The thing about trolls…. is they are obnoxious.
Some of you will recall I wrote a first draft of a troll control plugin, which would display comments from trolls to the troll, but not others. However, I discovered that method used too much CPU when comment threads were long. So, I devised another method which used less CPU. This was given the development name of “Troll Control 2”.
The only difficulty was both methods prevented me from using the wp-cache plugin; the result was slower loading pages, and greater CPU use. So, I used Troll Control 2 from Sunday morning to Monday afternoon. Soon after… well.. ya’ know. I reactivated the plugin last night.
As I want to leave the plugin active for at least a week, I examined wp-cache, and I think I found the method of dealing with the troll. I’ve tested this by labeling and unlabeling myself a troll, and activating and deactivating cache. However, because of the vagaries of self testing which requires me to not only clear the wordpress cache but that on my local machine, I’m always afraid I goofed.
So… if you are blocked from viewing or posting comments, and you are not the troll, click the contact link and let me know.
The thing about trolls…. is they are obnoxious.
And they’ll eat you for their supper.
It’s a shame you have to use Troll Control, but as this site gets more popular, you’re going to attract more trolls from both sides. And I, for one, value the civility here.
Doug White,
What I want in the long run is a plugin that doesn’t hog CPU, and lets me tailor the treatment to different sorts of Trolls and get things to work more or less automatically. TCO might be ok if he didn’t feel compelled to suddenly post 1 comment every 10 minutes with no-one talking in between. Once he’s on a roll, I suspect he’d keep doing it until I activate the troll shields.
It’s entirely possible to write a script that watches for that type of behavior and autospanks. However, I usually have to see the behavior before I can write the script. Of course, some people just get banned.
Let’s hope the civility returns and Troll Control ver X works. 🙂
TCO can be quite a pest. He showed up on climateaudit about August 2005 and was a frequent commenter. He stayed around for a year and a half and was a broken record on his insistence that Steve Mc publish in the scientific journals. Ocassionally he was posting drunk and/or used foul language. He left CA and never returned. Good luck on your handling of trolls.
Troll Control Optimization.
Mike–
The things that bother most in a troll are:
1) foul language,
2) name calling (recently, maggots),
3) posting 5 comments/hour while absolutely no one else is talking to the troll and
4) providing theories explaining why I should value his derailing comments threads.
Beware of the Trolls!
They still harass travelers
On blogs, not bridges.
A haiku in a non-haiku thread… I’m always taking risks.
When I first picked up some trolls on the Air Vent, it made me crazy. All this really crazy stuff calling me a denier (I’m not) and anti-science. I started posting graphs and they went away. I nearly ended up making a post — Trolls Fear Graphs.
But then some other trolls came by who didn’t understand graphs and it didn’t bother them at all. They trolled on their merry way making any angry statement they could. It made me think I needed my own troll to guard the bridge and ask three questions before they could come in. The questions would be simple ones but something of an IQ test.
What makes the sky blue? If you open the door on your fridge does the house get A-colder, B-warmer, C-stay the same. — That kind of thing.
Then I had the problem of the more sophisticated troll, the one which has spent a bunch of time on real climate, the guardian or reading how to argue with a skeptic and has their talking points down with little original thought. Certainly they could overpower my good bridge troll so that’s no use.
I like your idea, I hope it works out but I suspect there may be a super troll which can change names and IP addresses. The only way to defeat that level of power may be the public SNIP- that works pretty well for McIntyre.
As a bit of a sadistic experiment, a little negative feedback could be generated by allowing ‘normal’ people to click and see the troll only threads, beat them up a bit and go away. That would make the trolls on the dungeon thread crazy.
Good stuff.
JeffId–
Negative feedback doesn’t work with trolls. They seem to like it. No feedback is required.
Private snippage probably works better with trolls. However, I like my current method because anyone who wishes can see TCO’s old rants. They can witness that he did call people maggots, brownshirts, etc. That he used ALL CAPS. That he would post 5 comments in a row with no one answering etc.
However, he can’t currently post and he can’t read anyone’s comments. He also sees a message that specifically tells him he is blocked for name calling, ALL CAPS and general obnoxiousness.
BTW: Based on work IP address, I don’t think TCO is a climate scientist. It’s not impossible, but highly unlikely. My guess is chemist, but that’s a guess.
Negative feedback doesn’t work with trolls.
Negative feedback = feedback = attention.
Back in the day, I used to babysit a few forums for an Especially big SPorts Network. My finding: trolls want attention. Nothing more, nothing less, but the more attention the better.
There are two schools of thought on this, in terms of administrating/modding – first; shadow banning, ie, they can see their posts, and think they’re still out trolling, but nobody else can. That was implementated on a big news aggregator site, but the downside was inflaming the tempers and wrath of people who were shadow banned on the subscription side of the site, and so still paying monthly. That this is a blog, and not subscription based, I don’t think you’d elicit the same response. They’ll eventually figure it out though.
The other is to just figure out the most efficient way to wipe and insta-ban trolls, once identified. Downside to that is that the more persistent of that crowd will immediately try everything possible (different name/email/IP/domain/etc) to get around it.
Probably six of one, half a dozen of the other. Good luck with the plug-in!
Cache issues, please delete.
Testing, maggot.
testing without fly larva
As a previous AGW believer, then skeptic and now becoming a denier I would still believe the AGW story if this site could show me the data that proves this. So far it seems to be unproven. I certainly would not believe it from RC. AGW’s might take some comfort in recent AMSU data (big jump in satellite temps for last 10 days)… but of course it may come down sharply to.. enjoy the speculation LOL
Anthony–
I have to hard code someone into the controller. But… someday…. maybe when I get to Troll Control Rev 666, it will recognize all insults and automatically diagnose who is and is not a troll!
It’s much nicer here without the distraction of …. you … know … who posting 5-10 comments an hour.
Have you considered issuing a random Cookie to new users that allows posting initially with a large time delay, and reducing the timer when the Cookie is so many days old, and has so many sensible comments to its credit?
Trolls could still get round it by running several parallel conversations on different accounts, so they had a stack ready when it came to trolling time. But writing 500 sensible comments just for the sake of one evening of fun would probably hurt more than it was worth.
The problem is that newcomers posting one-offs get moderated like trolls, which may well put them off. They might not want to stick around long enough to become regulars. Multiple levels of owner-adjustable trollhood, and the ability for visitors to turn troll-filtering on and off would be particularly useful in that case.
Stevo–
I’m considering a variety of strategies. The solution could use cookies for extra information. Right now, I’m mulling things over in my head, but I will need to use WP’s built in option storage to make it possible for the moderator to deal with several levels of trolls. Some need 100% banning. Some need to be given time outs. Some need to be restricted to posting from IPs that are not the local bar. . .