Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Aggressive Forum Users?

Slashdot reader dryriver writes: I've noticed a disturbing trend while trying to resolve a rather tricky tech issue by asking questions on a number of internet forums. The number of people who don't help at all with problems but rather butt into threads with unhelpful comments like "Why would you want to do that in the first place?" or "why don't you look at X poorly written documentation page " was staggering. One forum user with 1,500+ posts even posted "you are such a n00b if you can't figure this out" in my question thread, even though my tech question wasn't one that is obvious or easy to resolve...

I seem to remember a time when people helped each other far more readily on the internet. Now there seems to be a new breed of forum user who a) hangs out at a forum socially all day b) does not bother to help at all and c) gets a kick out of telling you things like "what a stupid question" or "nobody will help you with that here" or similar... Where have the good old days gone when people much more readily gave other people step-by-step tips, tricks, instructions and advice?
The original submission claims the ratio of unhelpful comments to helpful ones was 5 to 1. Has anyone else experienced this? And if so, what's the best response? Leave your best answers in the comments. How do you deal with aggressive forum users?

Comments

Not being a jerk, but...

[jddj]

You're asking HERE?

Ignore them

[Jeremi]

Nothing requires you to do anything about them; just treat them as meaningless noise, and act the same as you would have acted if their unhelpful post did not exist.

Re:Ignore them

[Cheech Wizard]

You are right. I have run a tech forum since about 1996 - Well, I actually started the forum part in about 1998. The first thing to understand is that over time things have changed. In the "early days" computers were not anywhere near as ubiquitous as today so most of the visitors were, while not techies as in this forum, but in their field of expertise. There were some problems, too. There were some people who would have 3 or 4 accounts and would literally start a discussion thread and then another of their "personalities" would post, and then a third one which would start a fight of sorts and get nasty. It took a few years but finally we got some code which, when an admin "marked" an account, that person could post (people did and still do have to register and be logged in to post) but the post would be invisible to everyone except that user. It didn't take too long - Maybe a year or so - Where we had things totally under control. People who were abusing the forum eventually got tired of trying to disrupt things. And the forum was/is small enough (well, these days with Facebook, Linkedin and such taking over people's interest is is) that control isn't an issue. And - We do have a lot of very long term moderators so someone is online most of the time. One thing I have noticed is that since the election of the orange one there are some forums I have stopped visiting. I'm typically a lurker (as I am here - Rarely log in but do visit every day as I have for years) but even some very good discussion groups are becoming pretty stupid. Trump this, dems that, typically where politics shouldn't be a part. I'm finding ore and more free time as I back away from visiting old haunts. Then again I'm almost 70 so all of this is old hat, so to speak, for me. I do miss what I call the "good old days". Even the vulgarity in the first posts of this discussion turned me off. I have seen this problem so I did log in to comment, but the vulgarity alone is telling me to keep to the headlines and to not bother to read the comments (much less log in to help people).

Re:Ignore them

[Antique Geekmeister]

Please be clear. What you were doing was not merely moderation, it was bureaucratic censorship. It can feel very powerful to control communications this way, but it's very dangerous because it encourages such clandestine abuse of clients, colleagues, and customers by example. It's very gratifying to be one of the "in" crowd that can enforce such arbitrary standards, but it leaves the lesson that such secretive, unannounced abuse by moderators is typical and should be accepted.

If I found such behavior in use on a forum I frequented, I would feel compelled to leave, even if the remaining content were of notabily better quality with this moderation in place. I would not feel able to trust the administrators of the forum because of such secretive censorship.

Re:Ignore them

[serviscope_minor]

Please be clear. What you were doing was not merely moderation, it was bureaucratic censorship.

No, you be clear: it is not censorship, it is you whining. I am a mod on a forum which has occasionally used nefarious means to get people to go away. The community standards on the forum were very clear, and the mods bent over backwards to avoid banning people. People were given short bans, second, third and even fourth chances, and even put on the mod queue to avoid banning them. But some people just needed to go.

If I found such behavior in use on a forum I frequented, I would feel compelled to leave, even if the remaining content were of notabily better quality with this moderation in place.

Everyone likes the good discussion, but few people seem to like the effort involved involved in stopping it turning into a 4chan style shitpile. The mods time is finite.

Second that

[Okian Warrior]

You're asking HERE?

I'll second that.

It might be because nice people tend to lose patience and go away, so that the forums have nothing but griefers left.

Lots of forums are completely toxic in this regard, and Slashdot has fallen prey to this as well. Post a non-insulting position about something that doesn't jibe with the group-think and you'll get nothing but insults. No thought put into it, almost a boiler-plate "you're really stupid" or "you're a racist".

Try to contribute to Slashdot by submitting articles, and the toxic users will mod them as spam and get your account locked.

They seem to think that any tactic in support of their end goals is OK, and they don't see the value of well-formed alternate opinions, and reasoned discourse. All they see is that opposition seems to be less over time.

They view it as "winning" when reasonable people lose patience with the griefers and leave.

What's left is the toxic residue.

Re:Second that

[Darinbob]

I just ignore them. And it's true, people have gotten ruder over the years. I suspect they don't know the answer at all and just want to belittle someone.
However others I think are just clueless underneath it, and can't understand why someone would even want an answer to that question. The question is outside of their frame of reference. For instance, ask how to resolve a tricky issue with existing code in C++, and someone will inevitably say "that's bad style, never do that" as if people have the luxury to rewrite all code. Or some people just misinterpret the question completely; they skim past it and assume you were asking a different but simpler question (very common on stackoverflow, which has become nearly useless because of of the bad responses, incorrect responses, or the unhelpful answers with "I don't know how to do that in C but it's trivial to do in C# so you should use that instead" style).

But overall, just ignore them.

Re:Second that

[arth1]

I see problems coming from both ends. The people asking are just as bad, really.
Some leave out important details like which programming language(s) or OS.
Some post at an expert forum, and get upset if they get expert answers when what they wanted was unskilled user level answers and not how to run a core backtrace to narrow down a root cause.
Some ask others to do a several hour jobs for them for free. (I'd mention a common factor for these type of questions if it weren't racist to do so.)
Then there are the hit-and-run posters, asking a question, and never coming back to look at the answers or thank anyone who answered.

But yeah, people who answer can be frustrating too. The most irritating to me are what I call Microsoft answers, which are cut and paste answers from articles, and while 100% correct are 100% unhelpful because they either apply to something different, or just define the problem without giving an answer.
Almost as irritating are what I call tech support answers, where the person asking have given low level details and wants to understand, and some nincompoop says that he should reinstall or unplug and plug back in..
Then there's the "works for me" crowd.
And those who want to argue about why you do something. If someone starts with "in a mc68k environment with 256 kB RAM", chances are that he won't have a choice, so arguing that he should use a raspberry pi or cluster of octacore xeons instead is just derailing.
And those who demand full logs and configuration files for questions where that informaton obviously won't provide any useful information. Questions about how to obtain an old version don't need full logs and config files. Really. Nor questions that contain enough details that the answer is obvious, or where a repeatable minimal test case has been provided.

It goes both ways.

Re:Second that

[ShanghaiBill]

And it's true, people have gotten ruder over the years.

You have obviously never seen a USENET flamewar from 35 years ago. I have seen no evidence that people are any ruder today.

Re:Second that

[mjwx]

I believe people are becoming ruder because our sense of community is being eroded. There is no "us" anymore, no sense of belonging together (or belonging anywhere). This is the sad legacy of globalism.

I don't think society is getting ruder, in fact its the opposite.

Also I cant see the link to globalism. Sounds like you're trying to frame the argument to blame something completely unrelated.

I visited Croatia the other day. There was a display of photos somewhere, and the corresponding descriptions showed a great deal of nationalistic pride. It felt like a breath of fresh air: people actually proud of what they were, and what they did. For one moment I felt that sense of belonging somewhere - and I'm not even Croatian...

And here it is.

The problem about showing patriotism in many western nations is that certain people have relentlessly attempted to tie patriotism to nationalism. Sounds like they've been successful on you.

Nationalistic pride is a bad thing as that says your nation can do no wrong. It is the belief that you are innately superior because you were born on this side of the border.

Patriotic pride is not such a bad thing. It says you take pride in the accomplishments of your nation and your peers in the advancement of your nation.

A nationalist is incapable of seeing flaw in their nation, a Patriot not only acknowledges that their nation can be flawed, but works to fix them.

The problem here in England... in fact I'd say its the same problem in the US as well as Australia is that racist and xenophobic groups, such as the EDL in England have completely managed to co-opt the idea of patriotism to sell their own brand of hate. They've tied the idea of being a proud Englishman to their hate of foreigners and religions they don't like. I think this is a shame because there is a lot to be proud of in English culture, not the least of which is its openness and acceptance of others. However groups like the EDL or UKIP would have others believe you were one of them for being a proud Englishman or woman which as I said, is a bloody disgrace.

Being proud of where you came from (I'm an Australian who lives in England) is not about beating down others, sadly that is what passes for Nationalistic pride in the west these days.

Re:Non-answers

[Sebby]

.... but, what I would do is just ignore, as others have already stated.

If I ran a list/forum, I would specifically state in the Terms that 'newbie' questions should be expected, and any condescending responses would result in immediate suspension. If users don't have anything helpful to respond with, they shouldn't bother responding.

Easy trick

[quietwalker]

Just avoid the python groups, and you'll avoid the spots where most of these sorts of people hang out.

In a more serious vein, I haven't seen this happening excessively. I've spent a good deal of time on a large number of forums and irc channels, and by and large, this doesn't seem to be happening frequently in the way you describe. I'm not saying that you haven't experienced this, it's just that in the last 20 years, there haven't been a lot of know-nothing folks just spamming "you suck noob" to any given question.

I can guess why; in any technical discussion it quickly becomes apparent who does and does not know what they're talking about. In fact, many quickly devolve into a special-case-knowledge comparison contest. The unhelpful person is ignored or derided by the masses as a whole. They quickly leave. That's why they're just not around.

That being said, what I have seen is people asking other people to do their work for them, including but not limited to: easily googleable questions, questions specified explicitly by documentation, questions that require more information to answer than is given, questions that could easily be answered by trying it out in a test, and so on. 95% of the time, these folks are inexperienced in technical forums as a whole, and don't understand that they're being lazy and trying to shift work they could easily do onto others because of it.

This is irritating, especially in channels of 300+ people with new folks jumping in and asking a single question and popping out, never to contribute, once every 2-3 minutes. Especially when many of them appear to be homework.

The best option for these folks is to ask them to read http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/... , especially the whole of http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/... , before asking another question.

Leave the forum

[WolfgangVL]

Some forums are completely toxic. Fuck reddit.....

On the other hand, read the stickies, use the search, and for fucks sake, RTFM before you ask for help.

You are either
1.) On the wrong forum.
2.) posting off topic.
3.) not trying hard enough to "self help"
4.) Ignoring the 'READ THIS FIRST" thread.
5.) Fucking retarded.

Sometimes, the problem is you. Tough love. Not trying to be an asshole, but ther sheer number of people who can't seem to follow simple directions is staggering.

Re:Leave the forum

[somenickname]

"If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, maybe you're the asshole".

Re:Non-answers

[shri]

I wish I could mod you up. :)

The problem is the people who own the site(s) and not the users. Treat your site like your living room - do not tolerate people who piss on your living room floor. Bounce them out, clean up and apologise to your other guests.

Rules for dealing with internet trolls

[taustin]

Rule #1: You cannot win.

Rule #2: The only way to not lose is to not play.

Rule #3: There is no Rule #3.

Ignore them. Any other action is encouraging them.

Re:FIRST POST!

[arglebargle_xiv]

Aggressive forum users are a sign of the failure of the moderators.

The specific behaviour the OP describes is more a sign of the type of forum they're participating in, it's, unfortunately, fairly common behaviour among geek/techie personalities. Go to a forum dealing with, say, gardening or pets or childcare and you'll very rarely see this sort of thing, the standard response there is sympathy and advice. So the best advice perhaps is to hold your nose and ignore the crap, or try posting to several different technical forums in the hope that you'll get good advice from at least one of them.

Moderation, I agree, is one way of dealing with this, e.g. Stackexchange does a pretty good job of keeping things on-topic, but sometimes you just have to mentally lint-filter the crap in the hope of finding the nuggets of good advice.