I have been lucky enough to watch entire communities turn their backs on trolls, who eventually leave when deprived of life-giving attention. Maybe that is the best solution after all.

Then again, I hope we're not being that controversial.

You will never have to do any of this if you outline in your rules that banned means banned and that you mean it. A few legal terms should make it stick. Few people will want to “try” you to see if they really go to jail. Works great for local forums because your verification process should give you enough data to locate them in the real world.

1. Positive identification of all posters is cardinal.
2. Playing nice is essential.

Personally, I would have granted the trolls their own discussion zone, created a few different persona's for myself and started a few wars. That is easy when you can be both a trusted ally and a hated enemy. They would be so happy in their new environment that they would soon forget all the other ones. After getting them mad as heck as each other I would withdraw so they could have their fun.

For this reason, I do not ban code words. I do not even ban in N word if it is given in context as a direct quote of a piece of literature, lyric, or the statement of a public figure.

I do toast comments that make blatant statements such as “I hate (othersubgroup)”. I also ban calling other people racist. Personal attacks are always out of bounds. If you are going to disprove a person's argument, arguments with tribalism at the core are pretty easy to refute without name calling.

Which brings me to my over-riding principal. You can discuss any idea and any statement without being rude. Rudeness is personal animosity. ideas that are offensive or wrong will die on their own in the marketplace of ideas. I find it offensive that people attempt to shut off debate instead of sharpening their own ideas and making their own argument better.

The number one benefit of free speech is that it forces ideas to clash and forces people to think. That is a hard thing. The easy thing is to find an excuse to cut off the debate.

Will people oppose President-Elect Obama's leadership because he is black. Certainly they will. They will also oppose his leadership because they disagree with him on ideas, principal, or motives. BOTH arguments will have bearing on how people vote and how they act and, as such, both should be debated.

They were using them to create dupes and continue to antagonize the community I was trying to rebuild. some were easy to spot because they couldn’t help themselves from acting like wankers, and I got to the point of recognizing their post cadence and habitual misspellings, but I relied heavily on keeping a list of known IP addresses they were coming from and checking new accounts against it for a long time.

Thankfully, my forums are a much friendlier place to be now, but jeez they were like leeches you couldn’t get rid of no matter what. And what sucked even more, was that they were locals. I knew their names and email addresses IRL. They just didn’t care.

I hate trolls.

Bridget: I think that’s an excellent posted guideline. That’s an important piece in this puzzle because you can refer back to it when dealing with abusers. They can’t claim ignorance that way. Here is the one I crafted:

Austinites love to be heard, and we’re giving you a bullhorn. We just ask that you keep things civil. Leave out the personal attacks. Do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone’s sexual orientation or religion. If you can’t be nice, we reserve the right to remove your material and ban users who violate our visitor’s agreement.

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