

On Trolls.  - lyime
http://parislemon.com/2009/06/on-trolls.html

======
mynameishere
The picture of a toy troll indicates to me, as does the text, that you don't
know what trolling is. Here is the appropriate metaphor.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(angling)>

~~~
pg
The word's meaning has expanded beyond the original Usenet sense.

------
froo
Personally I ignore the blatant trolls but I get more and more disheartened by
the people who are more or less two-faced.

The kind who spout vitriolic comments about people or products via their
online identity, but wouldn't have the guts to say this kind of stuff in
person.

I've noticed this a lot lately with comments aimed at Michael Arrington. Many
people love to leave anonymous persona comments about how much of an asshole
Arrington appears to be, yet I'd wager a significant portion of those wouldn't
dare say it to his face.

It really says a lot about a person who hasn't got those kinds of balls.

Disclosure #1: While I do think Michael Arrington can be over the top
sometimes, I do find him to be a fairly credible kind of guy.

Disclosure #2: I don't post anonymously, my contact details are in my profile
and I would definitely like the opportunity to tell the following people how
much I dislike them in person. Paris Hilton, Eddie Mcguire & Dick Cheney.

------
rms
Techcrunch needs to hire a dedicated community manager, like Boing Boing. The
low quality of the Techcrunch comments drag down the perceived quality of the
rest of the site.

~~~
ubernostrum
Well, to be perfectly honest, BB's "community management" hasn't been all that
great (remember when Big Brother decided that Violet Blue needed to be erased
from the interwebs?)...

~~~
rms
Yes, that was weird. I'm pretty sure the unspoken explanation had to do with
being able to get more advertisers or better relations with their advertisers
if their site had no links to pictures of naked women.

My point is that sites beyond a certain size need to have a system of
moderated comments or the comments cease to function. The individual decisions
of the moderator (and the moderator's bosses) shouldn't factor in here -- what
do you suggest as a superior alternative? Community moderation in the style of
Hacker News and reddit?

------
derefr
Would anyone be up for designing an _actual_ method to punch people in the
face (or some other equivalent action) over the Internet? And requiring that
you have it active and targeted at you in order to have your computer on? ;)

Actually, I think the most interesting method of eliminating trolling would be
to have a sort of escrow service that takes your money away if people downvote
you enough. To put it another way: establish a currency-to-Whuffie exchange.
Sort of like buying gold in WoW, except that you don't spend it on weapons to
fight monsters, but rather invest it in your own comments.

~~~
stcredzero
I think a "put your money where your mouth is" site is actually a good idea.
Have it by invite only. Make registration a pain in the butt, require credit
card, and require that people go by their real names.

~~~
olefoo
I remember seeing several sites try one or more these strategies, the only
notable success that I know of is smallworld.net which caters to a market that
used to be known as the jet set, rich, well-connected and privacy conscious
individuals who want the exclusivity.

But this (validated identity) is the sort of thing that Google, Yahoo and
Microsoft keep trying to push out the door (now joined by twitter "verified
identities"); and it keeps falling flat.

------
htsh
I am confused as to how a "tech" site such as t/c doesn't have any sort of
community comment moderation features. It makes sense to let your readers vote
down the trollish comments.

On slashdot and reddit and even on digg, if you set your comment threshold to
+5, what's left behind is pretty good conversation. On HN, trollish comments
are grayed out almost immediately. What's most disappointing is that slashdot
has had a comment karma system since '97.

Instead of complaining about the trolls, I'd prefer if they actually did
something about it.

~~~
froo
Slashdot, reddit, digg and HN are homebrewed software - TechCrunch is a
Wordpress install, a little bit of a different kettle of fish.

But regardless, I think that with a significant number of people who just
troll the comments at techcrunch, any kind voting system will just be gamed
anyway and in doing so, will dilute it's effectiveness.

~~~
slig
> TechCrunch is a Wordpress install, a little bit of a different kettle of
> fish.

Which is opensource and can be customized. TC isn't a toy blog, so they should
hire someone to work on the feature, or use 3-rd part comment system, like
Intense Debate or Disqus.

------
prodigal_erik
Maybe I took <http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html> too much to heart, but
"holds people accountable for what they say" is rather sinister. I've long
since stopped saying anything even slightly controversial without an alias.
Isn't there some way of making a reputation valuable enough to build and keep,
without tying it to my True Name and hurting my career?

~~~
billswift
<http://xkcd.com/137/>

~~~
prodigal_erik
That's stirring and all, but notice that Munroe is not in the habit of pissing
off his fans/customers (nor should he).

Me, I like having business guys drop tough problems and big checks in my lap,
and it's worth being nonthreatening to have that. Flying my freak flag just
means I'd have to be self-employed, which involves spending a lot of time not
coding.

------
jorleif
Has anyone tried using statistical filters to detect unwanted comments? If you
could get the volume of stupid comments low enough, the users could vote down
the more cleverly written trolls. Alternatively one could try to automatically
give high ranks to good comments.

