On calling “troll”: I can’t speak for the Pit moderators, but I can tell you why we have that rule. Basically, we do want to moderate these boards and to kick out people whose sole purpose is trolling. For example, the spammer who posts something inflamatory or racist, the kid who wants to watch burning threads, and similar people who are really not interested in our boards or in becoming part of our community.
When we used to allow the accusation of “troll” to be raised, in public, against everyone, it made the moderating job harder. Just because you disagree with someone, doesn’t mean that they’re a troll. Just because someone says something that sparks high emotional response doesn’t mean that they’re trolling. We basically want to limit the use of the word “troll” to mean people who have no other purpose than trolling; a long-time poster in good standing is NOT a troll, just because they say something that riles you.
So, by setting a definition and standard, we want our posters to REPORT suspected trolls, not to just use the word as a taunt.
It’s kind of like, if you go around calling everyone a Nazi, you cheapen the word. So, that’s why we’ve had the rule: we want to remove trolls from our boards.
But you’re fine with leaving the Nazis??!!?11
tsk tsk tsk; I thought the SDMB was better than that…
Otherwise, I do have one really minor nitpick. (Which oughtta say that I think it’s a good rewrite, if I only have one tiny nitpick.)
All of the bolded statements are actual rules, except for “Pitting other posters.” I think that the rule is “Include links so we know wtf you’re talking about.” (or something…) Maybe “Be clear; include relavent links.” ?
I hate this rule too; there are many cases in which something appears to be a troll, and the possibility can’t be discussed - you have the choice between engaging with them as though they were serious, or ignoring the thread. It’s basically a rule that says, “Do not interfere with a troll’s ability to play everyone on the board.” You can’t even call them on it - and the mods generally want absolute assurance that something’s trolling before they close it (which is fair enough) but I think we ought to be able to bring the matter up even if it can’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The rule just means that time after time, people start troll threads and no one can do anything about it, so long as they manage not to be absolutely transparent about it. The rule ensures they get exactly what they want - a big reaction - because no one is allowed to dismiss them the way they deserve.
Have you gotten into the habit of Reporting the Posts that look like trolls, I have. I will report the post and not reply to what I think is a trolling attempt. As long as I spend as much time here as I do, I might as well make myself slightly useful.
Right. Which means that they’re going to get pages and pages of serious responses. Um, did you miss the part where I explained why I see that as a problem? Honestly, this “just ignore it” shit is getting seriously annoying. Stop your kneejerk jump to the same goddamn suggestion and read what I actually wrote.
The logician in me must point out what has long bothered me about the “don’t wish death on somebody” rule - you never know if a RL person is also a poster here.
I’m sorry I still can’t see why it’s taboo. I can’t see how it makes moderating harder either, surely now you get many more reported posts because people can’t just post ‘DNFTT’.
Your post makes it seem like it’s just the word ‘troll’ (and implication of it) that’s bad, so the following would be ‘bad’ posts :
So would the following be bad ?
If the latter ones aren’t against the rules (and I don’t think they should be) then you’re just banning the word which seems fairly pointless.
I can’t call another poster a troll, because I could be wrong and it cheapens the word? It’s a perfectly good word, with a well defined (and understood) meaning. If people use it wrongly they’ll be called on it as with any other word that’s badly misused (for example using Nazi, or comparisons to rape provoke pretty strong reactions). There are other word and expressions with similar problems that aren’t banned (liar, for example).
Someone is or is not trolling, that fact doesn’t change just because I call them a troll.
And, yes, we shouldn’t feed the trolls – ignore and report – but it’s clear that we don’t all the time. The rule isn’t “Don’t feed the trolls” so that’s mostly irrelevant to my point anyway.
Respectfully, I think the community is mature enough to be able to use the word troll in reference to another poster.
Listen, folks, this is a new millennium and you cannot - CANNOT - go around the boards calling people “troll” anymore.
They are “underpass-residing peoples of questionable virtue.”
Really, though, it seems to me simply reporting “trollery” to a mod and waiting to see what - if anything - happens creates something of a communications gap between members. If the mods are the only ones who hear complaints of this nature the members themselves will lose their ability to to confront the offenders.
Sure, we can “write to our congressman,” but we no longer have the “Right to Assemble”?
A bit dramatic, sure, but I think the analogy fits. So long as we are adults about it, don’t get offensive ourselves, and don’t create pile-ons, I believe we need to maintain the ability to call out a troll so our community keeps its flavor and forms the bonds that hold us to the lofty standards we set for ourselves.
All that being said, I don’t feel this is an issue of truly great importance, but every little step toward censorship - even to avoid confrontations - gets me in a bad way. Especially when it involves my ability to communicate with respected friends in a medium I have to pay for to participate in.
If someone trolls on our boards, notify a mod and then give’em what-for. Don’t just sit and glare, remind our members why we don’t tolerate people who don’t want to contribute.
Trolls may seek to cause disension and take up time and bandwidth, but they also polarize our community against that kind of behavior.
[Steps off soapbox, looks around, runs down alley.]
Yep, you can accuse someone of lying, of being deliberately obtuse, or of trying to get a rise out of people. Focus on a poster’s current behavior and not your beliefs about their underlying motivation and goals.
Personally, I don’t like the rule much, either, as it leads to occasionally having to warn someone for pointing out that the sky is blue. However, the mods who were mods before it went into effect are all pretty unanimous on its utility in shutting down the junior mods and self-appointed troll hunters, and I defer to their far greater experience. Plus, I do think the umpteen DNFTT posts that inevitably result without such a rule end up calling a lot more attention to a troll than the way things are now, which is definitely a bonus.
IIRC, Giraffe started a thread a few months ago asking if we thought that rule should be suspended in the Pit. General consensus was that it should remain as is.
Here are my opinions- 1. I don’t think you should be allowed to flame other posters. I know it’s a long standing tradition here, but it’s a bad one. I post in many other boards without this option, and things seem more civilized. I have also seen several posters here get banned after they 'go postal" after being PITed.
No “whooshing” in serious forums. Ok, this isn’t so much a PIT subject. But in serious forums some posters waste a lot of time and resources replying to a seemingly serious post- just to get "whoosh! " :rolleyes: in return. If that isn’t “being a jerk”, then nothing is.
I do think that “DNFTT” should be OK- however, when applied to well-established serious posters it’s a personal insult, which shoudl be handled as one… BUT I agree that better yet is not to post at all- however, if everyone is jumping in and the thread is staying near the top, then something needs to be done. Sure, reporting it is fine- but the MODs can’t be on-line 100% of the time, so some trolls get away with it for just long enough to get their troll rocks off.
OK, that’s a better way to word it. That doesn’t annoyment as much. But you have to admit it’s a pretty fine line between ‘getting a rise out of people’ and ‘trolling’.
I guess if the rule was “don’t junior mod” or “don’t call for someone elses banning” it wouldn’t annoy me so much. It’d have about the same result but without seeming so arbitrary.
If that is indeed the case, and most people are happy with the rule then I should just leave it. I don’t post much anyway and it’s never been that big a deal. It just annoyed me and since we were looking at the rules anyway I thought I might see if there was any support for kicking it.
If you’re going to use an analogy, I’d use one a bit more pedestrian. You see a crime in progress, do you call the police or deal with it yourself? Assuming, of course, that the police can, with 100% certainty, locate the person after the fact, they are identified exactly, and the crime exists in living detail to see. I don’t think the expectation should be that we are self-policing. Nobody here is going to be hurt if a troll sticks around for a few hours, and the mods even go back and delete trolling posts, so their entire trollish existance goes away.
Now, if there is evidence that the mods are unable/unwilling to effectively deal with trolls, then this concern comes to light. I’d rather see a few Pit threads on how the mods don’t take the “troll problem” seriously before we make the claim that reporting posts doesn’t work.
A more effective way to deal with trolls is to make DNFTT the standard thought process for posters. See a trolling post, report it, and don’t respond. Trolls get feeble response to the most outrageous posts, get banned in short order and the posts deleted. Doesn’t sound like fertle ground to me. Ten people responding angrily about how much of a troll the guy is will be much more fun for the average troll, almost as much fun as being taken seriously, I’m sure.
I know, I merely like to see dialogue on the boards where everyone actually agrees for once. Burning a troll together makes us a happy family.
As for DNFTT, I cannot speak as to the psychology of the average troll and why and how much they enjoy what they do, and I concur that the mods are usually pretty quick to nail’em, so I don’t see a brief troll-flaming as any big obstacle.
Of course, I’ve never had to mod, either, so I suppose my opinion is skewed by my lack of responsibilities.
I don’t really have a dog in this race but FWIW I agree with Dex’s distinction. I understand a “troll” as someone who deliberately comes onto the board just for the fun of disrupting it. The word gives me an image of some HS kid who has his friends come over and to entertain them says “watch me fuck with these people online”. A longtime poster who is part of the community and takes part in discussions in earnest, but also engages in poor debating tactics which disrupt things is different. Someone who tries to defend a stupid argument with lies because they feel backed in a corner is a dick, but not a troll.
A troll is the equivalent of a prank caller, not the guy in your circle who happens to be behaving like a dick on the phone. I wouldn’t try to engage a prank caller in debate or accuse him directly of being a prank caller. I would try to block his number or call the authorities or something like that.
IOW, I actually believe that the word “troll” is more often than not, simply used incorrectly, and is cheapened in the process.
Not trying to be snarky or sarcastic, here, but… so what? You see someone you’re sure is a troll, so you don’t respond to him. Other people, looking at the exact same post, think that he’s not a troll, and respond to him. If we were allowed to call people trolls, the only thing about this I see changing is that the threads will be even longer, because of the added hijack about wether or not the poster is really a troll. The posters who were going to respond to him are, most likely, still going to respond. Let the people who he’s worth arguing with, argue with him, unless and until the mods decide that he’s violating board rules, and bust out the ban stick.
The only actual statement there is “we’re not stupid”; the latter two clauses are not statements at all. Do you really think “we’re not stupid” is outrageous thing for Giraffe to say? Even assuming you didn’t mean an actual statement when you used the word “statement”, that’s the only part of this that a cite could conceivably be supplied for.
" :rolleyes: in return. If that isn’t “being a jerk”, then nothing is.