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How To Deal With Internet Bullies?
creyes123 writes "I run a free website with an online model airplane design calculator. The number of registered users has quickly climbed and I've gotten many compliments. Out of nowhere, a fellow shows up and proceeds to bad mouth the calculator in a posting in one of my forums. After I politely point out that he's mistaken and should have looked at the documentation before posting, he changes the subject and bad mouths a different 'flaw.' The cycle repeats a few more times, with no apparent end in sight. I want to encourage folks to share their opinions, but constructive criticism was clearly not his goal. I feel that the whole episode was just a massive time waster for me. What did I do to deserve this? Could I have handled this better?"
When you realize you're in a pointless and prolonged exchange with a time waster, bully, etc., get off the ride. "Thanks for your feedback. I'll keep it in mind as I plan future improvements."
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Your best bet is to just relax. Remember, when you argue with an idiot on the internet, two idiots are arguing.
Winning an argument on the Internet is really hard, because people can trump you with their dickhead status or their real status. If you're trying to form a logical argument, they can make something that sounds cool and is easier to register, and people will accept it. Sometimes they just claim the argument is over, after they make a (flawed) point, leaving you unable to counter their blatant insulting of your intelligence (which usually paints you as wrong even if you're arguing over whether or not 2+2 = 7).
It's stupid.
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Banning their IP or username will probably be seen as an act of aggression, and if they are really intent on trolling your forums, they will find a means to do it. Really, the best way to deal with a person like this is to just ignore them... they won't find any entertainment if there's no reciprocation. Move their post off into a dusty corner of the forums if you can (make it the last to show up in searches, for example) and forget about it. There's one in every crowd =(
What you do is you take their comments, and edit them, to make them say exactly the opposite of what they are saying. So, if they say
Rob Sucks!
You can edit it to say
Rob did a great job.
Or something like that. It's really frustrating for trolls to find that their comments become benign.
Or, just ignore them. That works too!
Finally, what some people do is a little tricky. You ban their IPs, so that nobody *but them* can see their post. They think they are posting some vicious flames, and it shows up when they view the site, but nobody else (not even you, if you want) see it.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I've been on bulletin boards, mailing list since the 80's and usenet since the 90's, and I've found that the best strategy is to give them a private warning and then ban them if they keep up the bad behavior. Anything else just prolongs the inevitable, wastes your time, and drives away contributing posters.
That thread is really tame. You have an incredibly tiny forum with very few threads, and the first critical comments in a short 12-post thread send you running to Slashdot for help? Wow. Go over and read some forums with a lot more posts and grow a thicker skin. Seriously.
So, you're telling him to feed the troll? Let the troll know that he's getting to you, and he'll just do it more.
If you run the forum, the best solution is to ban him, and ban him with every new account he makes.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Don't feed the trolls, it only encourages them. Don't know who to give credit for that originally but it always holds true. Don't look at them or even acknowledge their presence, if they find out their life draining speech is worthless they move on. If anyone succeeds at doing this, let me know...
...in bed
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Don't assign to stupidity what might be due to ignorance. The dude's questions don't seem unreasonable, and you keep posting encouraging comments like "this is good stuff" and "these really give me great ideas" so of course he's going to continue providing feedback. He's probably thinking he's doing you a great service and he's the best forum poster in the whole world.
He's more coherent than 90% of the clients I've ever dealt with, and was willing to admit where he was wrong in some points. From my outlook, this man is a model poster and what you should really be encouraging in your community rather than freezing like a deer in headlights. Communities absolutely thrive on the [conceived] ability to alter the outcome of the product that has brought them together. Machiavelli wrote a book on just this type of thing.
If you need him to temper down his comments, simply remind him that you're a small shop and appreciate his patience as much as his input. Tell him that you don't check the board as often as you check your emails, and you would appreciate it if he were to continue this thread via email with you -- like telling someone to bypass your secretary with a direct line, it can be very flattering.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Clicking through the forums, there appear to be a total of 31 posts in the entirety of the forums (unless registered can see more forums or some such).
It appears that the subject of the thread that is linked to in the story is an unstructured series of bug reports and technical commentary about cases not considered by the software, and suggestions for improvement. The instances where the alleged bully deviates from the topic at hand, the comments regard the forum software in use, and after the first response, the alleged bully withdraws his complaint to return to a discussion about the technical merits of the software.
As a scientist (but not an aviation engineer), the comments, questions, and responses between the allegedly bully and the software author appear to be about technical aspects of the software, and there appears to be a mutual understanding and agreement about issues that got fixed.
The discussion appears to be professional, with the occasional attempt at absurd humour thrown in.
Am I missing something here? Is this story an attempt to generate hits for an otherwise non-notable website for a niche app?
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
While the 'complainer' wasn't the most diplomatic person in the world, it looked to me like he could possibly have been raising some valid points. The submitter certainly engaged in back-and-forth, mostly civil academic debate. I certainly saw no bullying. If the submitter's time was wasted, he encouraged it.
To come and whine to Slashdot about 'bullying' is pretty ludicrous, or just obvious traffic-whoring.
It's your forum. Delete his crap and move on.
1. Start a website
2. Post a tool that a small number of the general populous would give 2 shits about
3. Find an asinine excuse to post it on Slashdot
4. Get web traffic
5. Profit?
A friend of mine came up with a much more clever solution to recurrent trolls. Simply create a user profile that hides his posts from everyone but the troll himself. This way, he keeps ranting away, confident that he's being heard, until he gets disillusioned by the lack of interest and leaves of his own volition.
Genius, if you ask me.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
It still is frustrating for the troll. He's trying to get attention and suddenly no attention is granted. Is he being ignored? Is he already on the "troll list" again? He registers another account and writes again. And again, no response. He never knows whether he truely is ignored or whether he is on the "troll list".
When you ban him, he gets feedback. He was banned. He knows he got your attention and you did something. When you "silently" ban him, you deny him this kind of feedback.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I dont know anything about airplane design (model or real) but I read the whole thread and it looks to me to be a discussion between two experts with differing opinions on a highly technical subject.
Personally, I think this is a case of "Precious Programmer" - a programmer who has got their back up when their "labour of love" gets some fairly serious, detailed crititism. I am a programmer and I understand the feeling when something you've poured your soul into gets criticised by someone who DOES know what they are talking about, and they've gone through the software with a fine-tooth comb (which is a good trait for a beta-tester hint hint).
Mind you, there's fault on both sides - the guy doing the criticism, while his views/concerns on the calculations might be valid, should understand that the intended audience for this software is the beginner/noobie model aircraft person, not the aspiring airline designer (who, I would hope, would NOT be using an online model aircraft calculator to design their planes!), so I would think some safe assumptions in the coding of this software are valid, and he should understand that (particulary if he IS a programmer like he says)
Keep the discussion to email (since 1% of your forum's users would probably understand what the hell you are both going on about!), agree to disagree, grow a thick skin, offer to use him as a beta tester(!) and continue with what you are doing if you believe in it. It looks like a good idea on the surface...
It's redundant because just quoting movie lines at one another is pointless and stupid. You know how normal people tend to regard geeks as losers? It's because a hell of a lot of us do lame shit like this. It's an embarrassment.
Humor would be greatly stifled if the only jokes that were permitted to be considered funny are those that a majority of the public would like. Humor is personal, and if two people find a joke funny (and it hurts no one else), then who are you to say that those two people should stop laughing?
If the masses don't like that, then screw 'em. What kind of pathetic, inhibited loser stifles their own laughter for fear of not being "cool" enough?
(That said, marking Monty Python jokes Redundant is a valid reaction. You are allowed to boo other people's jokes after all. I'm just saying that fear of that shouldn't stop you from making them in the first place.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Or even better, don't tell them that they're banned. Just let them keep posting, but they're the only ones who sees their posts.
You are a genius. That's the best idea I've ever heard for dealing with trolls.
Why has no one done this before?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Congratulations on completely missing the point.
He is not defining a whitelist of humor wherein only certain jokes are permitted. He is attempting to describe a single item from what should be a universal comedic blacklist.
Clever references are funny. Continuing the reference beyond its relevant portion is a shallowly vain tactic in which one merely attempts to demonstrate that he also gets the joke and is thus deserving of being held in social esteem at least as high as the original maker of the joke.
It's not humor. It's not a joke. It's pathetic attention whoring borne of an insecure ego, and your getting so defensive at it getting the derision it deserves leads me to believe you're part of the problem.
Stop crying about comedic oppression when what you defend is completely unrelated to humor.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, editor!!! You actually let this guy use a cheesy, "Please help me with a bully," plea to drive traffic to his site?
What the hell?
Note: I'm not posting anonymous, mod me the fuck down.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Jeez, I just read your exchange. I can summarize it like this:
Him: "Hey, your software is cool, here's some detailed info on what I think is broken."
You: "Oh, wow, thanks! Okay, let me look at this...okay, I think you're right about this, but wrong about this. Did you click the metric button or something?"
Him: "Thanks for the response. Yeah, I clicked the metric button, which is why you're seeing metric units. Well, I kinda think I'm right about the second thing. Here's why...man, these screen shots were hard to attach and format commentary for, while I'm still writing this, I'd like to add that you should consider using some other software for this forum."
You: "Metric confuses me [ed: who knows why you made a 'Metric' button if Metric confuses you]. Please RTFM. Also, I ignore a bunch of stuff right now but I think it's unimportant."
Him: "Awesome, thanks. By the way, I found this other weird stuff. And I do think this stuff is important, because saying its accurate could actually hurt or kill people. Just sayin'."
You: "Okay. And wow, I didn't look at that other thing. Here's how I fixed it. Thanks! Also RTFM."
Him: "Cool. But I think your fix is wrong because of this disastrous situation that could put a kid's eye..."
You: "You're wrong. **EDIT** Oh, you're right! I'll make that more clear. **TO SLASHDOT** OMG TEH TROLLZz!!11!!"
I mean, the guy wrote a total of five posts (which puzzling make up over 12% of the total posts on your "recently popular" forums), and they all used a lot of "I" messages, none were inflammatory, and they all had a lot of detail about what's wrong with your app (I mean, the guy posted screenshots of your app detailing what he thought was wrong...it's pretty clear that he spent a *long* time writing up what he wrote up).
That he followed up in the same thread with new problems, well, maybe you could say, "let's start a new thread for that new problem." For the most part, the "new problems," were very related to your responses, though.
I think that you need to start taking criticism and suggestions more openly, especially if you're going to operate a forum about your website. And please, please, don't think that I'm a jerk for telling you all of this. I really mean it in the best way. Internet software is cool, and I'm glad to see you writing something fun, so keep on writing the good write, and keep on foruming.
And don't dismiss guys that criticize your software, especially if they use screenshots to do so :).
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Some of them are just assholes.
Quack, quack.
He is not defining a whitelist of humor wherein only certain jokes are permitted. He is attempting to describe a single item from what should be a universal comedic blacklist.
Then you missed mine completely. Any attempt to make such a blacklist is just elitist arrogance.
It's not humor. It's not a joke. It's pathetic attention whoring borne of an insecure ego, and your getting so defensive at it getting the derision it deserves leads me to believe you're part of the problem.
If that person finds it funny and someone else does too (as seen by the Funny mods), then it's humor whether you like it or not. It's not your place to be the high holy watchguard of humor who tells the little people what is funny or not.
(And "if you defend it, you must be just as bad" is a 3rd grader's argument. What's next, "I am rubber, you are glue?")
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").