

Ask HN on: Controlling trolling - aswanson

What do you think the best response to it is:
1) Ignore
2) Mock
3) Reason with<p>I'm leaning towards ignore.
======
Harkins
4) Delete, but still display to the troll

~~~
mattmaroon
This encourages continued bad behavior, because as far as they know, their
comments are still there for the world to see. They should see they've been
deleted, but get no reason as to why.

~~~
Harkins
Trolls and other misfits are trying to get attention, however negative.
Denying it to them is the best way to get rid of them.

It's fine if they keep posting: after a few posts of theirs are soft-deleted
like this, the moderation system should soft-delete their posts as they're
posted. Let them waste their time shouting into the void.

~~~
mattmaroon
Right on your first sentence. Denying them attention is the best way to get
rid of them. That's why you delete their posts. If you make them think you
didn't, they'll continue because they think their posts are still being read
by others.

Eventually by actually deleting them, they realize how long it takes them to
write the posts and how short a time it takes you to get rid of them and give
up.

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mattmaroon
In my experience (and I should mention, I have a LOT of it) delete and ignore.
They'll give up eventually. At some point they have to realize each attempt at
trolling takes minutes of their time to write and only a click or two for you
to delete.

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tonystubblebine
There's a "Troll Whispering" session at Web 2.0 Expo SF this year and also
some good info in the blog post we put up about it:
[http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/03/troll-
whispering-a...](http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/03/troll-whispering-
at-web2open.html)

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mixmax
ignore.

Mock and you feed the troll, reason with and you fall into his trap.

~~~
eb
too late: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162680>

~~~
Jesin
Yes, it is a blatant troll, but it's also an interesting question. As long as
a troll brings interesting discussion and not flame wars, it's not necessarily
a bad thing.

~~~
eb
Asking why someone is special is not a thoughtful question. This is a rare
case where a troll has managed to spawn coherent anecdotes. If you read over
the comments, there is no real discussion, there isn't even a topic. It's just
a bunch of biographies from people professing pg to be their personal jesus.
It reads like an infomercial.

Ignore the trolls. Start a proper discussion because topics like this get
killed, like this one just did.

~~~
Jesin
Meh. Good points. I and probably a lot of other people are probably feeling
pretty stupid right now for falling for this. I think I have a certain
combination of gullibility and skepticism that makes me a perfect target for
these things. I'm a skeptic in that I am quick to consider that someone could
be just _wrong_ , but I'm gullible in that I'm slow to consider the
possibility that someone is _lying_.

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epi0Bauqu
Usually just ignore. In some situations, however, I think it makes sense to
make one response, and then ignore. These are situations where the troll
brings up some idea you would otherwise like to comment on (and presumably
others might want to read your comment).

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inklesspen
Disemvowel.

