Suggestion: enforce the rule against trolling/baiting

KFCeytron·4/18/2019, 5:59:27 AM·3 votes·2,527 views

There is technically a rule against it ("Posting designed to bait conversation or falsify content." in Universal Rules), but it's rarely enforced. I've only seen it enforced once, when someone was making multiple posts per day designed to rile up everyone on Boards. I spent several hours explaining this to Boards mods before they finally conceded my point and banned that user. C.f. more minor cases that involve annoying a single person in a single thread for the purpose of inciting an argument. These are given a clear and confirmed pass by the mod team. If such posts were moderated and shut down promptly when reported, not only would the person being targeted and baited into an argument have a more enjoyable experience, they would avoid posting something out of sheer irritation that mods would then feel the need to deal with. It's a win-win. This would be especially useful because the mods are not a monolith: mods frequently disagree with decisions made by other mods, which creates inconsistency and mixed messages for us users. I guess that makes it a win-win-win, really.

Thanks for listening. :) 👋

8 Comments

Kalikain4/18/2019, 11:12:02 AM2 votes

How do you determine if someone is posting bait to bait, and they actually dont believe what theyre saying/dont know how it come across.

English is the hardest language and its hard to determine intent by just words.

ChickenWrap4/19/2019, 9:20:32 PM1 votes

... Is this a bait thread?