Trolling or freedom of expression?

[sbj]

I forgot to say. Also it makes a difference if there is an aggressor or not. So, let's say I am disrespectful. But am I because out of nowhere, or am I reacting to someone?
For example if you insulted me and my family, I would insult you back. (XF staff would remove our posts of course). You would be the aggressor here. My reaction would be just secondary resulting from your insult. So if I were an admin, I would treat the aggressor differently than the one who reacted to it. I would probably don't even warn the reacted guy, but definitely do something against the aggressor.

But it is also not a free ticket.

 

[Jon12345]

First of all, why is everything a ban for you?

It's the opposite. I don't want to ban anybody.

 

[beerForo]

You need to have a good set of rules that you can refer to for your members and your staff!

You may want to employ a cool-down period ban. Let's say 24 hours. This is beneficial to members and staff. 1) It gives your mods the ban power they seek, but also the consultation you seek (in that you can discuss a longer or permanent ban when this action is taken). And 2) Cool-downs are pretty effective for members as they don't get too upset since it is short and by the time they come back the conversation has shifted. They have also cooled down a bit, hence the name.

 

[beerForo]

I might add, this only works if you trust your mods! If they are trigger happy, you need new moderators.

 

[Jon12345]

You need to have a good set of rules that you can refer to for your members and your staff!

The recently conflict on my board arose from me taking a consultative approach within a VIP section of my forums. I presented what I considered to be a very reasonable set of rules, but the significant majority disagreed with them. I call it "Mutiny of the Mods!"

One of my founding principles is I don't want to ban anybody forever, unless they are spammers. It is a question of freedom of speech for me. If members dislike what a particularly difficult member says then I say block them. But some of these forum members say, "What if he says something bad about me in a thread? I want to defend myself."

 

[beerForo]

I had this recently. Thread was closed and the member who was attacked wanted to retort. So they replied in another thread with a screenshot of the attack post and replied there. So the person that was attacked actually got warned and they got so upset they posted it again. At this point they were unmanageable and got the cool-down ban. They came back and all was fine. So yeah. People want to defend themselves. You need to shut it down. Good rules, good mods, good systems in place.

 

[Jon12345]

We have one member who is particularly problematic. He is what I call a super-troll. Here is one members description:

In all those nearly 20 years, I've never seen anyone with the ability to upset and wind up as our friend Adam... For some reason he just knows how to push your buttons. Somebody called him a Super Troll - a fitting description I reckon. He got to me, I very nearly lost my composure on several Nay, numerous occasions. I realised I would eventually crack and say something unforgivable. That's when I knew I had to do it, I've never done it before, but I blocked him. Bliss! I could still get an idea of what he was up to because I could read other people's responses to his shenanigans. But I wasn't getting upset, and I didn't feel the need to Wade in and sort him out. I just sat and observed and wondered why people were feeding the Troll...

A large majority want to ban him permanently. I say no! You could argue he is more trouble than he is worth, I get that. Yet consider the argument of one of the mods who wants to ban him permanently. That very same mod was banned permanently from a competing forum, by arguing with the site owner. He said he didn't deserve a ban and the owner was wrong to do so. So what are we left with? A mods perspective where the forum that bans people permanently were wrong to in his case, or a forum that never bans permanently but should, and that t is right to ban if he considers it right. He does not have a monopoly on the truth.

Another point I make is that you cannot ban a person, you can only ban a username.

 

[Kirby]

Personally, I'd ban that account without getting too much heachache about that.

Ask youself whould you you gain by banning the account, and what would you loose?
What would you gain by not banning and what would you lose?
Would if cause more headache, discussions and work to ban or not to ban?

 

[Jon12345]

By banning the account, I would be going against what I believe in, core foundational principles. It would be like a vegan tucking into a live rabbit.

Or, you could say by not sticking to what you believe in, you become rudderless.

Incidentally, this super-troll is a prolific poster. He has done about 2,000 messages in 4 months! Lots of content = Google nom nom!

 

[Empty]

Either you can ban the troll or you can say goodbye to the rest of your community.

Are you going to let this guy continue to antagonize and upset the majority of other people in the community because 'he hasn't technically said anything wrong'? Your 'values' aren't as important as the community and the company you wish to keep.

 

[Jon12345]

Either you can ban the troll or you can say goodbye to the rest of your community.

I do not believe this statement.

Are you going to let this guy continue to antagonize and upset the majority of other people in the community

The majority of people never get to see his posts. There are 1.5M posts, and he has made 2K. They can block him.

because 'he hasn't technically said anything wrong'?

Do you ban members who haven't said anything wrong? Is it just about mob rule?

Your 'values' aren't as important as the community and the company you wish to keep.

Do you not have any values, and if you do have them, do you break them all the time?

 

[Empty]

Do you ban members who haven't said anything wrong? Is it just about mob rule?


Do you not have any values, and if you do have them, do you break them all the time?

I have banned members who made a significant number of people extremely uncomfortable even though none of their behavior was technically rule-breaking, yes. Rules aren't perfect and can't account for every potential scenario. Sometimes new rules have to be added. Sometimes people do things that you couldn't have imagined ever being an issue.

I have values, but when it comes to running a community I can't take only my own feelings into consideration. I personally don't believe there's any value in keeping someone excessively unpleasant around, even if they don't bother me directly. You might not be bothered but there's more than just your own values/feelings to consider.

 

[Jon12345]

Rules aren't perfect and can't account for every potential scenario. Sometimes new rules have to be added. Sometimes people do things that you couldn't have imagined ever being an issue.

I agree with this statement.

I have values, but when it comes to running a community I can't take only my own feelings into consideration. I personally don't believe there's any value in keeping someone excessively unpleasant around,

You have just contradicted yourself.

You might not be bothered but there's more than just your own values/feelings to consider.

You might not be bothered about anybody, such as those you banned, unless it suits your personal goals.

Do you believe in censoring others like they do in North Korea?

 

[Kirby]

Do you ban members who haven't said anything wrong? Is it just about mob rule?

If their behaviour, although it might still be just within the rules, bears the risk of losing a large amount of members or keeps the community in constant dispute: Yes, absolutely - I've done that a few times already.

It's hard to make such a decisions as it is against my believes but I am not going to kill a community just because I think they are wrong and I am right.

 

[Jon12345]

I understand your perspective. My view is that a person can block another persons posts if they don't like that person. If they don't block that person, and engage the troll, they become partly culpable. If you don't like whats on TV, change the channel.

 

[Jon12345]

I've just come across this: https://www.debate.org/opinions/should-trolling-be-illegal

As I suspected, it is a political position. Part of the problem is, who decides if it is trolling or not? Was it not Darwin who offended many people when he revealed his theory of evolution? Was he a troll? Do we shut him down? Is China right to police what people can say, and take action against those who say something against the government?

Lets ban Darwin from ever uttering his nonsense in public again! He is in a minority and offends the majority. Lets crush the speech of that Chinese citizen because we are the rulers and have the right to do so. Lets silence all those who do not agree with us and live in our own echo chamber. Happy days.

 

[alexm]

At the end of the day, it's your site. If you have heard the arguments but still feel this way then that's what they must do... or they must step down. You don't have to always do it that way either, you can move either way to suit, it's YOUR site.

Think of our 'system'... we have 3 owners, me - 'laissez-faire', person 2 - banned! and person 3 - 50:50... it does work though, amazingly

 

[Jon12345]

I'm a little confused by your system, but I agree with your first paragraph!

I found the whole backlash from some mods on my forum very unpleasant. I particularly dislike conflict, but I was also caught by surprise with the reaction. I think the hatred many had towards this particular troll ends up colouring judgement. You cannot be rational and impartial when you hate someone so much.

 

[alexm]

I was trying to say, with our 'system', you would think there is no chance of it working... but it does work for over 10 years now!

So as you are just one owner you could get to play all three... sometimes you can be laid back, sometimes you need to ban, sometimes it's 50:50 what you do.

I hope that makes sense, I had a stroke so sometimes my words don't mean what I am trying to say!

 

[Jon12345]

Let me get some opinion here. A forum member said this:

Member A

I've always thought you post more to get you post count up rather than having valid input into the problem.

Sometimes I wonder how old you are as you seem to respond like my daughter would have 11 years ago she's 26 now.

You've been here five mins and you already have a post count more than mine and I've been here since 2004.

It resulted in this reply:

Member B

non-believers and negative people do just what you do, mick. I'm gonna discard this thread now. oh, I wanted to ask you too....I'm not putting you down, but is that you and your daughter in your photo/avatar? if it is you don't really look happy at all. I hope that's not really true??? if you want to answer that and have me read it, you'll have to PM me. I'm gonna unsubscribe from this thread. coincidentally, or maybe not, I've known many access developers during my years of doing this work that have not been happy people, and many times during the day they're frustrated beyond belief and do not like their jobs. I hope that's not you, Mick. but I guess it's possible.

and I'm sure this is not you either, but many of them that I've known as well haven't really been that intelligent. they're good at what they do, but anything other than that, they really don't know much. but this forum is a bit different. I'm talking about real life encounters. there's a lot of older people here that are pretty wise and that I have a high regard for.

One of these members got a 3 week ban. Who should have got banned and why?