User agreement addendum items

[ratcatcher]

TROLLING
Trolls, flamers, griefers, jerks: They are known by many names, but they are always known and will always be found on any Message Board or on-line community.

Other Message Board members spend time thinking about trolls worrying about trolls discussing trolls, obsessing over how to stop trolls and their influence. Trolls are awful and make it tough to do anything worthwhile on the Message Board, and even tougher when you have these living roadblocks doing their best to interfere. We suggest medication, or, failing that, intensive psychotherapy.

Trolls do not follow the rules, play nice or take prisoners. You may judge them, fear them, but just think: isn’t there someone out there you hate? Perhaps someone who is really obnoxiously wrong, and won’t listen to reason? Yes, admit it, there is someone who posts for this very site and grates on you! You want to see XXXXX reduced to childish tears, to see YYYYY’s monocle pop out of his gentleman’s attire with shock! You will not achieve this with reasoned argument! However, with trolling ………

While there are as many reasons for trolling as there are trolls themselves, there are only a few basic kinds of troll:

Professor
Spends most of the time pointing out every possible error in postings. To be truly effective, they try to act as helpful but also imply that each tiny error makes the whole post invalid. This is the quickest way to suck the joy out of a thread. Their whiny complaints serve as inspiration for the Critic.

Critic
Posts are seen as an open invitation to tell everybody how bad things are. Their goal is to convince everybody that the golden age of the Message Board is in the past. To be truly effective, they try to make it seem like it could be possible to please them – talk about how they used to like the posts/posters. Their goal is to make people feel that they should abandon the Message Board before it disappears. Their superior tone can really set off the Screamer.

Screamer
Subtlety is not their strong point. However, caps lock, cusses and hatred for every other poster (as well as all humanity, it seems) are. It is easy for them to be truly effective. Flame and spam until they get banned, then come back - making sure that they pick a similar screen name so that people know it is them. This projects an aura of invincibility, and really riles the Prophet Of Doom.

Prophet Of Doom
Most people do not even know this person is a troll. They think of themselves as the “healer” class for the trolls. They are forever wailing about how bad the trolls are and how they are going to take over and destroy the Message Board. This is the best fuel that a troll could ask for. The Prophet Of Doom singlehandedly keeps trolls going when times are tough! To be truly effective, they keep quiet until a troll outburst has started to die down, and then start wailing. If that keep at it, the site will begin to attract the Robot.

Robot
These are almost certainly somebody who owns a site, or is paid by someone that does own a site. to spam advertisements on the Message Board. It is super easy for them to be truly effective. They simple spam their rotten little hearts out, and a few eejits will check out their site.

DEALING WITH TROLLS
The best way to deal with trolls varies by type.

To deal with the Professor and the Critic, ignoring their rants goes a long way. They may get angrier at first, but the lack of an audience will drive them to find a more easily riled audience, hopefully elsewhere and soon.

Screamers should be gagged somehow, and are usually easy to pick out by their use of caps lock (Internet Shouting) and their high ratio of swear:normal words.

The Prophet Of Doom should be mocked - nothing gets them to go away like knowing that their dire warnings are not being listened to.

Robots need to be banned. It's hard, but necessary.

FEEDING THE TROLLS
This is just as bad as trolling itself, and is when people make posts that they know will prompt someone to respond with a trolled reply and/or replying to comments that are blatantly from a troll. This is especially true when a troll first makes his comment/reply, and (usually many) people respond, either trying to correct the troll, or express anger at the statement. At that point, the trolling was successful and has been fed. When encouraged by success and feeding, trolls often return. In simple Message Board terms ………. DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS!

BULLYING
Bullying will not be tolerated on this Message Board. Bullying only occurs when it is someone else doing it. For the individual in question who is posting, it is not bullying but rather an expression of a personally held opinion. Bullying can only be considered to be such when it is someone else doing it. Bullies will be held to account by a group of peers, who will round on that person and start baying for their blood. If the Bully is not part of a specific group/clique/whatever, then other posters are quite within their rights to complain vehemently, and demand that the Bully be removed, or at least retract their words. The only time when Bullying appears acceptable is when the Inny masses round on a non-specific Outy group/clique/whatever member.

P!SS TAKING
See above, but this is only acceptable if you are an Inny. If you are an Outy, then forget it. However, if you are an Inny then it is not P!ss Taking but rather a further expression of a personally held opinion.

CYBERSTALKING
Cyberstalking, which is simply an extension of the physical form of stalking, is where electronic mediums such as this Message Board are used to pursue, harass or contact another in an unsolicited fashion. Most often, given the vast distances that the Internet spans, this behaviour will never manifest itself in the physical sense but this does not mean that the pursuit is any less distressing. There are a wide variety of means by which individuals may seek out and harass individuals even though they may not share the same geographic borders, and this may present a range of physical, emotional, and psychological consequences to the victim. Most commonly cyberstalkers will post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards and in guest books designed to get a reaction or response from their victim, thereby initiating contact. It ain’t funny, don’t do it!