Solving the Troll Problem

[Brimacombe]

Why not require telephone verification from new members? They have to provide a phone number and answer the phone and verify that it is them to get clearance to post on the forums. What empowers these troll parasites (yes, I am aware of the redundancy) is anonymity. Strip their anonymity and they shape up fast.

Now I am sure that a lot of trolls on their "nice guy" accounts will howl everything from "Big Brother" to "censoring the web" to "invasion of privacy" to "It will kill project 1999" etc etc etc. However, I think it does not take a doctorate in psychology and sociology to determine what their actual concern is. You are not asking for fingerprints and Social Security Numbers.

International players? Make them talk to you on Skype video chat.

Don't have a cellphone? How many guys posing as girls to get flirting gifts or whatnot have protested that their mike is suddenly broken when invited to mumble?

It takes work, sure, but at some point you have to decide whether it is worth it to moderate a forum where your users are being abused psychologically, or just not worth the effort, and too bad for them.

I won't play the troll's game of: "If you say something I win because you got mad, and if you don't you are now my bitch." Trolls are the paste we pick out from between the cleats of our boots and everyone knows it. Make them show a face to post. Make them powerless, like they deserve to be.

-Brimacombe

(I apologize for the double post, but I wanted this to have visibility. Thanks for your patience.)

[bizzum]

Why not just disallow the posting of images until you have a post count of 100, how many people post images in the first place anyhow.

[Brimacombe]

Then you give the troll the power to prevent a whole forum community from posting pictures for however long. Spiders could also be used to artificially inflate the post count.

-Brimacombe

[Brimacombe]

The directors of The WELL have included Matthew McClure and Cliff Figallo, both veterans of the 1970s commune called The Farm, and since 1998, Gail Ann Williams, previously known as one of the principals in the political satire group the Plutonium Players. Collaboration, counterpoint and irreverence are respected values in the WELL community, nurtured by these unusual leaders over two decades.

The community forums, known as Conferences, are supervised by conference hosts who guide conversations and may enforce conference rules on civility and/or appropriateness. Initially all hosts were selected by staff members. In 1995, Gail Williams changed the policies to enable user-created forums. Participants at the Complete membership level can create their own independent personal conferences—either viewable by any WELL member or privately viewable by those members on a restricted membership list—on any subject they please with any rules they like.

Overall support and supervision of the conferencing services is handled by several staff members, often referred to collectively as confteam, the name of the UNIX user account used by staff for conference maintenance. They have more system operational powers than conference hosts, along with the additional social authority of selecting featured conference hosts and (rarely) closing accounts for abuse.

WELL members use a consistent login name when posting messages, and a non-fixed pseudonym field alongside it. The pseudonym (or pseud in WELL parlance) defaults to the user's real name, but can be changed at will and so often reflects a quotation from another user, or is an in-joke, or may be left blank. The user's real name can be easily looked-up using their login name. WELL members are not anonymous.

There is a time-honored double meaning to the WELL slogan coined by Stewart Brand, "You Own Your Own Words" or ("YOYOW"): members have both the rights to their posted words and responsibility for those words, too. (Members can also delete their posts at any time, but a placeholder indicates the former location and author of an erased or scribbled post, as well as who scribbled it.)

[Asfasfos]

Why not just disallow the posting of images until you have a post count of 100, how many people post images in the first place anyhow

+1. Smarter than the first option :)

[bizzum]

Then you give the troll the power to prevent a whole forum community from posting pictures for however long. Spiders could also be used to artificially inflate the post count.

-Brimacombe

If said person is going to put that much effort into getting their post count up to post a picture of a dick, I saw more power to them. So sad.

[Mystro]

Or... Just stay off the forums completely.. Problem solved..

[Slave]

So they could do something Byzantine and ridiculously complicated with invasive and time-intensive tomfoolery, or they could implement something simple and automatic like the 100-post image rule.

Come on man, I enjoyed the description of the forum utopia but... come on.

[Kevlar]

If said person is going to put that much effort into getting their post count up to post a picture of a dick, I saw more power to them. So sad.

Yeah, really. And if you saw someone making a bunch of one word posts it wouldn't be tough to figure out what they are up to.

Sounds like an easy solution to me without hurting the general community at all. Or they could just disable images completely, which I have seen other forums do, and hurt everyone.

[Ravager]

Would disabling images entirely really hurt the community? It seems to me most of the pics on these forums are posted for the purpose of trolling anyway.

[Hitchens]

Why not require telephone verification from new members? They have to provide a phone number and answer the phone and verify that it is them to get clearance to post on the forums.

No.

[Sickle]

User CP > Setting and options > Edit options > Thread display options > Uncheck Show images box. (can go ahead and do sigs and avatars for safe precaution)

Dont click on links to pics from people with a join date as current month and only 1-5 posts.

GG Troll

/Thread

[Brimacombe]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16765_5-ways-to-stop-trolls-from-killing-internet.html

-Brimacombe

[Autotune]

Why not just disallow the posting of images until you have a post count of 100, how many people post images in the first place anyhow.

wts forum account $400.

[Tiggles]

I endorse registering with a name and telephone

[Pico]

i fully endorse this idea im sick of it to be honest, here in our year of lord 2012 and troll is still a rampant problem

even better lets just kill black ppl

[Pico]

all im sayin is if we dont figure out a final solution to this troll problem soon p99 might end up being the rnf money scam it alrdy is

[Strifer]

sorry guys ill stop posting pictures i know how annoying it must be im awful. :(

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/when-im-sad-i-stop-being-sad-and-be-smashing-instead.jpg

[Brimacombe]

http://www.angelfire.com/space/usenet/

-Brimacombe

[Sorrow*qc]

just nuke innothule swamp. problem fixed

[bylbob]

Yeah great idea, just a little problem, who is going to do the 1000 or so phone call to check you are not a nut job?

[Diggles]

I endorse registering with a name and telephone

ninny

[Brimacombe]

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=544

-Brimacombe

[Daldaen]

I approve of the 100 posts to begin posting images Idea.

[Brimacombe]

I refuse to allow some troll to cause me to disable pictures on my account.

-Brimacombe

[Lazortag]

You can still post links to pictures if you have less than 100 posts. It doesn't seem like that big of a sacrifice, and I think it would be a great idea to implement this.

[senna]

I'm more worried about the fact that the server is a fucking ghost town.

Been gone for a month and come back and I'm amazed..

bah.

[batkiller]

I wonder if GW2 beta weekend had much impact? I've been playing it the last 11 hours straight.

[Slave]

I'm more worried about the fact that the server is a fucking ghost town.

Been gone for a month and come back and I'm amazed..

bah.

We could tell you why but that would probably warrant a ban if she's watching.