Life in the Land of Internet Trolls

Trolls can be scary. Not necessarily in the “What are you doing under my bridge, and why did you eat my goat?” sense of the word, but trolls can make deciding how you and your company are going to interact online a scarier thing.

If you’re still not sure what a troll is, allow a little help from Wikipedia:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

As it is defined, the troll can cause some anxiety when planning a blog, forum or social networking site, or if you plan to participate professionally in any web 2.0 interactions. Despite their lack of regard and ambiguous aggression, trolls are a manageable annoyance.

First of all, it is important to know that different levels of moderation can be set up for most blogs, forums and peer-to-peer profiles. Basically, if you are willing to moderate every response or post to your site, you can weed out the trolls pretty easily. In many cases, this is a one-stop solution, but it does have its limits. Post-by-post moderation can be very limiting if you are supporting or plan to support a large community or any sort of fast-moving site. Waiting for moderation can disrupt conversation on a high-traffic blog or forum.

Consider this brief, yet helpful guide on how to deal with these types of visitors:

Rule #1: It is safe to say that you feed a fever, but starve a troll.

It is important to realize that most trolls are on your site or page for their own amusement, not a serious agenda. If they make a remark or comment that seems profane, infantile or otherwise immature, it is likely because they are 16-19 years of age and simply looking for a laugh. Ignoring this sort of a troll is definitely an option, as said troll will likely become bored and move on if they are not baited to comment further.

Rule #2: Be nice. If you reply, stick to the facts and force the troll to answer real questions.

Responding to a troll is always an option, but be wary that trolls feed on frustrated replies. If you reply to a troll-post you are breaking rule one, so proceed with caution. The slimy little creatures that they are, trolls thrive on negative attention. Be sure your posted response is positive. Stick to the facts, and never resort to name-calling or profanity. In many cases, the best way to reply to it is by asking questions of the troll. This is often a good way to exploit their lack of knowledge on the posted topic. Thus, you have discredited them and revealed their slimy skin.

Rule #3: Trolls cannot be scared away. They must be obliterated. Banning is your only option.

If your site’s troll has grown too big or is smelling up too many topics, it might be time to remove it permanently. Deleting the trolls-posts (if you are a moderator) might seem appropriate, but this will only feed the troll’s ego and the deletes might be used against you as your unwanted guest will point out your censorship as a weakness. The smartest thing to do is to ban the troll. Many blogging applications (such as WordPress) allow you to ban users at an IP address level, so that any posts from their previous posting locations will be immediately dumped into spam.

Don’t let trolls move into your Internet neighborhood. Good online communities and blogs can be found everywhere. Many of them are not infested with trolls, but trolls do show up from time to time. Good pest control is as simple as following the three rules laid out here. Start with Rule #1 and work your way down to Rule #3, if necessary. This should be a reliable formula to picking off these annoying and troublesome users when and if they show up.