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Getting Rid of Trolls In WordPress

Posted by timothy on from the does-not-kill-bugs-dead dept.

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."

4 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. How is this a story by tomcio.s · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:How is this a story by dubious9 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How is this news for nerds, or stuff that matters?

      Because many of us, as nerds, have blogs and therefore trolls. Any discussion about reducing the effects of trolls and trolling occurances is, I'm guessing, really interesting to a lot of people here. Is it a treatise of the effects and coutermeasures of trolling? Nope. Does is discuss a couple of the more popular ways to deal with trolls? Yes.

      No one forces you to read slashdot. You are going to see articles that *you* think are stupid. But just move along to the next story, somebody might find value in this one. And for what it's worth I don't think you should be modded as troll. Just offtopic.

      --
      Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
  2. Re:I've always looked for ways other people did it by nacturation · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:I've always looked for ways other people did it by etymxris · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.