Disarm Internet Trolls, Gently

Shlomi Fish writes "The best way to react to people trolling on Internet forums is not to feed them, right? Wrong! 'Don't feed the trolls' is also usually ineffective. Luckily, however, there is more effective approach, inspired by the book Feeling Good by David D. Burns."

Comments

So you "cure" one, then what?

[petes_PoV]

Then another pops up. And another and another.

Trolls have been around for as long as individuals have been communicating online. From what I understand, they're essentially lonely, attention seeking people. Even if you do engage one in dialog, what then? All you're doing is feeding their addiction. There are just too many of them to warrant trying to help them all (and trying that may point to bugs in your own personality, too)

No, the best course is to killfile them or use whatever options your forum implementation has to achieve the same results. You don't raise your signal to noise ratio by trying to negotiate with the noise, you just filter it out and try to make sense of what remains.

Re:Troll = someone who disagrees with groupthink

[goodmanj]

The definition of "troll" has changed. It used to be, back in the good old USENET days, a troll was someone who intentionally took an outrageous viewpoint, purely to generate responses and enjoy the excitement of being in the center of attention.

Can we go back to the Usenet definition? Please? It referred to a specific new phenomenon (mostly) unique to online conversation, which was desperately in need of a name. And the name made sense: when you're trolling you're dragging bait through the water hoping some sucker will take a bite.

The word "troll" doesn't make sense when applied to hostile posters, and we already have lots of good words for people who are overly confrontational in conversation. "Asshole" and "dick", for a start.