Slashdot Mirror
Getting Rid of Trolls In WordPress
CypherXero writes "I recently had to deal with a bunch of unwelcomed trolls to my blog, and it became my number one priority to stop it before it got out of hand. Luckily for me, I'm using WordPress, so I had a lot of great options for stopping trolls."
How does this constitute a story?
So some guy figured out how to work WordPress webapp. Good for him. How is this news for nerds, or stuff that matters?
I really don't care if some guy has managed to set up his site correctly. Good for him, but why waste our time with this?
I will probably be modded as a troll, but someone has to go and say this. Slashdot has been slipping. There is so much good content out there, why do we have to read about this shite?
I believe I have written a little about trolls here but, blogs are the unfortunately the best place to troll. Places like slashdot get their fair share but the "many eyes" benefits quickly put them into obscurity. Though when one latches onto your site with only a handful of readers, it can be very hard to persuade them to move elsewhere.
Trolls are often very smart and if they see active counter measures like IP-banning and "disemvoweling" they are likely to find one of the many ways around those countermeasures because they know they're annoying someone.
The best thing I can think of is to have a slashdot-like mechanism where you're the only mod and everybody starts at -1 (only the subject of their reply visible). You check in a couple times a day and "promote" comments so that the entire body is seen. But that rather draconian.
Hmm... like spam there's no clear way to stop trolls, only minimize the pleasure they get from trolling. If you have a clear and consistant plan before the trolls hit, I'm guessing you'll be better prepared. And yes, you've seen it here, the best advice is "Don't feed the trolls".
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
It occurs to me that you could auto-moderate via whitelisting. So those folks on your "angels" list would automatically get a 2+ score. Those on your "not-a-troll-so-far" list would get a 1. Those on your "definitely a troll" list would get a -1.
Oh, and I would never allow anonymous posting. It's just too much frickin work.
Thoughts?
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I agree nothing woerst then thoes anonononymous postters that can't even take the tyme to spell rightly.
I'm SURE you'll find the answer here.
The only thing wrong with modding trolls down automatically is that they'll just create a new account without that restriction. Then you'll drive trolls do just do one troll per account.
Like I said active counter measures don't do very well when the whole point of being a troll is getting attention. The whitelist thing is good, but many blog sites have a lot of one or few time posters. When you're running a blog you're not really trying to create a community (where the whitelist would work well) but rather trying and get people to respond to your thoughts. It might end up as a community but you have to tread very carefully before making first time posters less visiable.
One thing I *have* seen work well was to have first or few time posters not have any rich abilities, ie. you can't link or bold or have a small font or whatever. That way you'd have to work a little bit to become a really *visible* troll and that's often more work than most trolls want to do.
Also, I want anonymous posters. Often, the whole registration thing is too much work when I just want to make one comment (and probably never go there again.) Maybe sprinkle some Wiki ideas in whatever anti-trolls measurs you take.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
OK, since lineman.net seems to be down right now, I've mirrored the article on my blog. You can check it out here. And as far as that filter list is concerned, I JUST started building it. I expect it to get bigger and bigger over time.
Full text of what I got:
Dealing With Trolls in WordPress
You are not authorized to access this page.
Whatever he did works great, I didn't even get a chance to troll before I was denied access.
-G
I do not think it means what you think it means.
sulli
RTFJ.
I was hoping for something more automatic than testing for trolls based on their words, then manually approving posts.
I wonder how well some kind of bayasian auto-classification of comments would work in practise?
I guess the majority of comments would be very small so there may not be enough to work with, but if these systems are mailing comments to the administrator already it would be fun to setup a troll/non-troll classification, and see how well it could learn.
Just like spam/non-spam handling there would likely be false positives initially, but if it worked out well you could setup some code to approve comments which scored non-troll and delete comments scored troll.
Does something like this exist already? Seems simple enough to knock up if not.
the best advice is "Don't feed the trolls"
Exactly. Anyone tried this: implement an "obvious troll" moderation, where not only the troll's comment is modded down, but also all replies to that comment, along with damage to karma etc. Used judiciously, this should make people think twice before replying to a troll, the troll won't get the attention they want, and they move to another site.
Posting a link to your blog in a Slashdot article while saying you figured out how to avoid being trolled = you get trolled like a motherfucker.
#!/
Hmm... like spam there's no clear way to stop trolls, only minimize the pleasure they get from trolling. If you have a clear and consistant plan before the trolls hit, I'm guessing you'll be better prepared. And yes, you've seen it here, the best advice is "Don't feed the trolls".
One creative solution I heard from Phil Greenspun is to simply let the trolls post away. If you find someone is trolling, simply mark their account (or IP address) with a troll flag in the database. With this flag, they can post all they want but they are the only ones who can see the content -- to everybody else, what they post doesn't even show up. This way, the trolls think that their stuff is visible but nobody ever replies or makes any comments, which makes for a very dissatisfying troll experience. Trolls want nothing more than to get attention and stir up a controversial discussion, or have adversarial matches where they try and defeat your banning methods. Hard drive space is cheap, and it's rather easy to filter results based on account information so that only certain people see it. I think it's one of the better ways to 'not feed the trolls'.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
PeopleCall, chosen by The Pulver100 PeopleCall is the only spanish company of services VoIP (Voice on Internet) chosen for pulver.com to form part of The Pulver100, the list that, every year, elaborates the group of telecommunications with hundred companies most distinguished from the market of Voice IP. PeopleCall is the only Spanish company included in the ready The Pulver100 that, every year, pulver.com elaborates and that it assembles to hundred companies of VoIP's industry (Voice on Internet) that register the highest rates of growth and that contribute in major measurement to the development of the market of the new technologies. PeopleCall appears in this list together with companies of great international projection, since it is the case of Vonage or Skype. Throughout last year, PeopleCall has supported conversations with the principal operators of broad band with a view to the offer of a Flat European Tariff of voice and information, has extended his scale of products and raised his number of users up to the half million. The company has consolidated his positioning in the European and Latin-American market, opposite to his more direct competitors in the supply of services of communications IP: Vonage and Net2phone. All these circumstances have allowed to PeopleCall to turn into the only Spanish company that forms a part of The Pulver100. "2004 has been the year of the voice due IP, to a great extent, to the labor of companies as PeopleCall, which has helped to stimulate the market of the communications IP thanks to a complete offer of services" affirms Jeff Pulver, Pulver.com's CEO, "we are proud to include PeopleCall in The Puver 100 in 2004 ". From his appearance in September, 2002, The Pulver 100 only gathers in his list to those private companies that represent the future of the communications and that register out-standing indexes of growth. The chain of value represented by the companies gathered in The Pulver100 differs substantially from the traditional vertical model of telecommunications, centring on a model of industry who relies on opened interfaces and on a wide conectividad. For Herme García, PeopleCall's general manager, this election "represents a recognition as pioneering company in the introduction of services of voice IP in more than thirty five countries and to the labor developed in the last five years in the field of the communications on Internet ". PeopleCall Founded in 1999 in order to provide services of communications and telephony IP in the whole world, PeopleCall has turned into one of the groups of telecommunications with major international projection. The company possesses half a million users, commercializes their products in the whole world and is in conversations with the principal operators of the continent with a view to the offer of a Flat European Tariff. http://www.peoplecall.com
see the subject line for more information!
Something Awful forums do this, and it's nicknamed a "hellban". There have been folks who have gone weeks without realizing they were even banned, as they merrily, and gradually less merrily, posted away.
Someone mentioned that Something Awful does this. Fark does it too. It sounds great, but the problem is that it creates great distrust in your userbase. I've seen people shadowbanned for years who made a comment or two some moderator thought was offensive. By not knowing if you are shadow banned or not, it creates a sense of paranoia.
My best solution in a blog like setting is to set up a simple yay or nay filter. If something is obviously spam or nothing but vitriol, then flag it. The default view settings for the reply threads will be not to show flagged messages, but you should provide a link for the user at large to see the flagged messages should he desire to.
Yes, the trolls will know that they are having an effect. However, that is life. Anybody can be a jackass and get a reaction. I say let him be a jackass. If he wants to continue posting vitriol I can just keep flagging it.
Of course, if it gets to the point of crapflooding or denial of service, then IP bans will be in order. But if it's just a few messages every day, well, that's just the price of running a blog or forum that values trust, openness, and transparency.
Do the hellban, and have automatic ( Liza, anyone ) reply mechanism in place for when they post. Then they will not be as able to tell from the lack of replies.
AND, you could even reverse troll them with the replies!
emt 377 emt 4
Trolls are when people post bad comments, spam, etc..on your forum/blog/etc...:).
The other fork from b2/cafelog, b2evolution has had this ability for a long time. They also have a simple migration utility for people who want to migrate from WordPress.
See you over in b2evo land!
If we could only get rid of the ones under the bridge. And under the bed.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere