There are people who post items that are against forum guidelines. They seek to provoke reactions, sell items, or begin a political discussion. Every time someone responds to such a post, it sends it back to the top for more exposure- exactly what the original poster wants.....
Instead, don't give them that satisfaction. Click the report button. This alerts the webmaster. The question will fall down the page from lack of response until the webmaster can get to it.
Great advice Carol. I do wish there was a partime webmaster assistant for the weekends though...
It's great advice Carol, but while many people can and do restrain themselves, it only takes two or three willing to engage trolls to put trolls front and center on discussion boards.
I understand RS not wanting to spend the resources to moderate this board on the weekends and PST evenings. I have frequented forums that do other things to combat weekend and late night trolls.
The first method is rather draconian. It involves moderating the forum by computer program during the off hours or in addition to company mods. For example, some forums temporarily remove the posting privileges of posters who use certain words, or will not accept posts with those words. Other forums require a cooling off period of an hour or more between posts on the same thread. Others freeze or slow threads that involve the same posters replying rapidly to each other. All of these methods tend to catch too many innocent bystanders for my taste.
On the other hand, appointing level headed regulars as evening and weekend volunteer moderators, works really well. Some company forums get along with almost entirely volunteer moderators. It's a particularly good solution when the company running the board is primarily in one time zone, but the board has international participation. --- Nope, not volunteering, I've volunteer moded elsewhere too recently to want to do it again anytime soon. But I've never seen a board unable to find many good volunteer mods. And there are many really nice, sane, knowledgeable, regular posters here who already seem to live on the forum.
So, to whom at RS it may concern, consider volunteer weekend mods.
I think Carol's reminder to not respond is the best one, and thank's to her for posting it. And I say that after being guilty of responding on the current thread that prompted her post. I have a hard time not responding but in future will force myself not to respond on the thread. If you feel the need to respond, don't feed the troll on the post, just PM them and share your opinion, or your side of an argument, with them alone. PMing them does not bring the thread back to the top.
I don't agree that this forum needs a weekend moderator just for the occasional troll posts. It is better if nobody responds and just let them drop to the bottom - report them and move on, they will be deleted come Monday morning.
I agree that not responding (which is what the troll wants) is the best way to handle it. And if you just can't help yourself (I definitely get that- ;-) ) sending them a PM is the best solution.
I understand the temptation is strong to reply in some way to those who post something just to get a reaction, as what is written in these posts is, at best, false rhetoric. But, I would even resist the temptation to send a PM. The most common goal of these people is to elicit a reaction of some kind, and a PM, though not public, is still a reaction. These types of posts die of starvation, so let 'em starve.
I get that too, I know when I found this 20 posts deep I could not resist a few gibes. But--send a PM? Do you really want your mailbox inundated?
I remember this same exact troll who came here months (or years?) ago...this is dejavu all over again. I cannot believe there are 40+ responses to this troll (including his/her own replies to others, of course) when there should be zero. All it takes is for no one to respond and the troll will just be banished to insignificance and they'll move on to other forums. I don't know why people engage with these trolls, it's obvious what they're after and arguing with them doesn't do anything except raise your own blood pressure. I wouldn't send them a PM either - ignoring is the best remedy.
Some folks also reply to blatant infomercials, blogs, and other posts clearly meant to generate clicks. It's easy to tell them apart and yet people still respond, often with innocent remarks and questions. I wonder why.
Exactly. Ignoring is the best remedy. Right now I don't feel that weekend moderators are needed. This is a very good forum. No vulgarities, no attacks, very polite, very little political discussion. What could we wish more?
Bump bump bump
Did I miss a fun thread? I have my popcorn and everything.
Jo, it is in the England forum, under "keep on traveling".
It has gotten worse, now with a third thread.
Trolls should not be fed.
Hey, if we need volunteers, I'm happy to do so. I'm usually on most nights. And while I do know what forum software is used here, surely there's a way for a volunteer to make a thread invisible until a real moderator could review it.
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
George Bernard Shaw
The problem is the number of people who just can't resist that pig.
Oh my. That was an interesting read.
Have offered my services as a weekend, night moderator. They don't feel the need for it. People just need to control themselves and not rise to the bait.
Torally agree with you, Emma.
I so agree with this.. you can * most of the time* very easily spot a troll. Ignore, ignore, ignore!
I was shocked that the thread got that much traction.
I have to agree with Emma about volunteer moderators. They can be trigger happy.
On another board I explained how someone could read ebooks across different platforms. The process is perfectly legal in the U.S where the board is based. However, one moderator from Germany didn't think it was legal in Germany so she removed the post. She didn't ask me to modify it or remark about legality in other countries. If it was possibly illegal in Germany then it was verboten for anyone to read.
I complained that the moderator went overboard but the people running the board backed her saying the issue was complicated. It's not.
What RS could do is ask a different employee to volunteer to moderate the board on weekends. It doesn't have to be the same person but spread out among the employees. The other option, which is what some boards do, is not allow newbies to post their first few times without being moderated. Usually the first five postings.
Sorry folks. When he says the Nazi party was a leftist movement because it had socialist in the name, it needed to go immediately. This was mixed in with the troll's general condemnation of RS and anyone left of himself. That untruth that the Nazis were really leftists and not fascists is spouted in extreme right literature.
I don't care about the name calling, silly accusations, etc, the rolling with a pig. I'm speechless that so many people engaged with the troll. Most of all, I do care when untruths about one of the worst ideologies in history are written. It's clear that in these times a moderator needed on weekends.
I agree with Emma. I thought the zero was hilarious!
The business is marketed with openly political messages, which would
be reported and censored if they were posted on this forum. How does
that work?
Simple. It's up to the business owner to set rules for his own forum that's he's providing free of charge. He doesn't need to market or tolerate or give free space to other people's ideas that he doesn't want associated with his business. He can do whatever he wants. "Free speech" (in the US) is speech protected against government intervention, not private intervention. Private employers can censor whatever they want.
As far as this forum is concerned during off-hours, it already has volunteers to flag posts that break community guidelines. It's effective; those flags are immediately acted upon once the Webmaster returns. It's a pretty decent, self-regulating forum. I don't think we need to go overboard due to a few moronic trolls if people could just stop feeding them. This last troll managed to get poster Paul in his cross hairs and turned him into a "Little Marco"...that's what happens when you tussle with a pig though, you debase yourself in the process.
I agree with the others that say this board doesn't need more moderators. This forum is refreshingly free of the trolls that target other internet forums (just google search the latest troll's name to see what I mean). One reason is the current moderators do a good job of cleaning up the useless posts that are reported. So yes, please don't feed them and they will get their due within 48 hours.
This latest guy has spend literally years honing his troll skills so I'm not surprised he was able to get under some people's skin. Just remember the trolls are not here to argue, they are here to hear their own voice. Ignore them and you deprive them of what they want.
DJ -- you are giving him way too much credit. The one thing that might be useful would be for a couple "trusted ??" posters to have a backdoor/private email address for the webmaster so that he could be alerted a little earlier on the weekend when the site is not being fully monitored. Would not put the volunteer posters in a position of having to make a decision but rather a faster heads up to the webmaster. However, one idiot does not create a disaster either.
There is no need for people to work their weekends. No one should have responded to the post, other than push the report button. The bottom line is people have to be responsible for their reactions as well.
That sounds like advice I need to take next time!
Paul, you cannot win with an idiot who has no purpose other than to jerk your chain. The internet is too flat for any serious discussions other than where to get more kool-aid. Look at it this way -- you are still here and he is not. The ultimate win.
"The ultimate win" is to walk away totally clean and unsullied, not be left "still standing, yet battered". These trolls bring out base, puerile instincts in otherwise normal, intelligent, level-headed people and bait them to react in ways they'll probably regret later. Some of the responses to the troll were pretty cringeworthy themselves. Don't do it folks, you'll come out for the worse in the end and your own reputation will suffer (everyone already has rock-bottom expectations/respect for the troll, so no loss to him/her).
Hi everyone. Thank you for the discussion here. The best thing is to always ignore a troll, but I'm also accepting that we can do things differently to help moderate things better. We have introduced a number of controls to help limit spam and trolls over the last few years, and it sounds like we're doing our job if you, the intended members of the forum, haven't noticed. We know that more can be done and we are listening.
I've also removed a side discussion here. Once again, please avoid the political topics.
Political Topics
Emma brings up a good point about political topics in our forum. It isn't that they are banned. There is a nuance that is frequently misunderstood. I'd like to address that and provide clarification.
Rick is political at times on his blog, in his profile on this site, and in his book, Travel as a Political Act. Plus, his Iran and Holy Land television specials broach political topics when traveling on location and meeting the people on either side of political boundaries. You may remember we started a forum section for a discussion on the Holy Land show, but most people who engaged there couldn't do so without major violations of our Community Guidelines. So, that's out. Rick's blog is his own, and ensuing political discussions should remain in the comments there.
You'll notice that our Community Guidelines do not actually call out anything about political topics. Guideline #1 is that you stay on topic. The overall topic on this forum is travel. We allow for mentioning political topics if it directly relates to travel.
Thus, we allow for an explanation of what's going on in the Catalan region of Spain if it can e.g. help travelers avoid the location of protests... but it crosses the line if the discussion becomes pro or anti Catalonia (or pro or anti Spain). A few years ago, we allowed for talk of where migrants have flowed into Greece or Germany as that may affect choices in travel, but it crosses the line to post fear mongering or hate speech about migrants. We allow discussions about visiting Nazi sites and relating history, but it crosses the line when you're here to assert that they're capitalist, socialist, communist, (fascist) etc as the recent assertions are typically done in a way that relate to today's political climate and insinuate that opposing viewpoints in the political spectrum are akin to that of Nazism (Godwin's Law, anyone?).
As long as it is always brought around to be about travel and you're staying on the right side of our Community Guidelines, we'll usually allow it. I hope that makes sense and provides insight into how we moderate things here.
Thank you Webmaster! I really enjoy this Forum and appreciate your efforts to "keep it clean".
Someone wrote about a few renowned historians earlier in this thread, and now that post is gone. Does anyone recall who they were? I would like to look into some of their books. Thanks.
@Tim,
I'm pretty sure it was Fred from San Francisco. Scroll all the way down on the below thread and you can find him (you can send him a PM to get the book titles):
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany/prague-germany-amsterdam-itinerary-help-please
Thanks Agnes. Fred has got the goods.
