patrick.net

Splendid idea

Also, when someone does have a post deleted, either don't show it at all, or at least don't show it to people who have already banned the offending user.

It's bad enough that I have to see Cloud's posts when someone takes the troll bait, but the clutter of seeing "Cloud's post was deleted" serves no purpose (for me, at least) and just gets in the way of the thread. I'd rather not see any of it. Trolls lose power when they become invisible...all the way invisible is better than usually invisible.

swebb says

It's bad enough that I have to see Cloud's posts when someone takes the troll bait, but the clutter of seeing "Cloud's post was deleted" serves no purpose (for me, at least) and just gets in the way of the thread.

Actually that was me. I wholeheartedly believe in transparency, so I could not bring myself to delete a post without transparently acknowledging to the community that I delete it, who it was from, and why it was deleted. It's a way of preventing the power of being a moderator from being abused.

Personally, I'd be in favor of a "soft" delete for postings. In a hard delete, you actually delete the record from the database and it's gone. In a soft delete, you just mark the record as deleted either by placing a flag (IsDeleted boolean field or DeletedDate DateTime field) or by moving the record to a different table, say from UserPost to UserPostDeleted.

The advantages of the soft delete is that you still have the record, thus leaving a trail, and you can undelete it if necessary. The disadvantage is that for the flag method, it makes your queries more complicated, and for the moving method, you have an additional table for every table in which you want to support soft deletion.

Anyway, I could just delete Cloud's posts without putting in that acknowledgement. I can see how it might be distracting still, but I just wanted everything to be on the up and up. I wouldn't want to risk crossing the line between deleting trolling posts and censoring content I don't like.

Ahh, I see. I appreciate the transparency...but I also appreciate Cloud just being invisible. In the recent thread where you had to delete 3 posts in rapid succession, it made the thread more about deleted posts than about the actual thread.

Trolls are a pain...there has to be a better way. Maybe anyone the moderator has ignored doesn't get to post at all. You know, 0 strikes and you're out. :)

swebb says

Ahh, I see. I appreciate the transparency...but I also appreciate Cloud just being invisible.

Can't argue with that.

3 months seems a long time without any appeal available to Troll. I've never liked zero tolerance rules, so 3 strikes is better than 0 or 1. Is the troll notified that his post was deleted and how many strikes he has left?

Just my 2 cents...

chemechie says

3 months seems a long time without any appeal available to Troll.

Perhaps, but the restriction is only on threads moderated by M. The troll can still post on other threads. Appeals of course can be made directly to Patrick if he's willing to spend his time doing this.

On the other hand, three months seems to be the shortest time necessary to make the troll reconsider his actions.

And as cloud just demonstrated, it's necessary to keep the troll from spamming a thread.

Just deal with them on an ad hoc basis. Any set rules just attact circumvention.

Remember MarinaPrime?

Liberals you're doing it wrong.
I thought you guys were the champions of Freedoms of speech?
It has been the Liberals championing "Freedom of Speech" That there's not a Child in America over the age of 9, that doesn't know what Pimp and Hoes actually do for a living, and much much much more. Thanks to recent pop music and movies.

But you sweat what people post in an internet forum?
When Ignore is enough, because other people might agree.

Here is an obvious prediction of what would happen to a board that operates like this - combines three strikes rule with an easy path to becoming a decision make (i.e. a moderator)

A multi-partisan core will be unstable and will gravitate towards stability - a highly partisan core. All alternative points of view will be suppressed, their carriers - banned. Very quickly, such a board will turn into a circle jerk.

"But I'm not like that. I would not ban people for their views" Don't worry, someone else will.

Today, forum on patrick.net is just left-leaning. With those rules, it will very quickly become a full scale liberal circle jerk.

Having said that. Dan8267, what posts specifically disturb you enough to raise this as an issue?

CaptainShuddup says

Liberals you're doing it wrong.
I thought you guys were the champions of Freedoms of speech?

Dan8267 says

I do make it a point not to delete based on anything but trolling. Even the most offensive bigoted rants, outright lies, or controversial positions would not get deleted by me. So far, the only things I can see that merit deletion are

- threats of violence
- trolling
- posting of someone else's personal info without consent
- something that's highly illegal

Dan8267 says

You are free to express controversial opinions, even encourage to do so. You are free to make up bullshit facts and get called on them, although discouraged to do so. You are not free to be an asshole to anyone. If you don't like that, tough shit.

You can, of course, call out a person on bullshit if you think the person's argument is disingenuous or based on falsehoods. You can also attack any argument and advocate any political philosophy including drowning puppies in rivers. But you don't get to troll.

CaptainShuddup, does that address you concerns?

Damn! I may have missed it.

Patrick,

Is there a rule that I'm required to respond to what I feel is a troll comment. Maybe you could post "Troll Responder" under my name when I'm stupid enough to respond. Or maybe better yet, I could read the comment, not respond & move on. I'm not sure I am that mature.

Oops, sorry I didn't see this thread till now.

I've been working on a moderation system of my own, recursively weighting users by likes and dislikes, with me as the initiator of the recursion. It's kind hard to explain, but the net result is that if users with lots of likes from well-liked people dislike a comment, then it goes into moderation, where I'll probably delete it.

but the net result is that if users with lots of likes from well-liked people dislike a comment, then it goes into moderation, where I'll probably delete it.

Ah, good old graph theory. Kind of like Google's page rank algorithm.

It is also very important not to copy and paste entire passages from another source without permission.

Maybe the key is to get more people to ignore the trolls. It's frustrating to me when people keep taking the bait. If no one responds to the troll, the problem goes away.

Hare brained idea #1: Make the "Ignore" link more prominent (larger, different color?) the more people have ignored a given user. Maybe after 5 people are ignoring someone, put the ignore link at the bottom of their post, in 32 point font. Or say "7 people have chosen to ignore this users posts, do you wish to do the same?"

For me, I am happy with the "likes"/"dislikes", the ability to ignore and the "trollishness" rating. That already is far better than many other sites have.

GameOver says

As soon as the "Premium Members" seized power, they quickly took advantage of the opportunity to stifle their enemies abilities to participate in the forums.

Not true.

You can start your own threads and no one can delete them or moderate comments on them but me.

And you can easily become a Premium Member yourself, but you choose not to.

swebb says

Maybe the key is to get more people to ignore the trolls.

Trolls don't stop trolling when they are ignored any more than rapists stop raping when they are ignored. To get rid of trolls you must make sure they have no platform from which to speak. Unfortunate, but true. Twenty years of ignoring trolls have not made them go away.

Peter P says

It is also very important not to copy and paste entire passages from another source without permission.

True, but that's better handled by asking the person to just blockquote small parts and link to the source rather than deleting the whole post.

I'm more concerned about trolls cyberstalking. There's a difference between trying to convey an idea, which is free speech and shouldn't be censored, and stalking a person online, which is not a free speech issue and should not be tolerated.

I don't care how much you hate a stranger you've never met, you don't get to even attempt to harass them.

Dan8267 says

Trolls don't stop trolling when they are ignored any more than rapists stop raping when they are ignored. To get rid of trolls you must make sure they have no platform from which to speak. Unfortunate, but true. Twenty years of ignoring trolls have not made them go away.

If a Troll burps under the bridge and nobody is there to hear it, then did the Troll eat a Subway 5 dollah foot long at all?

Dan8267 says

I'm more concerned about trolls cyberstalking. There's a difference between trying to convey an idea, which is free speech and shouldn't be censored, and stalking a person online, which is not a free speech issue and should not be tolerated.

I agree 100%, you can choose to agree or disagree, even make an argument that other may not connect the pieces to. But following that person around and just digging on that person like you've got an axe to grind is unacceptable. Calling them names just makes it worse.

But calling people a Troll just because their view conflicts with yours is a stretch.

Example I said "Paul Ryan is this generations John Kennedy".
Now if the only impetus I had in making that comment was to upset the Liberals then you could label me a troll I suppose.

Especially had Obama actually conducted his term in accordance to those expectations that was bestowed on him by the Liberal media that were trying to build him up more than he really is. I.E. to get the kids out to vote for him, and make them feel like they were part of some greater good destined for History. When the truth was Obama has NOT been this generations JFK and nothing like it. It was baseless to call him that then, just as it was to award him the NPP, just as much as it was for me to say Paul Ryan is this generation JFK.

How ever! Paul Ryan is no less deserving of that distinction than Obama was 4 years ago or now for that matter.

I always liked this forum because of the very limited moderation that took place. Once the forum starts to establish "rules" and little policemen that enforce these "rules" a forum just becomes more about the rules than it does the substance of conversation.

And you can't possibly tell me that in a heated debate, someone with a different political view than yours will truely be moderated the same way by all these little policemen.

The ignore feature is more than ample. The like/dislike feature can be abused by anyone that disagrees with your opinion. Just look at the articles on the front page, there are more liberals on this site and thus the pro-liberal articles always seem to hit the top spots while the pro-conservative articles struggle to make the first page.

Rent4Ever says

I always liked this forum because of the very limited moderation that took place.

I will be redundant of my favorite Irish saying;
"If there is a government here, I am aganit."
Understanding some rules are beneficial to a civil community, too many rules becomes an Oligarchy !
We need to understand troll mentality. Maybe your little sister poked you and prodded you for one purpose.(irritate you)
If the author's (troll's) intentions are immature, don't most readers pick up on that and place that info in the Dr. Suess section of their brain ?

Peter P says

It is also very important not to copy and paste entire passages from another source without permission.

Its not that important. What are we in danger of, some interweb blogger with seven viewers getting all worked up that someone cut and pasted their bloggings, on another blog? Surely we already have plenty of very important laws and lawyers in place to protect us from those dangers

Short passages for public discussion purposes are explicitly protected by the "fair use" exceptions to copyright.

What's "short" is a matter of judgement, but if it's for discussion and not part of another copyrighted work, I think it's OK to quote other sources.

www.copyright.gov has this:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

The rule of thumb I've heard is 250 words or less - is that a reasonable starting place for discussion?