Troll Control

Anyone who has spent any length of time in an online community knows about trolls: insecure teenagers looking for recognition by eliciting a reaction from community members, be it positive ("LMFAO") or negative ("fuck off"). The easiest way to draw a reaction is to incite the contempt of others, so that's exactly what they aim to do. Having this sort of person around is naturally detrimental to the tone and integrity of the community. But what can you do to get rid of them?

The obvious response is to ban them outright. Well, this one has a few problems. First, as negative reactions go, summary bans are pretty close to the top of the list and will incite the troll to offend again, both on your site and on others. Proxies do exist, after all, and trolls know this on account of having been banned from other sites before. As well, this sort of reaction is entirely arbitrary and may make other community members nervous to say things to which you may take offense. In short, they become afraid of you. Some administrators thrive on this, but really, how does that make you any different from the trolls? Just because you hold the banstick doesn't (shouldn't) mean that your own behavior in the community is beyond reproach.

Of course, the best response to a troll is to cut off their food supply. To post responses, as well as conduct overt moderation, will feed their insecurity. Instead, caution your community not to respond. If necessary, delete a few posts - other posts - so it appears that no response has been made. Again, it is a bad idea to moderate posts that are annoying but not rule-breaking. However, you may be able to find more creative alternatives. I once edited the shoutbox code on TorrentFries so that the shouts of a chronic troll would appear only to himself and me. He left of his own accord soon after. (I'm pretty sure the troll was male. To the best of my knowledge, I've never encountered a female troll.)

On larger sites, this sort of time-intensive personal response is not practical. Instead, liberally delete affected posts, or entire threads where they have become infested with the troll/response cycle. However, do not hand out warnings or even directly acknowledge the deletion and underlying reasons until rules are directly broken. "No trolling" isn't a good rule, since it is very arbitrary in definition and to acknowledge this status makes the troll feel successful as this is their goal.

However, true rule-breaking will likely happen within a few days, and you should respond swiftly at this point. By waiting until rules are broken before responding, you make it clear to the troll that they will not be dealt with in any special manner. Since they want to feel special, this will leave them unfulfilled and allow you to respond without making the situation worse.

It is possible that the troll will attempt to contact you or another staff member directly. Respond to their messages politely, formally, and cooly. Answer any questions directly and as succinctly as possible, or provide a concrete reason why responding to a particular question is not an option (privileged information and so forth). Do not make any other comments, particularly regarding the character or behavior of the troll.

Never ban a troll without sufficient cause, although you can certainly make the rules a little less tolerant where the undesirables are concerned. You cannot allow them to feel like a part of the community or they will get the idea that the staff and the staff alone hate them, leading them to return via proxy "for the sake of the community". To the contrary, if you do your job right, they will leave of their own accord after a few days and a ban will not be necessary. I have never had a troll that lasted more than 4 days.

If you stray from this path, particularly by arbitrarily banning the troll or rising to their bait, your site may end up with a poltergeist to call its own, and they will become extremely difficult to shift. One way or another, best of luck in dealing with these little shits.