Can you tolerate Trolls?

Whats your thoughts on forum trolls? If I could I would vaporize every single one of them on the internet today. Spammers I can tolerate but trolls, thats a certain NO, and depending on the severity of the matter I instantly ban them. What are your thoughts on forum trolls, and what do you do about them?

 

Trolls are almost always referred to as those annoying people that harm your site and members by breeding hate or something similar. On my forum we have a different breed of troll. I call them LOL Trolls. They don't breed hate or harm members. They simply make crude jokes with dark humor that would generally be inappropriate but not something anyone would really be personally offended by. I know these LOL Trolls well now, they simply pull harmless pranks and hijinks for the amusement of members. Therefore, in regards to the good trolls (oxymoron?), I appreciate the humor they bring to my community. Now, if we're talking about the real trolls, off course I'd have them obliterated. My LOL Trolls never break any rules, mind you, I've set some good rules to boot. Spammers I'd obliterate too. I hate looking at my board and observe a 46% spam post rate. It all stays in the spam forum but when almost half of your activity are your members kicking back in the spam forum... it's a bit discouraging. But yes, I ban spammers on sight as well as the "regular" trolls. The spammers I've had to ban thus far were humans promoting their website aggressively across the forum. I could tell they had no interest in the community and therefore didn't deserve a warning. I hope this has shed some light that not all trolls are bad.

 

Haha nice name, im fond of LOL Trolls, I always like a good laugh.

 

NO. In fact i got banned from a forum after watching 2 weeks of relentless trolling of various members there and then speaking out against it (the trolls were mods and admins). I was in the middle of making a goodbye post after I told them I was leaving when they thought "LOL no we cant have our members leave we have to act tough like we kicked them out" and banned me. The immaturity of staff on some forums really gets under my skin.

 

This was one of the main factors that led me to create my own site. Nothing is more irritating than immature and incompetent staff.

 

I agree, I hate staff members like that who abuse their powers.

 

Patience is a virtue, there was one floating about here regarding SMF bashing everyone's opinions, but I believe he has now left the building as I gave him a firm warning to keep his comments constructive, etc.

 

Sad little Troll, lol how could I miss it? I guessing it was around my leave lol.

 

He appeared just before you left, and kept coming back after you went on leave

 

lol Ashley

 

Yea, I scared him away

 

Haha yea right, he knew I was coming back and got really scared and left

 

I remember that. Nothing like a classic case of someone not respecting another's opinion and thinking what he says, goes. I'd give them a straight out ban. No warnings or anything. We have too much to deal with on the forum that doesn't involve trolls I wouldn't even sit around trying to "play" with them even.

 

I see your point they can be a real pain in the bottom if you have alot to deal with, like me I have so many things to do when im on, that I dont got time for trolls.

 

Ashley.S. is pretty good at scaring these low-life people away though! In one of our newsletters I asked members how we could improve on the site, and all one member did, while he did make some good points, he mostly wasted his time by bashing us. I didn't even go for a verbal warning: I just went straight to the warning system, while Ash gave him a stern talking-to about bashing people's sites. So while he didn't get banned right off the bat, it did scare him away, so sometimes a stern lecture and use of the warning system is what's only needed to get these people to shape up. Either shape up or shut up was the name of that little game, and it was a relief when the member chose option #2. In fact, he hasn't been back since! Score One for the staff team!

 

Thanks Ashley Just an FYI, If you've seen me deal with trolls, and you've not seen me when I'm angry or annoyed, you won't like me when I'm angry

 

On XenForo, it's easy to deal with them .

But they're definitely something you gotta deal with, so the only thing you can do is thicken your skin to deal with their annoyance.

 

I can tolerate them, usually give them a run for there money.

 

Yea it is with all the features and stuff, and specially my favorite the spam cleaner... makes it easy to deal with trolls and spammers.

 

And the discouraged usergroup.