What do you consider trolling?

[$achibelle]

Jun 3, 2011 22:01:23 GMT -8 Karcolith said:

What if the admins are the trolls?

If the admin is a troll then they do not deserve the power that they have, people [that are smart enough] will leave to find a better forum with a worthy admin who is not a troll and follows the rules of common sense and not the rules of 'owning' or 'the ways of argueing'. I mean sure i've had to kick people off of my forum by 'owning' them, that was only if they cause problems and posted inappropriate things towards me and my other members.

[Former Member]

To me trolling means deliberately starting pointless arguments with no base of fact just for the sake of self-amusement.

[SpotLover]

"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory[citation needed], extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[3] The noun troll may refer to the provocative message itself, as in: "That was an excellent troll you posted". While the word troll and its associated verb trolling are associated with Internet discourse, media attention in recent years has made such labels subjective, with trolling describing intentionally provocative actions outside of an online context. For example, mass media uses troll to describe "a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families."
Wikipedia

[sandiegomovers]

Trolling is when a person jumps into a board post just to argue for no real reason at all. Most board trollers that I know are lonely, socially unacceptable people who just want to argue with someone so that they have some type of human contact.

[shistavanenjedi]

When I was a moderator on one forum we once had this person who joined and in their first post posted a link to a myspace page in which they had used an old banner of the forum and was using the forum name on their myspace page. It was awful. The person seemed nice enough but we couldn't work out if the person was a troll or not to begin with. When the same person then posted a link to a board they'd just made using a similar forum name it was the last straw. As a moderator, it's the only time when I've really had to chastise someone and felt horrible doing it because even afterwards I still wasn't sure if it was a genuine troll or just a misunderstanding.

There have been times when people have followed users on to the forum I was a moderator on (and this was before I was a moderator) and had been causing problems for the user on blogger, etc, by copying the user's characters without asking. As the user could be a bit immature at times I often wondered later who started it but this particular incident caused upset with other users of the forum because the troll posted werid messages about other users (who also used blogger) on the forum which if read the wrong way could have offensive to the user it was directed at. In the end, we concluded that the troll had a problem distinguishing between what was "reality" and what was RPGing. So a warning there for RPGers - don't use one of your character's names as a user name because some people think that you're role playing even when you aren't.

Sometimes we got new members who posted things which could have been interperted as making fun of the forum for no apparent reason, and there have also been times when I've had people post inflamatory stuff about things I like in replies to my posts and then trying to claim that they have no idea that what they put was inflamatory - and this had happened more than once from the same person.

So this is a list of what I consider to be trolling in addition to obvious things like general nastiness and profanity.

- Impersonating a forum / Stealing graphics from forums / Using a simliar name to a forum then joining it and trying to poach members (which is what we concluded that the myspace person was trying to do).

- Bringing disuptes from other sites on to the forum. Forums that are not the scene of the original dispute are not the place to air them. It's difficult to sort this one out because you want to stand up for your users but what if it is them that started it?

- Repeatedly posting inflamatory replies to posts by the same person over a period of time.

- Making posts that appear to make fun of (in a negative way) of a forum or its members, admins and modorators.

[kristabelle89]

Oh man, I just had a NASTY troll on my site, "nilats" which as you can decipher is Stalin backwards. He sent the majority of my members these nasty PMs with really sickening images and over took the cbox using one of our names to post lude comments. I'm really disgusted and I hope there is something that we can do to once and for all get rid of trolls.

[Snakeair]

Oct 14, 2011 19:25:42 GMT -8 kristabelle89 said:

Oh man, I just had a NASTY troll on my site, "nilats" which as you can decipher is Stalin backwards. He sent the majority of my members these nasty PMs with really sickening images and over took the cbox using one of our names to post lude comments. I'm really disgusted and I hope there is something that we can do to once and for all get rid of trolls.

I'm a super moderator on a very large webmaster forum and i see trolls every single day and it never stops. The trolls use proxy IP's and automated software sometimes to send messages on different types of forum software.

All that we can do is add modifications to help weed out the trolls and also have active moderators/admin's on the forum daily. With a active moderating crew, you can help spot and remove the troll's. Eventually they will get the hint that there tactic's is not fooling the moderators and they will leave for good.

Regular members don't know how hard real moderators/admins work to keep there forum a happy place to hang out on.

[writinggirl01]

For me, trolling is someone who comes along and bashes you, your characters (if you own a RP site), or your site itself.

I just recently had someone come into my chat box on my Marvel RP site, and bash me for my characters. They would kept telling me that they all are Mary Sues, and that I should have taken the litmus test for them. I kept telling them that I did take the test when I first created them, but they kept bashing my girls just because they are OCs related to canons. I had tried to ban their IP from the chat box but they just kept coming back under a different one, just to continue to bash me.

And this all started because the guest had thought about taking up a canon character that happened to be one of my characters’ father, and they did not like the idea of said canon having a noncanon kid. I politely told them then that since the site is an alternate universe, and I allowed such characters to be created and asked that they go away. I was of course forced to hide the chat boxes (OOC and ICC) from guests, and limit registration to the forum. So now if any guests have any questions that they wish to be answered before they make up their minds about joining, they would have to post them in my FAQ board and wait for someone to respond.

Of course I had put up a little speech on my site to explain why I had hid the chat boxes, and singled that person out so perhaps others who come by to look would realize how bad of a person this guest was.

[kristabelle89]

writingirl: how do you hide chat boxes from guests?

[🎶Sossity🎶]

Oct 23, 2011 19:20:37 GMT -8 kristabelle89 said:

writingirl: how do you hide chat boxes from guests?

Hi

This not the correct board for this. Please post all such queries on the support board.

Prior to posting, anywhere on the forum, please check the local rules of that board. Additionally, also check the general rules.

Thanks

[sunshine11]

There is a new troll on a board I'm a member of. This person is calling regular members vulgar names and threatening to expose some members with information he or she supposedly found out about them. The administrators are never around any more. How can something like this be resolved.

[xxunnamedmerkxx]

Apr 29, 2009 15:46:15 GMT -8 viruszero said:

For my own descriptions, at the worst a greater troll is someone who joins a forum using false information. (Proxy/Tor IP, fake/disposeable email, obvious inflamatory name, unrealistic age... like saying they're 100-118 yrs old.) Then proceeds to harass and bother the members. When banned they quickly return and begin to harass the members again. Turning off registrations and/or setting them to admin activation only deters this troll for only a little while. And as soon as you restore the board so people can rejoin, they return and harass the members again.

At the least annoying, a lesser troll is someone who just makes a nuisance of themselves. Nitpicking at the admins/mods every action, feuding with the members for the most pointless reasons. They may exhibit excessive attitude towards others, thinking they are the best. They may become enraged or atleast annoyed if you express a remotely different opinion from theirs. But they toe the line of the acceptable rules, so they know when to back off so they don't draw the fire of the mods or admins. These trolls typically don't use techniques to hide their identities, instead they rely on not crossing the rules too much or too far.

Then between the two is the troll who toes the line sometimes, but others brazenly confronts the members or admins. This troll may or may not use a proxy/tor/anonymizer to hide their identity. But they are less concerned with not crossing the rules as the lesser troll but they don't normally go out of their way to cross rules like the greater troll.

As for what to do about it, I simply just ban the greater trolls. The others get a warning the first time, depending upon what they did... if they did something ToS offensive then they're gone, zero warnings at all.

Now as for the reasoning behind the punishments... a greater troll knows consciously they're doing it. There is no denying this, so they're normally more harmful on a community thus they're best sent packing ASAP. The lesser troll might not realize what they are doing, so they're given the benefit of a doubt with a warning. The mid level troll probably knows what they're doing, but it is always best to play it safe and give them the benefit of a doubt as well. Plus it gives them a chance to reform and quit the disruptions. It might send a message that we don't tolerate your abuse, so wise up. (Though this can work both ways for a troll... they might reform or they might take it as a challenge to do as much damage as they can.)

i would agree with this because i have used a proxy and I have trolled sites with said proxy then it became annoying to myself and i quit doing now i just ban people over and over again because

• its fun
  
• i think its fun to ban them
  
• and it livens up a forum abit
  

[sunshine11]

Thanks! That takes it all in! Our troll is not around lately so he may have had his fun and left. Most members have a pretty good idea who this person is.

[Megamind2012]

Apr 29, 2009 10:39:14 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

When you are on the internet, you run into various types of people from around the world. Some people are very friendly, while some are not. To the latter, the most common term applied to them is "troll."

As a staff member, how do you determine "trolling? What are your different levels of it? How does your forum handle "trolls?" Are there stipulations in your rules in regards to "trolling?" Why or why not?


Submitted by HoudiniDerek

I've had to deal with what i believe to be the worse of the worst Troll from the old MSN board that have all navigated to the Proboards now.

Yes there are some good MSN people back in the day when MSN was fun to post on, but the Trolls there had taken over and MSN had no other option but shut down the boards there where people were constantly cloning other people's id's and pretending to be someone they weren't.

Right now, I know a group pf these trolls on the Proboards that have attacked and ruined my 1st board and now working on trying to ruin my second board as well.

They came to my board and emailed other members things about me and spammed them via emails, so when I did it to their board, mine was shut down, but theirs was allowed to say up.

I've even seen other boards where they bash me all the time, I have reported it and they still have it up and going on their boards.

What can one do when people have their faves on the net and Troll the boards and the Proboards now.

My first board was doing great until the trolls from another board came in and began sending spamming emails telling people I am stealing their ip addresses and emails.

This should not be allowed to happen on the Proboards, but it happens all the time.

[xstardustx]

I have had so much trolling happen on my website that now I put an image on my chatbox side bar with the number one rule"Do not feed the trolls" with a little troll dude next to the text.
To me there are two kinds of trolling
Pranking
and just plain annoying

To me trolling takes place in the cbox mostly normally with guests posting random stuff in the cbox or spamming if you will, impersonating a staff member saying their account was hacked or whatevers to get promoted again, stuff like that.

2.)Starting pointless arguements. We all see it, it happens everywhere. It just progressivly gets worse.

3.)Joining under hundreds of accounts to spam a site so when one gets banned they can just log on. IP adresses nowdays mean nothing you can go to a website for free and get a fake one.

How to deal with it, the best thing for me is I ignore it. Plain and simple. There isn't much you can do to prevent it really. I guess when it comes to the cbox put in the code that makes it so guests can't see your c-box? That's the only suggestion.

The other half of trolls would be an example in my case. The staff on my sites have been my friends since the begining of time and get along very well. We have been staff together and it all began on this one site. Well we admins have the power to modify profiles we prank each other by posting random things and what not just for fun.

So trolling can either be annoying and a pain in the rear to deal with or harmless :/