I've really been getting turned off by the sheer amount of venom in the forums lately, and I've been thinking about how to deal with it. There's always the "ignore" option in the control panel, but that seems a bit unilateral and unforgiving.
So I suggest the following: add a button to the user interface that allows users to mark a poster as a "troll". In our control panels we have an option to ignore posts from people with X troll counters over the past Y days/weeks/months where X and Y are user selectable.
I'd suggest placing the "troll" button similarly to the "Report Post" button, or as part of the drop down from the posters name. These "troll counters" are accumulated and sorted by who pushed the button and when they pushed it. So if I'm pushing the troll button on every post by a particular poster, it only shows as one counter but is timestamped with the most recent push.
We'd be able to see how many troll counters we have, but not who placed them. Showing who placed them is just asking for petty wars. No doubt the more belligerent will comment on their use of the button in the thread anyway...
A method like this gives the community a way to shun someone who behaves badly, but allows for rehabilitation. It also chooses a community standard over individual taste-- someone may be driving me mad, but if they're only bothering me then maybe I should be more open to what they're saying.
And it allows users to select their tolerance level-- some people won't use the troll blocker at all because they want to hear the full cacophony, others will set their filter to a small number of troll counters because they really just want to avoid all the controversies. We'll probably have to keep playing with X and Y to figure out what the right balance is given that some people are going to mark everything they disagree with as "troll" and some people will use it more sparingly.
On some of these threads it will appear that there aren't any posters at all! Maybe there should be a thread level option to disregard our settings so we can plow through the muck if we choose to.
So I suggest the following: add a button to the user interface that allows users to mark a poster as a "troll". In our control panels we have an option to ignore posts from people with X troll counters over the past Y days/weeks/months where X and Y are user selectable.
I'd suggest placing the "troll" button similarly to the "Report Post" button, or as part of the drop down from the posters name. These "troll counters" are accumulated and sorted by who pushed the button and when they pushed it. So if I'm pushing the troll button on every post by a particular poster, it only shows as one counter but is timestamped with the most recent push.
We'd be able to see how many troll counters we have, but not who placed them. Showing who placed them is just asking for petty wars. No doubt the more belligerent will comment on their use of the button in the thread anyway...
A method like this gives the community a way to shun someone who behaves badly, but allows for rehabilitation. It also chooses a community standard over individual taste-- someone may be driving me mad, but if they're only bothering me then maybe I should be more open to what they're saying.
And it allows users to select their tolerance level-- some people won't use the troll blocker at all because they want to hear the full cacophony, others will set their filter to a small number of troll counters because they really just want to avoid all the controversies. We'll probably have to keep playing with X and Y to figure out what the right balance is given that some people are going to mark everything they disagree with as "troll" and some people will use it more sparingly.
On some of these threads it will appear that there aren't any posters at all! Maybe there should be a thread level option to disregard our settings so we can plow through the muck if we choose to.
