Aug | 26 | 2006

There are bloggers and there are trolls…

Posted by Professor as Blog Tutorial, Terminology, Tips

Ever encountered someone who seems to visit your blog and puts comments to annoy you? Or maybe this person keeps on putting weird things on your shoutbox, just to give you a bad name or something? Hmmm. Looks like you have a troll there.

According to one of the definitions in the Urban Dictionary, this is a blog troll:

(n) -A depraved individual who sits in front of a computer all day and posts flames of an idiotic or pseudo-intellectual nature on public forums and private websites. Many of these people actually become emotional about what is said on the afore-said mediums and feel it is their duty to punish those who disagree with them. They too may pursue this object in an obsessive-compulsive manner.

Dealing with such people could be difficult. You could have just posted something about your day and there’s this blog troll who loves antagonizing you. Especially if you are some kind of blogging personality.

Actually, blog trolls might focus on giving you comments of an idiotic nature rather than pseudo intellectual stuff. Sometimes they just go on and on. So how do you deal with them?

So far, it seems as though there are not so many effective ways. You might as well give them a try.

Banning the IP address wouldn’t really stop the person. There are ways to go around that if the person is knowledgeable when it comes to computers. Well, try this first. It might work in case he/she isn’t so tech savvy.
Moderate the comments on your blog. Don’t let them show up at all until you approve them. Maybe your troll will go away if he/she sees that the comments won’t appear anyway.
Ignore the troll. In case you have not opted to moderate the comments and they appear on your blog, ignore them. Replying to anything the troll would say would probably make things worse.

Confront the troll. How? Post a separate entry on your blog that directly talks about the troll or to the troll. That might cause some more fighting but sometimes, it’s worth it especially when the troll gets tired of it all.

[tags]trolls,blogs,internet[/tags]

Comments are closed.

Our Features

Design and Themes

Is Your Blog W3C Compliant?

Last night I checked my personal blog’s code hoping I can proudly display the W3C Validated Button. Since I use Blogger and do not really do anything to clean up the code (beyond adding Alt-tags to the images I embed) I wasn’t surprised at all to find that my blog contained lots of errors - [...]
Read on
More Design and Themes Features
Software and Widgets

Wordpress Plug-ins

If you blog using Wordpress and can’t do something that you want done like adding Sphere-related content at the end of your blog posts you might be surprised to find out that there are already plug-ins available that make it happen.
To find good Wordpress plug-ins all you need to do is search for â€œwordpress [...]
Read on
More Software and Widgets Features
Reviews

A Friend In Need

I’m helping out my friends from the UA&P - IShareHappiness Blog Team.
Whenever you feel pessimistic, angry, troubled, frustrated, and depressed â€“ what have you â€“ you need someone to talk to. Someone who could help you be more optimistic and help make you feel that there is hope. Sometimes itâ€™s hard to talk to someone [...]
Read on
More Blog Reviews
Monetization

Making Money Through Consumer Generated Ads

As I mentioned in my previous post today I will be suggesting some ways you can still profit by joining programs such as Pay Per Post and yet ensure that your readers don’t get turned off.
In my opinion the only way to really do this is by making sure that your blog entries stay [...]
Read on
More Monetization Features
Marketing and Search Optimization

Building your blog brand step by step

Building your blog’s brand does not need to be difficult. However, when it comes to branding you should always remember to exert effort to be consistent with the image you wish to portray or you’ll end up with confused, turned-off, and/or skeptical readers. Branding inconsistencies will make it obvious that the image you’re putting up [...]
Read on
More Marketing and SEO Features
Blog Resources