Trolling

Mister Sifter

What is boards.ie's policy on trolling?

Gordon

What kind of trolling?

Mister Sifter

If every post a user makes is aimed at getting a reaction?

Gordon

What kind of reaction? What forum/s?

Mister Sifter

Posts aimed at getting other posters backs up. The golf forum.

Gordon wrote: »

What kind of reaction? What forum/s?

copacetic

Conno16 is the poster in question Gordon, on the golf forum.

A number of regular posters are very unhappy at his contributions, he has had a number of bans but doesn't generally do more than annoy people with inane comments. Graeme received an infraction today for abuse toward Conno16 and while not disputing the infraction feels that the moderation of Conno16 leaves a lot to be desired. I advised him to go to the helpdesk if he needed to further his questioning of the moderation.

Please feel free to correct any of the above Graeme.

Mister Sifter

copacetic wrote: »

Conno16 is the poster in question Gordon, on the golf forum.

A number of regular posters are very unhappy at his contributions, he has had a number of bans but doesn't generally do more than annoy people with inane comments. Graeme received an infraction today for abuse toward Conno16 and while not disputing the infraction feels that the moderation of Conno16 leaves a lot to be desired. I adviused him to go to the helpdesk as we disagreed on thie issue.

Please feel free to correct any of the above Graeme.

That's pretty much bang on.

Gordon

Then I imagine that his next ban will be longer than the last if he gets another ban.

Mister Sifter

Ok, do i take it then that there's no set it stone rules on trolling? I've looked in rules etc and have search 'trolling' but haven't really found much.

Gordon

There are various types of trolls: subsets upon subsets of trolls, it's a very wide definition these days.

sceptre

Just to confuse you completely, Politics posters who accuse others of trolling in the forum get a red card automatically from me as it's specifically addressed in the rules. This applies only to the Politics forum though.

Trolling is bad by its very nature. The trouble is that firstly it can take some time for mods to decide that a member is definitely trolling rather than just being an idiot, idiocy being annoying but not necessarily being illegal.

There aren't any site-wide rules set in stone on trolling. I don't think any forum has definite rules on trolling either. Generally though, action is taken where someone's actions are disruptive to the forum but that's down to the forum moderators (local mods as I often call them for easy identification, either way, moderators of forums). What you may consider annoying to you may not be considered a general disruption by them and that's a judgement call which they make really.

Suggestion: if you think someone is trolling, don't feed them. Do your best not to engage with them at all on-thread. Send a PM to the forum moderators or report a post and leave it to them. That will at least get the best result for you as a member.

I'm happy (and interested) to engage with anyone on the general issue of trolling and solutions to it so if you don't want your infraction or whatever considered in this thread, feel free to have a discussion with me here or by PM about it.

If you do want your infraction considered in this thread but feel like a general discussion on possible solutions to trolling, drop me a line or start a new thread bout it, here or in Feedback (to consider a general discussion about trolling rather than this specific case). I can't promise solutions unfortunately:( Trolling comes as a subset of being an ass and it's sometimes hard to quantify being an ass.

This is my view by the way, it's not an official missive form on high or anything like that.