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?

Actually I quite like that.
Post isn't visible anymore but you can have a look if you want and still answer back.
I imagine that if MN wanted to still police some of it, they could (eg ungrey some answers that have been disliked but aren't offensive). It would give them time to think/investigate at least whilst everyone would know there might be something going on.

One thing I don't like is the fact that a post could get a lot of dislikes just because let's say it's unconventional or contentious (eg I don't want to vaccinate my dcs) and be hidden even though there is nothing offensive about it.
It would push the discussions toward very conventional ideas and paths which would be a shame IMO.

I think that seems to have encouraged people to be rude in a no holds barred fashion.

I agree that would be a problem Aristotle. There is already a lot of 'shouting down' of unconventional/unpopular opinions so I would imagine that they would be disliked and 'voted down' as well.

I've been looking at youbemom since 2005, pre dislike buttons, and it was always fantastically rude. When I first discovered MN, I was amazed at how polite and civilised everyone was here. The dislike thing hasn't changed anything there in that respect.

But again - it doesn't need to be, actually shouldn't be, a "dislike" link. I dislike many posts on MN but would never report them - we're talking about a way to deal with threads that we suspect have been started by trolls.

It can remain "report thread" at the top of the thread, and that's it. MNHQ decide how many reports they need to get before the thread is automatically greyed out. Thread is visible but it's a visual hint that it may not be all it seems to be. Next step is obviously MN either deleting or reinstating it.

And I did pick a particularly idiotic post to show you, it was the first one I came across with hidden posts.