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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."
Treating them like an adult ("why do you say that Windows is a load of pigs' livers?")
Sounds like the OP is suggesting we respond to trolls with Eliza.
... develop a strong sense of self-worth & recognise that someone throwing profanities at you who has never met you is entirely unimportant.
Get over that, then you can have fun baiting them, reeling them in, playing with them a while, then throwing them back when you're bored.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The author seems to be using "troll" as a term for "someone posting in an inflammatory manner," but I thought "troll" specifically referred to posters doing it to get a rise out of people. Responding in a reasonable manner isn't going to help if the other party isn't interested in taking the conversation seriously.
Exactly. The fact is many people enjoy feeding trolls, because it lets them feel superior to that schmuck who's standing there waving his dick in the community's face.
Case in point; Charlie Sheen. The media machine LOVES this troll, because he's feeding THEM, so they want to keep him going as long as people pay attention. And people (real people) are paying attention.
So go ahead, give people advice on disarming trolls. They won't follow it, because trolls are part of the online experience, and most people would miss them if they didn't exist (though lots of those would angrily deny it; see responses to my post).
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
There's logic to the use of the "troll" metaphor. A rant is not trolling. Angry disagreement is not trolling. Deliberate attempts to disrupt an online forum are trolling. A responsible forum moderator has the responsibility to identify trolls and deal with them firmly, decisively, and as quickly as possible.
The most common form of trolling I have seen is a bigoted comment, often "justified" with insane troll logic. Arguing with such logic is useless, and so is trying to dissuade the commenter from bigotry.
Most importantly, the effect of such a troll is to silence or drive off members of an online community. Remember that in general, only a minority of participants in an online forum are active participants. If members of a group that has a history of victimization by bigotry see bigots going unchallenged or weakly challenged, they're likely to be discouraged from participation. Active participants will become passive, and passive participants will depart. This can kill an online community, and doing so is often a troll's intent. It is a moderator's responsibility to nurture an online community; therefore it is a moderator's responsibility to deal with trolls firmly.
A troll is not interested in having a reasoned discussion, and when offered reasonable arguments, will continue or escalate the trolling. This amplifies the effect of the trolling, and leads to a forum thread being dominated by the argument around the troll: this is the reason why the conventional advice is to refrain from feeding the troll. That's not enough, however: trolls must be eliminated.
There are two options for dealing with trolls: banning them, and humiliating them. Banning is the straightforward option, and usually the best choice, as it's the cleanest break. Humiliation is more chancy, but it has a few advantages: it makes it clear that a troll has been confronted, and in some cases, may more effectively demoralize a troll than simple banning. (One technique I've seen is "disemvowelling", in which all the vowels are deleted from a troll's comments. This makes it clear that action has been taken, and the troll's comments can be ignored, or can be puzzled out, if a regular participant wants to figure out what is going on.)
I've encountered a few really annoying newsgroup trolls over the years, people that only showed up in order to stir up crap for no good reason. Those types invariably seem to think that they're anonymous because they use an assumed name and some Yahoo/AOL/Google address they acquired for that particular purpose. Although it cost me dearly in hours and eyestrain, I've hunted a couple of those people down, identified them, then posted all of the steps necessary to connect the dots back to the newsgroups they were making asses of themselves on, with information detailed enough to derive their home telephone numbers, names, place of employment, and even more sensitive personal information (in one case, if someone chose to read between the lines). In both cases, that was the end of it -- no more troll. I did this the first time after having had a discussion with a friend, who suggested that this was the best way he had found to deal with astroturfers. I believe he was right (thanks Alex). For casual trolls, I still think it is advisable to simply ignore them -- for people that are seriously asinine, a little vigilantism can be effective.
Unlike some, I have no appreciation for "the Art of Trolling". Appreciating a skillful trolling is no more worthwhile than appreciating fine sewage-making. They add essentially the same benefit to society -- in fact, the sewage might be the greater contribution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet