Moderation Policy & Trolling

Daen·4/20/2015, 6:09:34 PM·3 votes·1,269 views

Hiya! I'm curious about how trolling is viewed from a moderation perspective. There are a few users on the Boards where the vast majority of their threads are heavily downvoted for basically being spam and their comments are distinctly negative to those that choose to participate in these threads. One user in particular has been doing this for about a month, and literally hasn't offered a single constructive comment during this time period.

My question is as such: What is the moderation policy for dealing with trolling and consistent low-grade negativity? It seems strange to me that a well-meaning thread posted in the wrong place is eradicated from the platform almost immediately whereas consistently negative threads and people survive for a long time.

As a secondary question, how do you feel about the concept of downvote closing when threads reach a certain threshold?

5 Comments

Starlighte4/20/2015, 7:36:51 PM2 votes

Downvote closing is an absolute necessity in GD at the very least, and other boards should be considered for having it as well.

As to your first question Daen, I doubt very much you'll receive a response from Tamat or Pendragon, as they'd be the best people to answer the question with any real authority on the topic.

Wolfess5/13/2015, 9:47:21 PM1 votes

If I were moderating any site, I wouldn't tolerate trolling because it's instigating people into tarting a discussion or thread with a very negative attitude. Of course from just a user point of view it's slightly humorous at the beginning, and thankfully avoiding being trolled isn't all that difficult IMO, but the ones that don't know how to void it end up caught in a 'conversation' with someone who is purposely being an idiot and instigator to annoy them just to get some laughs for themselves. I personally would send a warning to anyone attempting to troll, users should be able to come enjoy the site and benefit from it same as everyone else without dealing with morons.

That aside, this is GD, the section that is "self moderated" and is the off-topic part where there doesn't really have to be any league-related content, letting people be more free in their posting. Though with self-moderation also comes tricky parts as there are still very important rules to follow but people will overlook them because they think they're free to post whatever they want in this section. The boards have to be kept friendly for all sorts of people, and as the people who own and are responsible for what people read on the board, they have to keep it as such.