Can we do something about the Trollfinder General wannabes?

[Anonymous]

I think troll accusations without the slightest bit of evidence just blow up any discussion and contribute less to the site than Octotroll, Chipotle Lady, etc. Can we just have a delete on sight for those posts, please?

[jsteele]

I agree with you. But, I can only delete them if I see them. So, report such posts.

[Anonymous]

How exactly can you show evidence on an anonymous forum?

I don't troll here, ever, but I will call out a troll and explain why I think they are trolling as well as note fake posts. I do it because I think it's incredibly rude and manipulative to ask people to put in effort to problem solve some issue only to discover they have been duped and there is no problem at all, just an attempt by a bored fool to amuse themselves by mocking people who take their problems seriously and respond to them.

Frankly, I find it surprising that you would find the people calling out the trolls more irritating than the actual trolls. I guess I was silly in thinking that quality of posts was more important than quantity of posts. Silly me.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:How exactly can you show evidence on an anonymous forum?

I don't troll here, ever, but I will call out a troll and explain why I think they are trolling as well as note fake posts. I do it because I think it's incredibly rude and manipulative to ask people to put in effort to problem solve some issue only to discover they have been duped and there is no problem at all, just an attempt by a bored fool to amuse themselves by mocking people who take their problems seriously and respond to them.

Frankly, I find it surprising that you would find the people calling out the trolls more irritating than the actual trolls. I guess I was silly in thinking that quality of posts was more important than quantity of posts. Silly me.

If you are not able to show evidence -- and you concede that you are not -- then, on what basis do you feel justified in calling another poster a troll? I agree with you that the quality of posts posts is important. I guess we disagree in that I do not find a post that consists, in its entirety, of "troll" to be of much quality. This is particularly aggravating when the person making the claim is incorrect. If you believe that a poster is a troll, please use the "report" button to bring it to my attention. Don't simply disrupt the thread with accusations. If, for some reason, you don't want to report the post, please move on to another thread.

[Anonymous]

If you are not able to show evidence -- and you concede that you are not -- then, on what basis do you feel justified in calling another poster a troll? I agree with you that the quality of posts posts is important. I guess we disagree in that I do not find a post that consists, in its entirety, of "troll" to be of much quality. This is particularly aggravating when the person making the claim is incorrect. If you believe that a poster is a troll, please use the "report" button to bring it to my attention. Don't simply disrupt the thread with accusations. If, for some reason, you don't want to report the post, please move on to another thread.

No one is able to show evidence on an anonymous board. Even if you have tight IPs for every poster, you still can't know for sure that you aren't looking at a shared computer with one or several users. (That said, I cop to my posts and yes, it's me whose posts you're responding to.) The idea of expecting users to have evidence when they don't even have the tools you do for extrapolating someone's identity is kind of unfair.

But, you ask a good and very fair question about why I feel justified in calling someone a troll. There are two ways I would answer the question. Why do I think I have the right to call someone out and why would I think someone is a troll and feel validated enough by my instincts to call them out. The first...well, one of the things I like about this place is, for the most part, it is a pretty self policing community. That's no longer a trait of the internet, and I miss it. In the olden days, if you posted stupid on the internet, people called you out and you either defended or you shut up. This place had that vibe for a long time. Now, maybe times have changed and now we need to protect everybody from something they don't want to read (including the trolling types) or maybe people think they can control every thread and how the internet responds to them. I don't know, and how the internet has changed in the last 15 years is probably a far more boring topic for you than for me, so I will mercifully spare you.

As for the second way I'd answer the question, I spot a troll from their own inconsistencies. They post something. People respond. The the story changes, negating all the responses. People respond. Then it changes again. And, every time it changes, the previous posters are made to look like idiots and often insulted by the OP. When I see that, yes, I want to call that person out. I also want to call out anyone who posts impossible to believe scenarios, especially if they involve vulnerable people or otherwise invoke sympathy with a fake post.

No, we don't disagree about posts that just say "troll". (Sorry about the double negative.) I find those posts of low, well, no, quality. What I was responding to was OP's suggestion that all accusations of troll be deleted on sight without "evidence". If someone can call out a troll with details from their posts (and that's not evidence), I think the accusation should be allowed to stay and the accused should have to put up or shut up. Of course, this is just my own big fat opinion and you should, obviously, do what you do.

I'm sorry to go on about this. Honestly, I respect what you do and like this place and felt I owed you a thoughtful response to your question.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:[
No one is able to show evidence on an anonymous board. Even if you have tight IPs for every poster, you still can't know for sure that you aren't looking at a shared computer with one or several users. (That said, I cop to my posts and yes, it's me whose posts you're responding to.) The idea of expecting users to have evidence when they don't even have the tools you do for extrapolating someone's identity is kind of unfair.

You are confusing "evidence" and "proof". While it is possible that multiple users of the same computer can post in a way that it gives the appearance of a troll, it is quite unlikely. But, even if such activity were to trick me into wrongly believing that the multiple users were a single troll, at least my mistake would still be based on evidence. But, to carry your argument to its next logical step, even on a non-anonmyous board nobody can show proof because users can share usernames and passwords.

I am not expecting you to show evidence before calling out a troll. I am asking you not to call out trolls. If you suspect a troll, report them to me. I can use the tools at my disposal to make an evidence-based decision. No matter how well-intentioned your efforts, or how sure you feel about your conclusions, it is very disruptive to have such a high number of threads being interrupted with someone crying "troll". You and I have the same goal of stopping trolls. I would just rather you play a cooperative rather than disruptive roll in doing so.

[Anonymous]

"Should dh go on a trip" has the appearance of a troll. The story kept changing as posters questioned the OP's information. No response since last night when folks started to question the veracity of the post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Should dh go on a trip" has the appearance of a troll. The story kept changing as posters questioned the OP's information. No response since last night when folks started to question the veracity of the post.

No, the story does not keep changing. Posters simply disagree with parts of the story, like whether or not there is traffic on Christmas/NYE, and what role a midwife would/should play in a high risk delivery. This is what I hate about people calling troll on DCUM. If you disagree with parts of a post, fine. But that doesn't make the person a troll. And if new details emerge to complete the story, that doesn't make the person a troll either. The original post shouldn't and can't possibly be War and Peace.

And more fundamentally, why the hell would a troll make up a story asking advice about her husband traveling to visit his sick father and whether he should go or not? Is there something remotely dramatic, sexy, or provocative about that thread? No.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:"Should dh go on a trip" has the appearance of a troll. The story kept changing as posters questioned the OP's information. No response since last night when folks started to question the veracity of the post.

I think you are correct that the original poster of that thread is trolling. That poster is also the author of a few other controversial threads and the details offered in the various threads are inconsistent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, we don't disagree about posts that just say "troll". (Sorry about the double negative.) I find those posts of low, well, no, quality. What I was responding to was OP's suggestion that all accusations of troll be deleted on sight without "evidence". If someone can call out a troll with details from their posts (and that's not evidence), I think the accusation should be allowed to stay and the accused should have to put up or shut up. Of course, this is just my own big fat opinion and you should, obviously, do what you do.

I'm sorry to go on about this. Honestly, I respect what you do and like this place and felt I owed you a thoughtful response to your question.

OP here.

It takes as much effort to report a post as it does to post "TROLL" with absolutely no evidence (such as internal contradictions).

A thread of a plausible enough story with the OP, 60% replies and 40% arguing about whether OP is a troll is much less useful than a thread that gets closed/removed because Jeff determines that poster has been different genders, races, etc., in the past.

[Anonymous]

It seems like the real troll posts get lots of activity and interest. People have a lot to say about these topics even if they are not true. !! A sort of WWYD discussion. But I object to what seem like real, if heated, posts about hot button issues when someone hears something they don't want to hear they call troll, and hijack the thread. Jeff, you are right, posters should just report, not call troll.

[Anonymous]

Posting "troll" does nothing to add to the discussion.

Posting "Wait a minute, it doesn't make sense to me that X would happened, because not only it is very rare, but can't happen when Y happens which you also said in one of the replies" actually adds to the conversation.

Both are calling out trolls, but in a very different way.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:I am not expecting you to show evidence before calling out a troll. I am asking you not to call out trolls. If you suspect a troll, report them to me. I can use the tools at my disposal to make an evidence-based decision. No matter how well-intentioned your efforts, or how sure you feel about your conclusions, it is very disruptive to have such a high number of threads being interrupted with someone crying "troll". You and I have the same goal of stopping trolls. I would just rather you play a cooperative rather than disruptive roll in doing so.

For me, the underlined part above is the most persuasive argument. I'm happy to outsource my troll accusations to Jeff, because he will investigate more efficiently than I can.

[Anonymous]

9:42 again. Jeff, as a request, when you delete posts, could you please add a short sentence explaining why you are deleting? That would save a lot of stress and misunderstanding about the sudden removal of posts.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Should dh go on a trip" has the appearance of a troll. The story kept changing as posters questioned the OP's information. No response since last night when folks started to question the veracity of the post.

I think you are correct that the original poster of that thread is trolling. That poster is also the author of a few other controversial threads and the details offered in the various threads are inconsistent.

Jeff, DCUM users are very good at smelling a proverbial rat. I will continue to report suspected trolling but I'm not going to censor myself from mentioning when I see an obvious troll post. People get upset, share details, and I think it generally contributes to a crappier site. Not scientific, but in my experience nearly all of the times I've suspected troll enough to say it, (and usually this is from truly inconsistent info, or a slightly changed attitude that doesn't seem like a change of heart so much as a recasting of the situation to get more sympathy or to be more provocative) I call it out. I really appreciate when other people do. There are certainly threads where one or two posters cry troll simply when they disagree with someone or when the opinion shared seems unlikely, but most are pretty judicious about the troll calls. Why would anyone want to change this effective self-policing? If "you're a troll" calls are annoying, they can be ignored as easily or easier than the troll posts themselves.