> React to the anonymous information unemotionally. Abusive posters will be encouraged further if they get irrationally irate responses. Sometimes the most effective response is silence.
For every case of abuse, there are more cases of good use of a service and we should focus on those and not let the malicious ones become the loudest.
Any space where abuse was allowed rather than moderated, the space just became dominated by the abusive and they would overtake the space.
Internet is a strange place right now, much different from what it was
Don't feed the troll was born on the premise that abusers were a minority and that anonymity was protecting the good guys from the bad guys
Today anonymity protects the bad guys from being prosecuted
Now your anonymously accessible forum greets newcomers with the most abusive, disgusting posts imaginable sprinkled with the occasional post of an idealistic cypherpunk who abides by the dictum, "Don't feed the trolls."
Predictably, the forum is frequented by no one outside of a handful of idealistic cypherpunks and problem even fewer trolls (because it's cheap to saturate a forum with the most vile, disgusting content).
Maybe you can monetize trolls somehow? But I've never been on a team that came up with a good way to do so. No one wants to be 4chan.
In the end, it's always been better for the bottom line to try to make them go away.
> React to the anonymous information unemotionally. Abusive posters will be encouraged further if they get irrationally irate responses. Sometimes the most effective response is silence.
trolls don't need a lot of food to keep posting, but i posit they at least need some.