Dealing with trolls and spammers in forums the unique way

[Krisleen]

Trolling and spamming have been rampant nowadays and obviously, forum moderators get annoyed with this. It's either they moderate first before being published or they delete posts and ban those trolls and spammers.

I have read a thread about a unique way of dealing with trolls and spammers a few days ago. The idea is to make their posts only visible to themselves without them knowing that they are just talking to themselves. Can this be a good idea to prevent trolls and spammers from annoying and disturbing people who write decent comments as well as the moderators? What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Shannon Apple]

It's not so unique. It was a built in part of vBulletin to put a user on "global ignore." I have done it to a couple of people. All of their messages were collapsed to moderators the same as soft deleted posts. The system automatically placed the message on each of their collapsed posts "the admin has decided this user needs to be quiet for a while." You need an add-on to make this work on Xenforo, but haven't found the need to get that add-on for the Xenforo site.

We used it to combat a couple of trolls that knew how to circumvent bans and IP bans. When they realised(or thought in their case) that no one cared about their trolling and skipped over their posts, they left the site of their own accord. Trolling only works if you can get people to react negatively to you. If no one reacts, it's no fun.

I recommend using it sparilngly and as a last resort. If the user you've done it to find out what you've done, it won't work. It very rarely actually works as a form of discipline where you tell them you'll take them off if they behave. They'll just make a new account.

 

[Krisleen]

It's not so unique. It was a built in part of vBulletin to put a user on "global ignore." I have done it to a couple of people. All of their messages were collapsed to moderators the same as soft deleted posts. The system automatically placed the message on each of their collapsed posts "the admin has decided this user needs to be quiet for a while." You need an add-on to make this work on Xenforo, but haven't found the need to get that add-on for the Xenforo site.

We used it to combat a couple of trolls that knew how to circumvent bans and IP bans. When they realised(or thought in their case) that no one cared about their trolling and skipped over their posts, they left the site of their own accord. Trolling only works if you can get people to react negatively to you. If no one reacts, it's no fun.

I recommend using it sparilngly and as a last resort. If the user you've done it to find out what you've done, it won't work. It very rarely actually works as a form of discipline where you tell them you'll take them off if they behave. They'll just make a new account.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I haven't seen anyone do this until I've seen that thread. Now I know that it's just a last resort no wonder I don't see people doing this.

 

[Carlos X]

The trolling is a human problem. But spam on the other hand, is a software problem, which vBulletin still to this day hasn't worked out on its own core. That leaves the stock installation of vBulletin susceptible to spam attacks.

This why I stayed with xenForo, because the developers coded a spam mitigation "software" underneath the core.

And even if the spam comes from humans, you can IP Ban and Discourage on xenForo. That's another feature that I love. It's a feature that prevents same-IP account creation.

 

[Corzhens]

I know of one admin who tries to communicate with such pests in the forum. However, all he gets is a blank stare, so to speak. More likely the spamming is robotic so it doesn't respond to the admin's queries. With the trolls, I think it is their nature or maybe their main objective is to do the trolling so no amount of explanation is needed for them to stop. The only remedy is to block their IP so they cannot use it for another account.

 

[Shannon Apple]

@Corzhens: As my post explained above, sometimes IP blocking does not work. In those cases, one might look for some sneaky tactic to help deal with them.

Some users just have nothing better to do, honestly. It's like they have no job, no friends, nothing to do outside of the internet, so they spend their time harassing a group of websites non-stop. There is one that comes on our forum even now who admitted to trolling a whole slew of forums including ours. I don't bother to converse with her because that's what she wants. We just ban the accounts when we spot them because she has a history of harassing other users, to the point of being kinda criminal. She uses new IPs all the time too.

Sakuga city is just over a year old, and she's been hanging around our community for 3 years. That will tell you how desperate some trolls are. *shrug*

 

[Kaynil]

I am part of a community that has an interesting approach, which reminds me of school detention. people that get negative points have an assignment to show that they learned what was wrong and are committed to sticking by the rules. It sure would become annoying to have to do those silly activities over and over just to stay in the community or get your limitations back.

 

[Jason76]

Putting a thing in user registration where new users must spell a word backward helps a lot, but sometimes a few get thru. I guess another option is asking hard to answer questions but that could deter new sign-ups.