So, you’ve made the subjective decision that a particular user is a troll. This user is not just an aggravated customer, an ignorant new user, or an over-passionate process evangelist; but rather a viscous and determined upsetter of the social order on your site. (For more info on identifying trolls see Part 1: UnMasking the Trolls Among Us. So, what do you do?

Well, there’s no easy answer and any true troll who really wants to mess with your site will always find a new and inventive way of doing it. So, how do we stop these hairy beasts from harassing your users and causing civil unrest? There are a few things you can do.

The general wisdom on the Internet is that you should not “feed” the trolls, and this is usually the best course of action. A true troll is only there because he’s getting a rise out of you or your users. If his (or her) antics/attacks don’t register any emotional reaction – then, he will probably move on to a site that will let him cause mayhem. This can best be demonstrated by using the old saying: “Never mud wrestle a pig, you get dirty and the pig likes it.”

What does feeding a troll mean? It usually deals with responding to the troll in kind. Getting angry or aggravated at the troll will only make him happy (like the pig in the mud). If you’ve labeled a user as a troll, you should have already contacted them several times to explain the proper norms for your site in a polite and friendly manner. If they continue to deviate from those norms, then it is best to ignore them or at the very most, send them canned responses that you have vetted for tone through a colleague.

There are, however, (at least) two instances when ignoring the troll might not be in your/the site’s best interest.

1. …If the troll posts wildly inappropriate content like porn on a kid’s site (to state the most obvious example of wildly inappropriate) or content that could mislead new users. Then, you should not ignore the troll and leave the content up, but rather remove it, isolate it, or correct it so that it cannot continue to harm other users. If the content is merely aberrant and unharmful, then it’s probably best to just leave bait where it lay and stay out of the troll’s trap.

2. …If your site is large enough or has enough turn-over that the troll could easily bait other users, particularly new users, into feeding him – you may need to take steps to prevent him from harming those users. These steps could include banning his user account or isolating his comments/posts in such a way that only he or a limited number of people could see them.

The danger here is that you may aggravate him into stepping up his efforts to disturb you. It’s also quite easy on most sites to set up new accounts under a different name/email making the account ban less effective than one might hope. Used judiciously, this can be an effective way of deterring trolls.

The long and the short of it is…you cannot always stop people from being evil. All you can do is try to protect yourself and your users and give them the best online experience you can.

For further reading, check out the Wikipedia Essay: What is a troll? which thoroughly discusses trolls from a Wikipedia editing point of view.

Related posts:

1. Things That Go Bump in the Internet: Identifying and Dealing with Trolls Part 1: UnMasking the Trolls Among Us
2. The Internet is not Anonymous
3. Facebook’s New Terms of Service: “We Own You”
4. Facebook and Grass Roots Mobilization
5. The Birds and the Bees of Online Reputation Damage Control

Tags: do not feed, protecting users, trolls
Posted in Design & Development, Off Topic, Reputation Management, Social Marketing | 2 Comments »