HowTo:Deal with trolls
From Cyber Culture News
This article is about how to deal with trolls.
The basic tactic is "Do not feed the trolls" meaning don't respond to the trolls. However at times this is easier said than done.
Contents |
Identify
Before we start you must learn how to spot a troll. Not everyone who disagrees with you or acts like a jerk is a troll. If you use the troll label this way real trolls will figure you to be an easy target and anti-trolls won't lift a finger in your defense. Remember the boy who cried wolf and don't become the eggshell who cried troll.
A troll is someone who seeks to intentionally disrupt things. On Usenet a troll would disrupt the news group(s) by increasing the signal to noise ratio to the point that it's difficult to find relevant messages due to the noise.
Intentionally retarded
An intentionally retarded troll is someone who is presenting an irrational argument just to irritate you. This person will pretend to believe something stupid in order to draw you into a debate.
Diagnosis
If a person is presenting retarded arguments such as "the sky is purple" or "the world is flat" the person is either stupid beyond all reason, insane or a troll. In all three cases your best course of action is to delete all comments and block the user. Of course the person may not actually be a troll and may honestly believe what he is saying. It hardly matters a person who honestly believes such things is better handled by someone experienced in this brand of stupidity.
Do not
Do not engage this type of troll or call him out as a troll. This is because he may not be a troll at all and you look kinda stupid also odds are you'll have one angry nutcase on your hands.
Even if he is a troll many such trolls are skilled in throwing that back in your face. Typically a troll will confirm he is in fact a troll by bitching about you blocking him just for trolling you. I don't know why but trolls think this makes you look bad.
Tactics
Do not feed the trolls
Do not feed the troll. By that I mean don't respond directly to the troll. Don't engage the troll directly.
If necessary delete the trolls comments and perhaps block the troll. It isn't always necessary. Such as if you get 100 comments a day or something it isn't worth your time to track down the 1 troll however if you have only 1 comment a month it's a good idea to censor the trolls.
Stay away
Don't visit a trolls website, youtube channel, myspace page, BBS or anything similar the troll himself controls.
He can change the context your comments are presented. On his own BBS or website he could edit your post to say anything he likes. Anything he can't use he'll delete so nothing that makes your point will ever be seen.
Also he has home field advantage. That means the people visiting his sites are likely to side with him over anyone. He is right no matter what he says and it's up to you to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the world isn't flat. Of course if you do he'll delete it or take it out of context so your completely wasting your time.