What's Wrong ATS?

But Who Trolls The Trolls?

reply to post by NeoAstra

Oh there are definitely troll gangs plying their talents here as they do elsewhere, and some schemes involve a surprisingly large amount of effort. It is, after all, just another form of recreation for some folks.

While it is possible to devote a considerable amount of time playing Internet Detective and trying to track down such undertakings, in the grand scheme of things, it's usually best not to bother.

The reason is that for trolling to be successful, it must, at some level, have an effect.

The desired effect is usually disrupting topical discussion in hopes of eliciting emotional responses from people. Achieving that grants a sense of empowerment to trolls, who tend to be motivated by feelings of helplessness in real life. In a world where they feel no sense of control, Internet trolling gives them a sense of having control over something, even if in a small way.

Where trolling fails most completely is when it is ignored (i.e., Do Not Feed The Trolls or DNFTT), but since trolling is specifically intended to gain attention, expecting every member of a discussion board to ignore it would be unrealistic.

So we remove trollery where we find it (with the incredibly valuable assistance of members who ALERT posts rather than taking the bait), remove those who persist in trolling where we find them, and apply the gold standard of courtesy as impartially as we can to shut down the most common avenues for trolling.

It's hardly perfect. Some of the more clever practitioners of trollcraft and organized efforts can cause significant problems for a while, but enforcing courtesy is still the simplest and most effective way of dealing with trollery in a community that is so easy for anyone to join and participate in.

Or I could be totally wrong, of course.

One of the largest sites on the web should have more control, I agree. That's exactly why I have left management behind.

It was probably my open door policy that ruined me. Idiocracy prevails with the many, outweighing the sensible (IQ 200 vs IQ ?) Predators and imbeciles, anonymously pointing fingers or testing the Mod's, until they find a non ban-able threshold.

I just came from a retaliation thread- and I had to finally say something.