Website/Forum Trolls

[Ozzy47]

Hey FP family,

In your own view, what is website/forum troll?

What all does a website/forum user have to do to become a troll in your eyes?

How do you usually deal with website/forum trolls, if they are not breaking any rules. You know the kind, the ones that push it to the limits and stop before actually breaking the rules on a constant basis.

Have you yourself ever been a website/forum troll before?

 

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Many different trolls act differently it seems, from trolling around one specific member/person where they follow and or does things around that person. Trolls that join as they are just bored and post and spam and say not nice things to everyone around the forum then after a while they get bored. Trolls that keep on joining as they keep getting ban and making the Admins and staff getting fed up.

I have seen trolls on sites and seen it myself on my own forum. I had a troll who was attacking me and the forum made many accounts that I then flagged, he made many more accounts that I then limited his actions from joining, then he was that little smart and had VPN and had many new email addresses 😵 But I wasn't going to let myself go nuts and I just accept it and stayed chilled and ban him over and over to he got sooooo bored that he gave up.

After that IPB spam defence was alive and then no problems since then, he's been added to that and future joining other sites, RIP him 😛

I had no trolls, other than getting new accounts then getting flagged right away as it's spam. IPB spam defence working away.

 

[Carlos X]

Many different trolls act differently it seems, from trolling around one specific member/person where they follow and or does things around that person. Trolls that join as they are just bored and post and spam and say not nice things to everyone around the forum then after a while they get bored. Trolls that keep on joining as they keep getting ban and making the Admins and staff getting fed up.

I have seen trolls on sites and seen it myself on my own forum. I had a troll who was attacking me and the forum made many accounts that I then flagged, he made many more accounts that I then limited his actions from joining, then he was that little smart and had VPN and had many new email addresses 😵 But I wasn't going to let myself go nuts and I just accept it and stayed chilled and ban him over and over to he got sooooo bored that he gave up.

After that IPB spam defence was alive and then no problems since then, he's been added to that and future joining other sites, RIP him 😛

I had no trolls, other than getting new accounts then getting flagged right away as it's spam. IPB spam defence working away.

I have a similar attitude. I recently had a person come to my forum. I let him start a thread about forum OG's, and I had a suspicion that this person had dubious ideas. Then, boom... guess what he said?

"I'm here to impersonate you." I immediately shut it down. I IP banned and IP Discouraged him.

I'm a nice guy until you piss me off. I'm telling you, I'm tolerant. I have limits. A lot of people don't get that.

 

[Deleted member 7467]

If they aren’t breaking any rules, best to just move on with your life and not make a mountain out of a molehill. I prefer banning everyone from the start though but my philosophy on forum management doesn’t seem to be the standard.

 

[Moonface]

To me a forum troll would be someone who joins solely to cause trouble and start drama. Back in the ZB days I recall someone went around as many boards on the network PM'ing porn to as many people as possible.

 

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as many boards on the network PM'ing porn to as many people as possible.

Ohh, I remember that happen to me years ago when I was running SMF and not long after I moved to IPB that I had so many nudes images posted and worse it was aiming at the owner.

The FIrst time it happens to me was back in 2012 when I was a mod for a GTA community site and turns out that the person was ****** towards the owner that turns out that they both known each other.

 

[TopSilver]

I had a forum troll come to my site and end up being a staff member. Later on I had to retire them because they stopped getting on. Then they requested I delete their account. So graciously I followed with their request and 3 different times re-signed up getting at least 300 posts before requesting their account get deleted over again. Apparently they were getting posts on purpose just so that they could then later request account deletion. I got so fed up with it but banning their ip address didn't work because they kept getting a new one. I am positive this person could possibly still be on my site as apparently they are more then just a troll but some type of site stocker.

I'm considering making a new rule so that users can't delete their account but get banned instead. This has only happened 3 times but because of how many posts the person had each time I am positive it's the same person. Plus their usernames were similar. They were trouble makers and spammed quite a bit too which I was lenient on a decent bit but I no longer allow people to spam. The good thing about Xenforo, is if you delete someones account it does not delete the posts connected to the account.

 

[Carlos X]

I had a forum troll come to my site and end up being a staff member. Later on I had to retire them because they stopped getting on. Then they requested I delete their account. So graciously I followed with their request and 3 different times re-signed up getting at least 300 posts before requesting their account get deleted over again. Apparently they were getting posts on purpose just so that they could then later request account deletion. I got so fed up with it but banning their ip address didn't work because they kept getting a new one. I am positive this person could possibly still be on my site as apparently they are more then just a troll but some type of site stocker.

I'm considering making a new rule so that users can't delete their account but get banned instead. This has only happened 3 times but because of how many posts the person had each time I am positive it's the same person. Plus their usernames were similar. They were trouble makers and spammed quite a bit too which I was lenient on a decent bit but I no longer allow people to spam. The good thing about Xenforo, is if you delete someones account it does not delete the posts connected to the account.

Bolded ENCAPSULATES what I've been saying about GDPR since inception. Everyone disagrees with me on the subject and cry wolf about privacy, at the expense of trolls.

I ban anyone who shows interest in being a troublemaker, trolls or spam.

I say keep banning these spammers (including your trolls, @TopSilver) until they tire of redo-ing accounts. I would've kept the original account to catch them in the act. Because xenForo attaches your IP addresses to accounts and vice versa. Don't just stop at IP Ban, go use IP Discourage, too. Not just at the account level... go do everything. Constrict their access. Remove their access until they get pissed off and want to give up.

 

[Fait]

I had one yesterday i just banned him

 

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I had one yesterday i just banned him

Details?

 

[Fait]

Details?

he came in and said in a thread that the site basically sucks and i should quite why i'm a head some people have no life's

 

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he came in and said in a thread that the site basically sucks and i should quite why i'm a head some people have no life's

Saying it sucks and yet that person joins 🙄 they are just dumb silly people at times, I would just play his little game to the point that he will lose and he walks away being a nut at himself.

 

[Katrina]

I was a troll once.

Yes, ME! I went along with some other friends from a Christian forum to an atheist site that had been bashing us and we invaded their open Chatbox with messages of Love and Jesus 🙂

 

[Fait]

Saying it sucks and yet that person joins 🙄 they are just dumb silly people at times, I would just play his little game to the point that he will lose and he walks away being a nut at himself.

That’s a good point there’s no logic behind it and the dumbest thing is that I’ve got their IP address but they don’t seem to realise.