This blog has been getting a lot more traffic lately. The downside is that we’ve had a lot more trolls here lately as well.
Because of this, and because of a shitty situation in one of the comment threads earlier tonight involving an abusive troll who I wish I had banned sooner, I want to open up a discussion to everyone here (that is, everyone here who is not a troll or an MRA).
The question is: Do I need to crack down harder on trolls?
Generally my approach has been to let trolls post unless and until they’re abusive. I know a lot of people here like engaging with trolls and taking them down.
The problem, of course, is that these trolls can quickly become abusive. And this can trigger people.
Should I be quicker to ban people — banning trolls at the first sign that they might become abusive rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt (which, unfortunately a lot of them don’t deserve)? Should I be stricter about who I let post in the first place?
There are actually a lot of people I don’t let post here at all; if their first comment is too aggressive or hostile or (obviously) contains a slur I don’t let their comments through. I’m especially strict when it comes to people posting in threads about women who’ve been harassed.
But I could be stricter, and I could ban more quickly if that’s what you think I should do.
Frankly, I gave up a long time ago on the idea that it’s possible to have any kind of “open debate” with these people. Too many of them are abusive assholes for that to work.
So my priority here is the regular feminist and feminist-friendly commenters on this blog, and coming up with a comment policy and procedures that work better for you all. There are people who enjoy and in many cases feel empowered by being able to confront the trolls here. But I don’t want, and I don’t think any of us want, more situations like the one that happened tonight.
To be honest, I do think I need to crack down harder. I just want to hear what you all think on the issue, and to hear your suggestions as to how to do this most effectively.
The other aspect of this: I think I need to put up more no troll, no MRA open threads. And so I will be doing that.
Thoughts?
(I may not be able to get back to this thread for a little while, but I’ll definitely be back later in the evening.)
She’s gorgeous! Though I’m not sure if that’s an “I shall put up with this gracefully” or “Engage laser eyes of death” expression.
http://imgur.com/GdqUpCt and that’s poppy about 6 months old. Hope it works
Shit. Try again. Molly sat through it with good grace. There were several variations on her bedecking. OK, back to imgur…
http://i.imgur.com/42K1Yn0.jpg…fingers crossed.
@kittehserf: it did occur to me that it might pose an interesting paradox for MikeyB trying to decide whether or not to refer to the Australian Army Chief as a “purple poodle”. XD
I know, I’m perceived as a troll here but nevertheless… if you feel I am being abusive or intrusive feel free to delete/ban/move, but I really want to add something constructive to the discussion here.
Banning trolls is a good idea. Sure, people like cassanrakitty, Ally S, and pecunium chew most of them up, but there are good people here that just can’t handle it psychologically. Your web space is your private space and if it becomes insufferable it’s perfectly acceptable to ban the people that ruin it for everybody else.
However, there is a big downside to this. The very purpose of this blog is to “track down and mock misogyny”, and by banning trolls you lose a great source of…
well…
…misogyny! You will lose out on those articles in which one idiot shows up in the comments and starts mindlessly pecking on the keyboard thereby exposing his ignorance and/or hypocrisy…
…But then again, those are mostly small-fry and might not be worth the exposure they will get anyway.
So, I suggest a middle ground:
–Become more liberal on the ban-hammer in normal threads. Ban normal, obvious, drive-by trolls who just spout non-sense and are here to mostly stir things up. It’s not worth keeping them around and they are not worth the attention.
–Do however allow people like W.F. Price, Karen Straughan, Allison Tieman, and other “Big Name” MRAs to post here and potentially expose themselves.
–Host “Open Troll Threads” more often (I believe two or three times a year is sensible) for the normal drive-by trolls to post nonsense -and get mocked/chewed on by the troll hunters here. That way, you won’t lose out (much) on the potential misogyny that they might bring and you might squeeze a few good articles out of them.
That’s about it.Now excuse me, I have to go back in my cave and cook some dwarves before the morning light comes.
(It’s called self-depreciating humor people! Don’t take the last sentence seriously! Sorry, but I posted on the web long enough to know that you have to spell those kinds of things out)
@pallygirl
If you’re using a mouse, you can right-click on the date and time in the troll’s post and select “Copy Link” from the menu. It’ll look like this with the comment ID at the end:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/06/13/do-i-need-to-crack-down-harder-on-trolls-a-no-troll-no-mra-discussion-thread/comment-page-2/#comment-512121
If you’re not using a mouse, clicking on the date and time will change the URL in the address bar and you can copy that and paste it into an email.
@thewatchingdog
<This is a blockquote.> turns into:
I’m glad to see Mikey is history. He might have been trying to boost his search engine rankings by posting links to his blog here. Links from sites deemed by Google to have high credibility give more value to the site linked to in terms of search results placement.
Bah, HTML fail. Trying again for @thewatchingdog
<blockquote>This is a blockquote.</blockquote> turns into:
(crossing fingers)
I’ve only been reading for about a year. JB is the only one of any note *cough* I remember seeing from AVFM. Have any of the big guns ever posted here? Are any banned? Yeah, I’d like to see them chewed up and spit out here, too.
(It’s called self-depreciating humor people! Don’t take the last sentence seriously! Sorry, but I posted on the web long enough to know that you have to spell those kinds of things out)
Oh really?
I wouldn’t know,but now I know that you are always good at telling self deprecating jokes…..
XD XC XC
BigMomma – Poppy’s adorbs! So. Much. Tortie. Fluff.
… and I looked around from “tortie cat lying on her back being Cute” on the screen to see “torbie cat lying on her back being Cute” on the floor behind me.
Lensman, iirc, you were being a bit trollish to begin with, but your more recent comments weren’t.
I think several of the big name ones have posted here, but managed to get themselves banned eventually because they were every bit as disgusting as on their own turf – I’m not sure if Pauly didn’t comment here at some stage (any old-timers remember if that happened?)
“Give them enough rope” would still be the overall way of things, I suspect.
@Auntie Alias
W.F. Price did indeed show up here, along with his “feminist” wife, and did indeed comment here. The article involved the Daily Beast’s take on the MRM. I don’t know if I can post a direct link to the article but you can find it easily if you search “Daily Beast” on the search box.
The article has over 1.900 comments so it will take you a while to see Price’s comments, but it’s there. I don’t know if he got banned though.
Oh crumbs, yes, I remember WTF Price & Totes Feminist Spouse visiting now.
I think I just sprained my eyes rolling them …
I come back to this site to see that there was a particularly vile commenter. Supposedly, he was so terrible that David made a new entry about considering a tighter grip on the banhammer. Upon checking out said thread…I’ve got no words other than holy fucking shit. I’m so sorry, Ally.
As great as it feels to see the regulars trounce the trolls, there does come a point where the fun is over and it’s time to just pull the trapdoor lever.
I second the notion of whoever suggested mods. Our kittens in a human suit need to sleep, so maybe having some assistance from people in other time zones may help.
Also, thank you so much, David, for finally banning that spammer. His constant butting in was like this…
http://youtu.be/5fkF008b-_Q?t=8m8s
…except he wasn’t even the least bit funny. And wow, he even did it here, in a No-MRA Discussion Zone!
^ Sorry, I meant for the clip to start at about 8:10. Start there and you’ll see the connection.
Nting what Hellkell said about the “be nice” thing. I’m fine with a fairly light hand on the banhammer, but if you’re going to go that route then the regulars need to be able to smack down abusive trolls. A combination of no banning/moderation AND the regulars being told to be nicer to people who’re in “whores and bitches!” mode is pretty much the worse possible solution to the troll influx. Women tend to be able to spot the guys who’re going to devolve into full-on screeching misogynist hate-monkey faster than men can, because we’re used to dealing with guys like that, so please listen to us when we tell you that’s what’s happening.
I’d rather keep some trolls around for entertainment value, but I do think that once they get into directing blatantly abusive comments at specific, named commenters then they need to meet the banhammer ASAP. Since David can’t be moderating this place 24/7 even if he wanted to that seems like an argument in favor of having mods, if the current traffic and troll influx lasts.
I kinda like the system as it is – people are banned with some fair regularity once they get bothersomely abusive / mean / WRONG but it still allows nits to shove their foot in their mouth repeatedly.
I think a good solution is to have the occasional open thread with enforced modding, as it is now, and then otherwise stick to the fairly open comment section as it is now.
On the other hand, there’s little call to accept abusive idiocy from people who are clearly just here to be angry and upset, so banning those folk right away is a good thing.
@cassandrakitty
Word.
I agree with a lot of the commenters here that that the time where a troll becomes abusive they must be banned. A lot of these idiotic mra’s come here anyway looking for attention. These guys have low self esteem and probably thrive on the negative attention and mocking they receive. There comes a point in all this where these trolls are not tolerable anymore and need to be banned from this forum. That’s a good thing Davis that even though it s your blog you asked for everyone’s opinion on this matter before making any policy for this blog.
Regarding the banning, I say be as harsh as you feel necessary. It’s telling that I personally haven’t noticed the trolls in the comments to your posts, and it’s a good thing.
Regarding the comments in general, I find that the comment style & presentation is not good given the volume of comments on your blog. The default view in Firefox seems to automatically go to to the last page, and there is no organizing of responses & comment “threads”. Is there a way to change the way the comments are shown so it looks more like a webforum or something? I have trouble telling what the heck people are talking about unless it’s a fresh post and there are only a dozen or so comments so far.
What a classless POS! Not only that, he’s stupid. He forgot the initial comment goes into moderation so David not being at his computer doesn’t actually allow the troll floodgates to open.
I’m sure he’ll win many elections on an internet troll platform though!
Plus, it was my understanding that the rule already was that specifically directed abuse resulted in a banhammering?
However, I should probably point out that to a very large extent I am not really triggered or bothered much by the trolls. I find them… funny and mildly terrifying, but not much else. It’s so clear most of the time that who they’re talking to isn’t really me-me or anyone else, but some idea in their heads of how all women are spinster harpies so who cares?
———–
An important part of showing just how wrong-headed a lot of these ideas are is allowing people to come by and be wrong headed in the comments, like those who show up to actively defend their own malarky or those who join in to defend the malarky of others.
I mean, where else do I get to write random rhymes about assfax?
So I think the problem just is the inability to monitor everything 24 / 7, and I think perhaps a moderator extra or two would solve that, because then terrible people can be caught before they become too terrible.
@ Ally
Sorry I wasn’t around to help shut down the creep yesterday, BTW. I wasn’t online at all.
Having now seen that thread it confirms my feeling that there are certain trolls who should probably be banned as soon as the first infraction happens, because Alejandro has trolled here before and he was a creepy, rapey little shit the first time too. Guys like that don’t snap out of it and start commenting like decent people, they just escalate the creepiness as much as they’re allowed to until someone shuts them down.
I see Mikey B is being as clueless and disingenuous as ever. In his blogwhine about being banned, he says:
But there’s nothing to correct. This blog is run by an American, and while the commentariat includes some Britons who might well get the reference (Dad’s Army remains very popular on British TV to this day), this obviously won’t apply to the overwhelming majority.
And Mike is about as oblivious a troll as has ever defecated round these parts, even he must know this.
So how did he think that people would react to a metaphor explicitly suggesting violent penetration if there’s a very strong chance that the people being targeted wouldn’t recognise the source?
Mind you, if you do recognise the source, there’s a certain amount of unintentional humour to be had, because if our Mikey is claiming to be a Corporal Jones figure, he’s effectively admitting that he’s a bumbling fool with a big mouth but precious little to back it up.
In other words, it was a singularly stupid expression to use regardless of the audience.
Well, hey, at least he has a realistic self-image, so that’s something.