
The Taming of Comment Trolls - danw
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-04/st_thompson
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chollida1
> It was invented by Disqus, a company whose discussion software handles the
> threads at 90,000 blogs worldwide (including mine). In this paradigm, if a
> comment gets a lot of negative ratings, it goes invisible. No one can see
> it—except, crucially, the person who posted it. "So the troll just thinks
> that everyone has learned to ignore him, and he gets discouraged and goes
> away," chuckles Disqus cofounder Daniel Ha.

This is just a lack of fact checking. This technique hsa been in use for many
years now.

I've used it on my discussion groups since 2001/2002, I can't remember the
exact year. Joel of Joel on software describes a similar technique that he
uses.

~~~
smhinsey
I'm not sure when it was introduced but I understand that reddit does this as
well. It's a pretty clever idea, but it really hasn't helped much there so
far.

~~~
whughes
Reddit isn't very strict with its moderation, unlike HN. My understanding is
that reddit attempts to only block out-and-out spam / crapflooding / malicious
links. There are ways to circumvent it or at least check to see if you've been
banned as well, so it's not a perfect defense against a tenacious troll.

~~~
smhinsey
Good point. There is definitely a distinction of intent that is reflected in
the tenor of the two sites.

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quoderat
Too bad it cites as some sort of authority Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who in my
view only tends to disemvowel those who disagree with her or question her in
some way.

And no, I have never been disemvowelled by her or anyone else, for that matter
-- but I did stop going to boingboing after her reign over there began.

~~~
jongraehl
I think her moderation is fabulous.

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TallGuyShort
On a forum I help run, we tried the method of hiding a person comments from
everybody but themselves (we only did it once for a particularly troublesome
member). It was completely effective. After a couple of weeks you could tell
from their comments that they really felt left out, but didn't realize what
was going on. They kept trying anything for attention and eventually went
away.

~~~
scorxn
Couldn't they log out, check the thread, see their posts omitted, and become
as inflamed as if they're banned? Or was the entire forum private?

~~~
Harkins
They could. One workaround is to record the IP address a post came from
(generally a good idea) and keep showing it to that IP, too.

They can still ask a friend to look, but the goal here is not to be perfect
but to make any kind of improvement.

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tptacek
This whole article made sense to me until the last couple grafs, when I
thought about "censorship" and first amendment lawsuits about whitehouse.gov
and asked myself, "why is it good for us to be able to comment on
whitehouse.gov"? Don't we already have enough forums for this discussion?

~~~
jgilliam
I don't see why whitehouse.gov shouldn't be allowed to delete comments within
a specific defined set of published rules. If you're in a courthouse, and
start hurling obscenities at the judge, or do anything "out of order", you can
actually get thrown in jail. There are no free speech issues there, so why
can't a similar (although hopefully less draconian) set of rules apply online?

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TrevorJ
This seems pretty effective. Giving the trolls what they want (or the illusion
thereof). But insulating them from people who don't want to have to hear it.

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blhack
I'm surprised that hacker news didn't get mentioned (okay, I'm glad they
didn't mention it).

IMHO, this moderation system is the best (or maybe a close tie with
slashdot)...trolly posts don't disappear, they just get lighter and lighter
until they all-but disappear. All it takes after that is a highlight and you
can read it.

~~~
dhs
I like that feature a lot, but I'm sometimes tempted to do CTR-A, just to see
what others have "censored". Must...resist...

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steerpike
I think the main problem I have with this article and the entire way of
thinking is the incredibly poor definition of a troll.

From their descriptions of a troll's comments, they make it seem like trolls
are easy to spot and moderate when real trolls are often anything but.

The main focus of a troll is an attempt to game other human beings. That
doesn't have anything to do with swearing or abusive language and it sure as
hell isn't easy to spot.

Frankly, from the techniques described in the article, I think the only one
that has a hope in hell of working against real trolls is the slashdot one.
All the others are just casting a net over foul language and blatant
stupidity.

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henryprecheur
It's mostly clever way of doing manual moderation. No matter what you try, it
all comes down to a guy reading another guy's post and moderating it. Nothing
has really changed for 20 years.

You might be interesting by this article on Edward Tufte's forum, a lot of
good principles based on years of experience:

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0000fT)

------
cubicle67
All this needs to make it perfect is a bot that occasionally replies to the
troll.

Something like:

Troll - M$ is teh suxxor

Bot - no you [anti-compliment], you suxxor moar!!!

