IanL
Member
Registered: Oct 2003
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 7 |
Yes, I can sympathize with your position. It would not be a good situation for visitors to think that the mods were censoring their opinions out of hand. You don't want an "Us vs. Them" atmosphere, to be sure.
And I agree with your statements that people need to think before they hit the reply button. That can help a lot, and I will try and keep it in mind myself.
The main problem I see is that people cannot see the troll patterns until it's too late. Wherever there's passionate discussion, there's disagreement, so it takes a little while for someone to figure out that the person you're having a disagreement with has no intention of doing anything except being contrary in every thread they take part in. By the time you realize this, the troll has ruined the thread and moved onto the next victim(s). Rinse. Repeat.
There have been a number of threads where I've thought, "hey, this is an interesting subject", and then got partway through it and found that a troll has pretty much ruined it beyond any hope of recovery. Ick. To me, that seems like too high a price to pay for a lack of censorship. Some people will never "place nice" if they're just told to.
That said, I'm not sure what the metric would be to judge whether "enough is enough" from an individual. I would probably say that warning them individually first would certainly make an subsequent action much easier. I realize that takes valuable time, however.
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm saying "hey, you admins suck!" or anything like that. I can appreciate the dilemma you face. I hope it's taken in the spirit it was intended -- friendly discussion of the problem that I think is on a number of people's minds who frequent the forums. I haven't been here long though, and when it comes down to it, you can freely tell me to shut my cakehole if you wish. 
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11-08-2003 05:48 AM
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