what happened to Rystefn?
@Kimbo Jones: You’re right, it’s almost impossible to make one’s point in a short, punchy, few lines (no one wants to read vast amounts of text). I know I struggle not to go off point pretty quickly
If they’ve got me scared stupid, I just throw some milk on them. If that doesn’t work, then a little kiss is usually too much for them to handle, and makes thier head explode. Somethings, I just avoid the bridge they are hiding under.
POP QUIZ!!!!
What are those scenerios references to!
But, in all reality, I’ve never really dealt with trolls, since I’m not too much of a blogger. With so many people wanting to say so much, its hard to stand out.
@russellsugden:
I think he was banned for two weeks and never came back, but I could be wrong.
I think that there should just be some kind of bot(s) to deal with trolls, If it’s on a forum you could just create a topic which is likely to draw in trolls and use bots to post replies, thus keeping them occupied and away from the general population, sort of like counter trolling.
@infinitemonkey:
ERNEST SCARED STUPID!!! OMG LOL COTW.
The onion always wins:
I rarely get any comments on my blog, so I think I’d welcome trolls. I’d probably end up blogging about them like PZ. If things got out of hand, I’d ban ’em.
Have a ‘Troll’ award that’s hung like a medal next to their name so everyone known who they are.
I’ve become much more adept at ignoring them, but that’s partly laziness. I just don’t have the energy to waste on crafting a good reply.
Personally I think trolls should be responded to once, maybe twice, from a rational “maybe-(s)he-s-just-deluded” point. And if that doesn’t work, i.e. the presumed troll doesn’t interact with the replies but just continues being stupid, I’m all for ignoring.
Now in the real world that doesn’t work, because most people people aren’t as rational and lazy as me, but troll baiters are as annoying as trolls and should all hang. My friend Bob agrees with me and repeated this opinion to reporters just yesterday: http://webtv.tv2.no/webtv/?progId=294465
If you can’t load that page it’s because you’re losers.
Also, if you didn’t want an abattoir I think you could have made that clearer in the outline. And… no, sorry, there isn’t time.
I keep hoping our latest one will come post on this thread. I am still learning the ways of scientism.
I like to bat trolls around as long as they’re entertaining and stay out of the way of real conversation. That at least gives them the chance to show some game OR show that they really want conversation but aren’t great at communication.
Once they show that they aren’t interested in dialog, then I’m good with banning them. It’s been a long time since I was a moderator, and even then it was at Internet Infidels and they had a huge process. If I needed to ban someone off my blog, I would wield a terrible swift sword.
What’s REALLY fun, though, is deflating arrogant fellow skeptics. The JREF forums are fertile hunting grounds for that.
I wonder. Does anybody really have a hard-and-fast definition of what a troll is?