About Trolls Succeeding In Their Objective

[Nomomo]

A dedicated troll was completely successful in their objective of shutting down the TribTalk discussion forum back in the day (10 or 15 years ago).

As the Salt Lake Tribune allotted few resources to the moderating of the TribTalk discussion board (only one person was assigned part time as moderator, and she had other more important editing duties at the Salt Lake Trib taking up her time).

I used to follow this troll's posts at a forum called asshats.com at that time, so I had no doubt that his objective was to shut down the TribTalk discussion forum. He discussed and bragged about it there, as he thought that that these discussions about him trying to shut down the TribTalk board were unlikely to be seen by TribTalkers.

He succeeded in this objective.

A poster from this Spirit Paradise forum of the Discuss Mormonism forum has been for a while now so totally obvious to me from his style and phrasing to be that of the former member from the old asshats.com forum, who succeeded in shutting down the TribTalk forum.

His objective is to make moderating this forum more trouble than it is worth, and for the moderators and Shades himself to give up on this forum and close the Spirit Paradise section of the Discuss Mormonism forum.

Don't let this happen. He doesn't deserve another success story to brag about, wherever he is posting about these efforts now that asshats.com is no longer an active forum.

[Chap]

A poster from this Spirit Paradise forum of the Discuss Mormonism forum has been for a while now so totally obvious to me from his style and phrasing to be that of the former member from the old asshats.com forum, who succeeded in shutting down the TribTalk forum.

His objective is to make moderating this forum more trouble than it is worth, and for the moderators and Shades himself to give up on this forum and close the Spirit Paradise section of the Discuss Mormonism forum.

That's fascinating! You are, I take it, referring to the one who has just ceased posting, presumably as the result of moderator action after Shades allowed them to take the gloves off. Or was it the previous, more literate one?

I am just getting my head round the idea that someone might make it a hobby to disrupt discussion boards as a kind of sport. And I suppose that all over the country there are sad guys in their Mom's basements desperate for attention. They can't get the attention by doing anything positive, so they do it by going into common spaces and s****ng all over the floor so as to disgust and repel those who meet there.

At any rate, that's what we have seen here for many months now. Fortunately, Shades has now enabled the necessary action by the moderation team.

[Nomomo]

A poster from this Spirit Paradise forum of the Discuss Mormonism forum has been for a while now so totally obvious to me from his style and phrasing to be that of the former member from the old asshats.com forum, who succeeded in shutting down the TribTalk forum.

His objective is to make moderating this forum more trouble than it is worth, and for the moderators and Shades himself to give up on this forum and close the Spirit Paradise section of the Discuss Mormonism forum.

That's fascinating! You are, I take it, referring to the one who has just ceased posting, presumably as the result of moderator action after Shades allowed them to take the gloves off. Or was it the previous, more literate one?

I am just getting my head round the idea that someone might make it a hobby to disrupt discussion boards as a kind of sport. And I suppose that all over the country there are sad guys in their Mom's basements desperate for attention. They can't get the attention by doing anything positive, so they do it by going into common spaces and s****ng all over the floor so as to disgust and repel those who meet there.

At any rate, that's what we have seen here for many months now. Fortunately, Shades has now enabled the necessary action by the moderation team.

I attempted to pull up some of his posts from the old asshats.com forum bragging about his shutting down of the TribTalk Discussion forum, but the WayBack Machine (Internet Archive) only had useless 404 message pages saved of asshats.com.

[Kukulkan]

Hard agree. This point has been stressed too much already but I will restate that I think we, as a community, also need to do better at collectively ignoring trolls that come our way. Yes they are disruptive and annoying, but the stark reality is that they rely on the reactions of those they are attempting to troll in order to fuel their ways. Ignoring trolls removes the source of satisfaction they get from watching a poster have a meltdown on the board. Eventually they will realize they can't get what they seek and will move on.

[Moksha]

The way to combat trolls is to be aware of their pathology and not be afraid to use a box of rubber bands (a metaphor for moderation skills) to bring them down.