The random thoughts of a genius...er...gene nash.
--or-- The Troll System Must Go
Published on February 11, 2004 By Gene Nash In Blogging

    In case you didn't know it, according to the JoeUser point system you can lose points when any other registered user clicks that they think you're being a troll.

    Unfortunately, this can have dire consequences in the hands of malicious users. For instance, Muggaz recently lost over 800 (!!!) points in about 3 hours, apparently to a single malicious user (or malicious user and group of friends) who actively decided to kick him out of the top 10. In the comments to Muggaz's blog on the incident Anthony R. said a malicious trolling-presser once sent his points to around -10,000. (Did you catch that? NEGATIVE 10,000.)

    This is outrageous. This should not even be possible. Personally I see no real use for this feature. (Though, it should be pointed out Muggaz himself feels "It's a good feature to have, that's for sure.")

"Troll Feature" Against Spirit of Point System?

    Why does the point system even exist? In his article "The Point System Explained: Measuring Success on JoeUser.com" JoeUser founder Brad Wardell says:

"I wanted to set up a medium in which people with opinions could write about what they want and their articles would be distributed based on merit rather than purely based on having the favor of some popular blogger. Anyone who reads through the blogsphere knows exactly what I'm talking about.  There are a handful of blog overlords out there which get the bulk of the traffic in the blogsphere. These overlords, while generally benevolent, have vastly disproportionate power over determining which blogs and which articles will be read by the average blog reader out there. That struck me as unfair."

    This "troll feature" is the antithesis of that founding vision. By allowing a single user or group of users to launch an attack like this it,

  • Makes a mockery of "distribution by merit." This activity is not based on merit, in fact the author's and the work's merit are under direct assault.
  • Creates, at least in reverse, the very Overlords JoeUser sought to dethrone. The "troll feature" allows a single user or group of users working in concert to affect which users can become popular with a simple click of "trolling." Don't like that user? Kill him! Knock him into oblivion! If, as in this case, it knocks someone out of the top ten, it affects all their articles, because by no longer showing up in the sidebar of "top users" it must have some impact on their site being read and hence negatively impact the scores for their articles.
  • Is just plain wrong. No-one should have the power to hurt someone else just out of jealousy, envy, or spite.

Introducing Fairness to the Troll Feature

    Personally I'd like to see the troll feature removed, but if it must stay let's at least introduce some fairness and safeguards so these types of abuses can never take place.

  • Your score drops too. According to Brad's article on the point system, troll-buttoning someone currently costs them 2 points. ("A regular user can give + or - 2 points.") Accordingly, if you cost someone points, your score should also decrease. This would encourage its use only in extreme circumstances and discourage abuse. I suggest your points should decrease by at least half as many points as you're costing others. Under the current rules you cost them two points hence you would lose one point.
  • Score limit in order to troll-button. A registered user should have a minimum score number in order to troll-button someone. If you don't have at least, say, 100 points, troll-buttoning would have no effect, just as it currently does not for unregistered "guest" users. That, combined with the above suggestion, would create a floor beyond which you could not troll-button anymore.
  • Fewer points deducted. I'm sorry, I think 2 points is too much of an impact. Lower it to 1 point at most.
  • Limit number of troll-buttonings per day and hour. A user should be limited in the number of troll-buttonings he can give or receive, per day and per hour. For instance, the most times someone could accuse anyone (single or multiple users) of trolling should be once an hour or four times per day. I find it highly unlikely someone could find that many cases deserving of being labeled trolling (which, when you think about it, is a harsh indictment) in a day. Anyone else is probably being a crank and out to cause harm. Likewise, in order to prevent a single user from being gang-trolled by a malicious group, there should be limit on the number of troll accusations a single posting or individual user can receive at one time, say, at most 10 per day.
  • Retract the points for the posting, but no more. You get points for posting comments to other users' blog articles. Theoretically someone could up their score by posting a flood of low quality comments. If the troll feature is meant to countermand that, it would be far better to remove the points only for the comment considered trolling. Establish a "troll threshold." Then if, say, 10 users consider a comment trolling, the troll threshold is triggered and the points for that posting are taken back. This could only happen once, only for the offending comment, and no other points are affected.

Bye-bye: Time for the Troll Feature to Go

    As Muggaz said in his original post, "Personally, i dont use the trolling feature... i dont like to put other people down... if they are idiots, they wont get up in the ranks..." Agreed. Let people rise by exceptional content and the trollers, flamers, and other lowlifes die where they lay, unable to rise due to their own foolishness. That should suffice. The troll feature should die.

    Yours,
    Gene Nash


Comments
on Feb 11, 2004
haha.. cool!!!

Great ideas!!!!
on Feb 11, 2004
I don't like the idea of of the troll system itself because of how it can be abused. I myself have only used it on real trolls. I suppose the positive point system can be abused too if one blogger gets a group of loyal friends to give him positive points no matter what he posts.
on Feb 11, 2004
You have a very well reasoned argument. I agree.
on Feb 12, 2004
i like the last idea best. if i want to tell someone that 2+2 does not equal 5, i don't want to give them points from my commenting.
on Feb 12, 2004
Your idea is very welcomed! But how can we change it? Is it possible? I hope so...
I myself have never "trolled" either... I hardly "insight", rather, I leave comments...
But really, DOWN WITH TROLLING!
(Or at least change it!!!)
on Feb 12, 2004
PS, have I been trolled? My score is at 2022, and it's always ended at 5s or 0s before... Or have I been "insightfulled?" sorry. Im being dumb. it's late and I should sleep. (Another comment that shouldn't receive points .)
on Feb 12, 2004

The problem with the troll system as it is now is that people can abuse it too easily.

What we're going to do is make it so that users can only make use of that feature once every hour or so. 

We know who presses the trolling button. Muggaz's case came from a very specific set of posts.  I suspect having every response having the word "BAM!!" at the end doesn't endear him based on the logs.  What happens is that someone's response ticks someone off and instead of just choosing trolling on a single response, they go and find a bunch of posts they've responded to and click it there too even though the response isn't a troll.

That is what happened to both AnthonyR and Mugaz.  In both cases, they wrote things that irritated a number of people for whatever reason and those people went off and not only flagged the offending comment as trolling but went and found bunches of them and did the same thing.

The same thing, btw, has happened to me as well. I've lost thousands of points in this way. When you're as busy as JoeUser.com does, it's easy to lose a lot of points very fast this way.

So what we'll be doing is making it so that you can't do that. You can flag a post as trolling the same as always. But you won't be able to do it again for another hour anywhere on the site (same for the positive rating).  This way, the user can "cool down".

on Feb 12, 2004
Another good idea would be to disallow rating a reply that is older than a certain age. This way no one can ever go back into a hundred different replies you've made and vote them as trolling.
on Feb 12, 2004
Damn, why wuld anyone do that? that is so malicious, so wrong... If you dont agree with someone's comment, fine, disagree.. but costing them hard earned points, really not fair.. My idea would be to dismiss the person pushing all those buttons for trolling, or at least putting them on some kind of probation or something, they should have consequences besides just losing points.. We are supposed to be able to just think aloud here, and don't need to not say what we want to say for fear we will lose all the points we earned over time..
on Feb 12, 2004
I for one welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
on Feb 12, 2004

The trolling system works pretty well other than the abuse from people going and finding every post the person has made and clicking on the trolling thing. Once that restriction is put in, it'll work as designed.

on Feb 12, 2004
haha.. the trolls can suck on my BAM!!!

I like the cooling off feature... losers will have to waste alot more of their time to bring me down now... not that it matters, because evidently they have time to kill anyway!!!

BAM!!!

(seriosly though, if anyone has enough of a problem to find my BAMMING!!! trolling, you need to loosen up you anal freaks.)
on Feb 13, 2004
Actually Muggaz,
I have to admit that I have found the addition of BAM in capital letters after every post quite off putting. I haven't 'trolled' you for it though. I just put it down to cultural differences. Don't take this wrong but, to me (coming from an Irish/English cultural environment) it just comes across as a 'look at me' childlike yell and my mind just blanks it. I've not bothered to read entire articles and posts by you because of this automatic blanking. I'm getting more tolerant of it over time though .

As for the trolling feature over all. I used to occasionally use it but don't any more. It's too easy to mistake disagreement with the poster and the poster is a troll. I like the idea of time delays between applying troll and insightful clicks.

Paul.
on Feb 16, 2004
Brad: Glad to see adjustments are being made. Keep up the good work.

Muggaz: I never even noticed the bamming till Brad just brought it up. I guess I tend to filter out what I consider "vocal ticks" not relevant to the content. Like, you know, "Like, you know." I can see where some people might get offended, though if they considered it personally directed at them... as if you were saying, "BAM! There! Take that you insignificant little twit! I have totally expressed and proven my superiority over you!" You know, the kind of jerk who's favorite line is "What you lookin' at?"

PoetPhilosopher: The OverLords are overjoyed to hear of your spirit of cooperation! Please report immediately to disection room 8 so that we might locate the source of the anomaly which allows you to see through the hypnotic masking which causes us to appear as mere weak humanoids such as yourself. We are most anxious to ensure no further such anomalous situations occur.