Moderation: Dealing With the Forum Troll
Monday, July 9th, 2007Nearly every online community has that one user who manages to get under everyone’s skin. It might be the way he replies to every single thread just to see his post count go up, or the way she constantly take threads off topic. Worst yet, this user might be just plain rude and disrespectful.
Meet the “Forum Troll”.
There are a million ways to react to this type of poster. Over the past 10 years of moderating sites and forums, I’ve learned that the best way to address this person is to start with the nice approach. Send the user a nice private e-mail following the general form:
Hi (username). First off, I’d like to just say hello and thank you for the continued enthusiasm you’ve shown in our forums. Your passion for [subject] is clear, and I appreciate your contributions to our community.
Second, I regret to have to bring up what might be a sensitive subject. Please understand that as the forum moderator, one of my duties are to sense when the community is headed in a negative direction and do my best to keep our members engaged in respectful and productive conversations.
I have received a few private e-mails related to a pattern of posting behavior you have displayed lately. Specifically, when you post…, some of our users find this offensive.
I ask that in the interest of helping our community continue to thrive that you take these other users point of view into consideration when making future posts.
You can fill in the rest as needed. Of course, every situation is different, but by appealing first to the user’s own desire for appreciation (an inate quality in nearly all humans) and then leveraging the “common interest” angle, you can usually get them to change their behavior. And if this doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to simply ban the user. After all, the ideal community is self managing and doesn’t require a lot of maintenance from you.
A great resource here is the book, “Crucial Conversations”. It teaches you how to have tough conversations in sensitive circumstances or when there’s a lot on the line.
If you have specific questions on how to deal with a nasty forum member, please post comments here and I’ll be happy to share my thoughts.
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