Did it ever happen that you had something so important to say, that you felt the urge to go comment about it on other blogs, even though they were not at all related to your issue, only to direct people’s attention towards yourself?

If you did, then welcome to the world of trolls! Maybe we all want a bit more attention from time to time, but this does not mean that we have to intrude in other people’s lives (or blogs) and become a real plague in our desire to capture some audience. There are other ways to get people to listen to you than behaving like a little, dirty troll.

Trolls can be existing members of a community that contribute no useful information to the topics, but instead make argumentative comments in an attempt to discredit another person. They concentrate almost exclusively on facts irrelevant to the point of the conversation, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others.

As mentioned in Wikipedia,

the contemporary use of the term first appeared on Usenet groups in the late 1980s. It is widely thought to be a truncation of the phrase trolling for suckers, itself derived from the sport fishing technique of trolling. The latter can be compared with trawling. Another plausible derivation is that it may be a shortening of “patrolling,” with the common meaning of “searching,” especially, “searching for those who do not wish to be found.”

What can bloggers do about this phenomenon which sometimes can become life threatening and result in somebody being afraid to step out of their own courtyard?

Let’s see some possible actions. If you have more ideas of keeping the trolls away, please feel free to leave a comment here. Thank you.

1. Ignore them

If you are the author or the reader of a blog post, ignore any trolls that may comment there. If you, as a reader, bait into their diversion, how would you expect your readers act in case this happens on your blog?

2. Give them a chance to take back their words

It is now possible by enabling editing comments. It is hard to believe, but some people may be sorry after they see their nasty comment published and they may wish to take it back. Why not give them this opportunity?

3. Use moderation for new comments

This can be a temporary measure to calm down the spirits. If your blog is under troll attack, then enabling moderation will put a delay between the moment of writing such a comment and the moment of seeing it published. Yet, under normal circumstances, when trolling activity on your blog is rather low or inexistent, there is no reason for applying this method.

4. Have a commenting policy on your blog

This will give you the “moral right” of deleting anything you may not consider suitable for being published there. Your blog is like your home: you give it the tone you desire, you shape and control it, you offer your readers food for thought and emphasize the values that define your writing.

5. Move on

There are several ways to get away: close comments on the attacked posts, keep on writing about your usual topics, rather than getting involved into the argument, or keep perspective.

What do you think? Were you ever under a troll attack? How did you solve the crisis?

As reader of another blog, did you encounter troll comments there? What was your reaction to them?

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