Embrace the trolls
blog.ivylees.com
blog.ivylees.com
In any forum, you should separate the emotional content from the factual content and only respond to the latter. This is quite different from taking the middle way.
Though there are moderate trolls whose inflammatory postings contain useful factual content, I prefer forums where extreme trolling is dealt with harshly. Dissent is uncorrelated with rudeness (meaning that moderating extreme trolling won't drown out dissent) and no-one wants to spend their online time with the horribleness of uncontrolled trolling.
Experiments have repeatedly shown that when trolls are visible only to themselves, no one else can acknowledge their presence, so they just go away.
Trolls are to be ignored. Outliers are to be embraced.
Plenty of times I'll see a comment by someone (usually clearly trolling) and the comment is labelled 'dead' seconds after posting.
Here is a timely example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=743103
The comment at the bottom clearly is not a troll and yet it is labelled 'dead'.
Outlying opinions are not appreciated on HN though, there was a 'worstcomments' link (admin only now it seems) that would show some (very) clear evidence of that.
Which is a real pity.
I would amend that to, "Outlying opinions are often subject to harsh treatment on HN."
As an occasional outlier here, I used to wonder if I was losing my mind from time to time. How could I feel so strongly about something while almost every responder felt the opposite?
I don't worry about it so much any more. Just say what you're thinking and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe we'll all learn something.
Better to have that learning experience in this "harmless playground" first than with a boss or a customer.
This is frustrating.
"old hands" has nothing to do with it. It's basically a couple of people who claim that they're owed something by other folks on HN.
> This is frustrating.
In almost every other community, you get NO feedback and you're here complaining that you're not getting feedback in the form that you'd like.
When someone gives you a gift that isn't exactly what you'd like, the gracious thing to do is to thank them.
Most 'outlying opinions', when reasonably defended (e.g., with paragraphs and citations) seem to do pretty well. There's a clear 'winner', in that one set of responses will have scores that dwarf the dissent, but rarely do I see earnestly given, somewhat supported answers drowned below -1. (Example, from the first headline on /best that appeared politicky enough to incite vitriol: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=738357)
Iconoclastic comments are difficult to discern from foolish comments because all votes get pooled- the disagree vote and the 'not contributing' vote count the same (as they should). A potential method to prop up iconoclastic comments: when a post has received a large number of votes on both sides, display both counts, as opposed to the summed count. This gives a fighting chance to differentiate the 'derp derp derp' from the controversial, and helps reconcile the differences in how downvotes are used against arguments of differing qualities.
Todd's definition was a bit broader, though, and seemed to include those who expressed a negative opinion in a harsh way.
Of course, the word has as at least as many definitions as there are online communities. The post could have easily been "Negative outliers are not trolls!"