Dealing with the trolls

[margiebargie]

Lots of people reported the most recent big troll thread, but it obviously trundled on for a while regardless - I presume while you were looking into it behind the scenes. How about a system whereby if you've received a certain amount of reports, the thread is automatically "paused"/locked/hidden while you investigate?

And if a thread is revealed to have been from a troll, delete it (with the message "Yawn" or similar), and keep it up for a day or two but hide it from everyone apart from those who were posting on it (op excluded, obviously), so that they can discuss it among themselves without their discussions being public. I'm sure the trolls get a kick out of being called a sick fucker as much as from the original deception; as it's an attention-seeking phenomenon, the less attention they get, the better, no?

margie could you tell us what is the American site? I like the idea of grey I gbthings but would be interested to see how it's working.

Yes there's lots of personal hatred on MN.

And people would feel crap if their post got disliked. Not a big fan.

I was just about to start a post asking what happened to that thread as its disappeared from my Watch list. How bloody dreadful to troll about that - and she posted photos. I was convinced.

No no noooooo to likes and dislikes buttons! I love the simplistic set-up of the boards, it's so easy to read

One thing I did suggest in the past is the option to "ghost post". When you comment, you could tick a box to post it as invisible so that on the thread it would have:
Post
Post
Post

• 10 ghost posts - do you want to read these?

Post Post

Etc

That way, you could easily place mark on the thread without having to read through a million "please update us!" "Where is the OP?" "shamelessly place marking" type things. Would be good both for threads like the Victorian safe / people going on dates type threads and also suspect troll threads. If everyone is ghost posting then the troll doesn't really get as much out as the thread looks bare.

I don't understand that Queen

I wasn't thinking of the greyed out thing being triggered by multiple reports - more something that MNHQ can do from their end to show that they've received reports and are looking into it. I guess they can just lock threads but they rarely do - I guess that seems more final and the greying thing might just be more of a heads up.

I don't like the idea of like/dislike buttons and I don't like the idea of people's posts being automatically hidden because a large number have reported them. It could/would be abused.

So basically place marking but without everyone else having to read your post.

Exactly Sissy. I mean, people can still choose to read your post if they want, but they wouldn't bother given you're essentially just saying "place marking" etc

IMO one of the reasons why the idea of a thread being hidden after a number of reports is flawed is because we as posters imagine there to be high levels of reporting going on when actually the reporting is much lower than we think.

I remember a few months ago a troll being outed and MN HQ said that although numerous people were talking about their inability to act quickly etc while everyone was reporting, they had only had about ten reports about the thread, which had gone into hundreds and hundreds of posts.

I don't think that nearly as many reports are made about threads as we like to think. Perhaps MN HQ can clarify?

Also, you only have to look at this thread and the number of people who say "I thought about reporting but felt terrible/mean," to know that if a hide feature were implemented far fewer posters would report for fear they were the one whose report triggered the hide function and thus removing the OP's only source of support.

Conversely if someone posted a controversial thread more people would report to get it taken down purely because they didn't like it - iyswim.

I think more transparency from MNHQ all round would help. e.g. when you report a post, it might be useful for some feedback e.g. "You're the first to report this" or "We have received 234 reports about this and we're looking into it" so at least you'd know if you were barking up the right/wrong tree. As it is, when you report, you're a voice in the dark until the thread gets pulled and you go 'aha, I knew it!'. But still, you don't know how many others thought the same as you.

I totally deserved my deletion upthread by the way, I named a suspect thread and I'm sorry for that.

The other part of my deleted post, I still stand by - that is to suggest that we have a 'Trolls Corner' topic, where examples of notorious troll threads can be saved so that people can look and learn.

Because at the moment, all we have are threads like this (which usually get pulled) which often explain the hallmarks of a troll thread. But unless you're part of a troll thread to see it unfolding, or you have long experience of these things, there's no way of learning. So newbies get sucked in. Time and time again.

I remember a horrible one a while back, where one poster was totally giving too much of herself, over investing and over sharing. It was painful to watch. A few people tried to warn her on the thread, and got shot down in flames. It would have been really useful to maybe just point that poster towards one of the many other very similar troll threads that had gone before, and say 'Hey, look, this thread is very similar to these ones - make your own mind up'.

Because I think some people are naive and can't believe anyone would be so callous as to troll about some of these emotive issues, and so refuse to believe it. A 'Troll topic' - perhaps with names removed so we're not victimizing any particular poster - would show those naive posters that people can indeed stoop so low, and regularly do.

Having a troll corner is a terrible idea. It's sort of like putting them in to the hall of fame or classics.

It would easily be the most interesting place on the forum. Who wants to read yet another thread about parking or breastfeeding if there is a juicy offensive thread with plenty of bun fighting on it?

I'm a bit reluctant to say this, but there is a certain entertainment value in the trolls and reporting them. A bit like some weird bird spotting game. That's not condoning them or wanting them to stay, but lots of troll threads run to umpteen pages and fill up the forums nicely.

UnGoogleable I've had replies when I've reported saying 'we've had a few reports about this one' or 'we've been looking at it but haven't found anything so far'. Maybe it varies depending on who from the HQ team replies?

In one of these instances, the thread is still running on like wildfire , so it may be thatthreads can look dodgy as anything but there's no outright proof. Still worth reporting.

I didn't actually mean a "dislike" button, I was just talking about the principle of it. Even if it's that the report system stays, but after say 10 reports, the thread is greyed out, or there's a warning flag at the top.

Everything that relies on humans, on people understanding better the principle of not investing too much, in whatever way, of people "learning" how to spot a troll etc. etc., is pointless. Even if they do learn, there will always be new people coming up behind them who have no idea.

Basically the way it's going, everything's going to stay exactly the same. There will continue to be trolling, lots of people will continue to get sucked in and then be devastated when the threads are deleted, and there will be endless de-briefing threads like this one. But nothing will change.

Yeah maybe people will never learn. I just find it painful to watch people getting sucked in and over invested. I feel so sorry for them having their goodwill abused.

But yeah, sometimes a good troll-tastic thread can be entertaining. As long as it's not too harrowing a subject.

Yes the "entertaining" ones aren't the ones with children, babies or other tragic circumstances. I was thinking more about the obvious and ridiculous troll threads. I should probably have said that in my post.

What about a score out of 10 for each thread, 10 being what you think is a definite troll. Each poster can vote once on each thread but only MNHQ can see the results.

Once the thread has been up longer than a set amount of time or has received a set amount of votes then MNHQ can look at the scoring to see how people are feeling about the thread. This may make more people get involved than actually reporting a thread.

AristotleTheGreat www.youbemom.com/ - Here's a thread with some disliked posts:
www.youbemom.com/forum/permalink/8581685/my-secret-to-maintaining-a-size-2-is