Handling criticism and dealing with trolls May 21, 2007
Posted by JamesVinzer in Blogging Ethics, Internet, Social Engineering, blogging.trackback
A few months ago, I posted an article on a website which I will admit wasn’t my best work, and a few people stated that, but then I got a little fucktard of a poster who decided to remain anonymous who said this:
Your profile says “freelance writer”. If by “freelance” you mean shitty and by “writer” you mean blogger, it all makes sense.
Shit like this is not cool, especially when you decide to cowardly hide under the shield of anonymity to deliver something like this. Yes, it may have sucked, but it DID NOT DESERVE someone mouthing off to me like that. You could argue that it is criticism, but it was criticism that was designed to hurt, rather then help.
People who do this will not fare well in the blogosphere. Nobody wants to deal with an asshole on their blog OR site. Even if you’re anonymous, your IP is still present, and one day, you’ll find yourself with a Forbidden error on your browser.
Bottom line: Don’t be an ass. We’re not here to let you say whatver you want to us.
Now, with that in mind, how to deal with idiots like this? Well, if it’s your blog, delete the offending criticism without a big show, unless the person has already created a comment war in the post. Then you say why the head comment got deleted later on.
If the person has a registered nick on your blog, and is a repeat offender, then you have more options. First, if it’s your blog, warn the person, and if they do it again, ban them. Second, if you’re on a service like wordpress.com, notify the admins about the troublemaker.
If it gets to the point where the person is consistently making new names or is constantly a bother, ban their IP. This also works when the person is “anonymous.” If the situation persists, or they start attacking you on AIM/Email, etc, write down everything they send you, and notify the authorities you are being harrased.
Whatever you do, try not to take any direct action by yourself that might be bad later on (i.e, no hacking, DoS attacks, etc.) You could land yourself in some serious trouble. Handle trolls as quick as possible.
Have you had trouble on your site? How did you deal with it?
Um, what would notifing the wp.com admins do about the situation? They don’t ban IP addresses and they won’t ban someone for making a comment like that. (Although they will ban those who disagree with Matt, point out that he lies like crazy, demand a retraction, and have done so.)