Trolls. Not the mythical creature or those dolls with fuzzy hair. Trolls. Those nasty hecklers who do nothing but annoy and launch asinine diatribes against bloggers, discussion board members, chatrooms, etc… If you’ve been around the Net for quite some time, you know who I’m talking about. They can be really irritating or at times, threatening. This is particularly true ever since the Kathy Sierra account on trolls threatening her came out huge in the blogosphere.

Computerworld has this great article on dealing with trolls and cyberstalkers. It cites some great advice (5 ways) to defeat those nasty trolls but here’s my take.

Remember your Miranda rights

Particularly the portion “whatever you say or do may be used against you.” While no one’s actually under arrest, it pertains to you. The Web’s an open space where anything you put online gets associated to you. Trolls can be really nitpicky. They can use anything and everything you post against you. So be responsible for whatever you post online.

Know the troll

• Spamming troll: Posts to many newsgroups with the same verbatim post.
• Kooks: A regular member of a forum who habitually drops comments that have no basis on the topic or even in reality.
• Flamer: Does not contribute to the group except by making inflammatory comments.
• Hit-and-runner: Stops in, make one or two posts and move on.
• Psycho trolls: Has a psychological need to feel good by making others feel bad.

I’ll add one:

• Grammar/Info Nazis: Those people who just can’t live without pointing out your inadequacies like grammar lapses. While corrections are much appreciated, these trolls make sure to make you look stupid.

“Don’t feed the troll” (DFTT)

Simple and surefire rule. Trolling is a cycle. Fight fire with fire and you’ll surely have a maelstrom of nasty comments swirling here and there. Trolls feed on your reactions. Giving them less reactions to feed on may cull the matter quickly.

Put comments under moderation

If you run a blog, try to hold comments under moderation. This way you can approve or disapprove of inappropriate comments before they show up for the general public to read. A word of caution though, take valid criticism as they are. Don’t be overly sensitive to mark those with sound arguments as troll comments just because they go against what you stood for. Debate is healthy.

Ban them

If you have persistent trolls, you might just want to block their names, e-mail addresses, or IP addresses. This way they will not be able to wreck havoc as they please. Engines like WordPress allows you to only allow comments from sources whose comments you’ve previously approved.

Monitor troll activity

Being vigilant is always a great thing to do. Don’ just delete their comments in an instant, you may want to save copies of them as evidence just in case things can get really mucky. Keep track of the post, the username, the IP address, timestamp and relevant posting details of the matter. One time, in a mailing list, we found out that a troll was actually a member’s vengeful ex by cross-checking IP records with previous e-mails to that member.