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

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).

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

[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: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.

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.

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".