Long Live the Troll Whisperers
Trolls, those angry, anonymous posters who mar Web communities of all types, are a scourge on useful discussion. These insidious little people crawl into the gears and tinker with the delicate machinery that makes a Web community hum. If I had a superpower, I'd wipe trolls from the earth. (I'd also have the lamest superpower ever -- troll removal?)Alas, superpowers aren't likely to come my way anytime soon, so myself and other community-minded folks need to employ a kinder, gentler technique. We need to be troll whisperers.
Cory Doctorow discusses troll whisperers in a recent Information Week column. His friend, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, serves as his troll whispering archetype:
"For some reason, she [Teresa Nielsen Hayden] can spot irredeemable trolls and separate them from the merely unsocialized. She can keep discussions calm and moving forward. She knows when deleting a troll's message will discourage him, and when it will only spark a game of whack-a-mole."Reading through Doctorow's piece, it struck me that troll whispering is something I've been doing for years. I wish I could claim it as a skill -- or even a gift -- but my own troll whispering comes from a character flaw: I don't like arguments and I do whatever I can to avoid them.
I've always been this way. In college, I loathed fellow twentysomethings who engaged in mindless debates simply because they enjoyed debating with newly-learned multi-syllable words. I never got the point; why argue when you could share an experience or a good time?
Yes. I'm a wuss.
But my wussiness has proven fruitful in my Web community efforts. On two occasions, I've been fortunate to develop communities that are marked by intelligent and witty discussion (from the posters, not from me). My own troll whispering played a significant role in the success of both communities because my argument phobia kicked in whenever a nasty -- or borderline nasty -- troll emerged. Rather than stoop to a troll's level, I ignored initial comments and diverted the community's attention. Or I whipped out the ol' "all opinions are valued as long as respect is present" card (that works more often than you'd think). If nonsense continued, I staged a private discussion with the troll to discuss ground rules without public embarrassment.
When all else failed, and a troll's cancerous agenda became clear, I avoided arguments all together and deleted every single post the troll ever made. In the battle of us vs. trolls, it pays to have a "Delete All" button. (It also puts that wussiness aside ... for a little while.)
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