Hump Day: how do you handle trolls?

[Jordan Miller]

Happy Hump Day, team! Shout-out to @nodle for being a big fan of these posts. 👏 

In today's community management hump day topic, I wanted to chat about one of the most powerful ways you can inspire kindness throughout your community. Kindness is an essential ingredient to a successful community. 😌 I know it's a little cheesy, but it's important.

Some times you may experience negative players attempting to derail your day because, well... misery loves company. In my experience, one of the most profound ways to fight toxicity in an online community is by... not fighting at all. Instead, it’s by offering kindness to those who need it the most. That’s done through understanding, outreach and personal displays of vulnerability. 
 

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“The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.” - Dr. Brené Brown

Like a drop of ink in a glass of water, a troll's negativity spews throughout the community (and possibly other communities) in such a profound way that it dissuades others from participating. The compounding effect of their flippant responses, snide remarks, sarcasm, arguments and attacks ultimately creates chaos. 

Fight the ick with understanding, compassion and vulnerability. The act of opening up to an anonymous person in need not only can inspire them to change, but it opens a door towards further self-discovery. 

Being vulnerable with your members also empowers them and you.

Next time you notice a toxic member’s pattern regarding how they post, remember there is more that meets the eye. Hurt people hurt people, so take the opportunity to be kind, practice being vulnerable and watch your community blossom. 

How do YOU battle toxicity in your Invision communities? Sound off in the comments below.

As always, here is a list of changes made to the platform in the last seven days. Nicely done, team!

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- Fixed an issue where clubs would show both items and comments in recent activity. 
- Fixed an issue where the editor would get stuck after a guest post.
- Fixed an issue where the queue task may become locked by deleting orphan comments.
- Wrapped ElasticSearch calls into a try-catch block to avoid that a broken ES install stops upgrades.
- Changed the default search option to 'Everywhere' for the default app otherwise it's app specific.
- Fixed an issue where a failure to communicate with the EC VAT validation service doesn't show the appropriate error message.
- Fixed an issue validating VAT numbers.
- Added support for OpenSearch 2.1.
- Added application filters for new reports in the Moderator Control Panel's report center.
- Fixed an issue where forum specific moderators received notification of reported content outside those forums.
 - Fixed an issue where forum specific moderators could see reports for forums they do not moderate.
- Fixed an issue where editing a topic and setting a future publish date may not alter state.
- Fixed an issue where deleting a member would try to delete data from a not existing table.
- Fixed an PHP8 issue in the GD class where processing the transparent colors thrown now an exception instead of returning FALSE.
- Fixed an issue with queue tasks stalling if an application is uninstalled during achievement rebuilds.
- Fixed an issue where rebuilding the solved statistics could fail. 
- Fixed an issue where the forums pagination response returned all forums.
- Fixed an issue where promote custom date would throw an error when empty. 

PS - I have an exciting blog post on the way. Stay tuned. 🙃

[Rikki]

Sometimes, turning the relationship on its head and actually employing the troll can have a beneficial outcome.

[marklcfc]

Something I've never solved in 18 years. It tends to be one of these though,

Set up an alternative member group which has a limit on the amount of posts they can make in a day, I set this as 10. This is an attempt to stop the troll ruining multiple topics with lots of posts and creating a nightmare for me to sort out.

If that doesn't work then post restrictions for a few day or a week. Sometimes this just makes them worse, so end up banning them and they rejoin under a new username and the process continues. 🤨

What would be perfect though, and I've requested this for so long is to be able to ban a member from a topic. This would help so much in these situations.

Edited September 22, 2022 by marklcfc

[Davyc]

If they are a 'genuine' troll only there to make trouble, kick them out; take whatever steps are necessary to prevent them signing in again.

If it's a 'genuine' member who is getting out of their collar for whatever reason, then take them to one side and attempt to discover what motivates them in to being obtuse.  It could be something simple, or complex, but regardless of what it is, if it's leading to toxicity in the forum then it needs to be stopped, sooner rather than later.

How either of these is handled is entirely up to the site owner, using whatever people skills or technical skills at their disposal.  Everyone will be different.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Davyc
Darned spelling again

[Charles]

I always advise clients to not put too much effort in a troll. If someone is just there to disrupt a community, ban them and give them no further thought.

If it's someone who just needs to cool off then you can do a warning but I usually say one warning is enough.

No time for distracting you from your good members to spend time worry about a bad member's feels.

[My Sharona]

[beats23]

I ban them instant no question ask. I change their user name to TROLL and give then a nice new Troll avatar.

My sits has only one rule. Trolls and negative provocative trolling is not allowed.

I dislike Trolls

The troll's avatar.

 

[Balto]

On 9/21/2022 at 10:47 PM, Jordan Miller said:

As always, here is a list of changes made to the platform in the last seven days. Nicely done, team!

Will these changes be implemented in the October release or the November one (the one which ends the life of PHP 7)?

[BGP]

On 9/22/2022 at 10:57 AM, Charles said:

I always advise clients to not put too much effort in a troll. If someone is just there to disrupt a community, ban them and give them no further thought.

If it's someone who just needs to cool off then you can do a warning but I usually say one warning is enough.

No time for distracting you from your good members to spend time worry about a bad member's feels.

I have been running a forum over 20 years, this times a million.