Like George Bush's methods to round up terrorists, the methods of some trusted users create more trolls than they round up.
Like George Bush's methods to round up terrorists, the methods of some trusted users create more trolls than they round up.
Consider the tactics of one trusted user, who has been harassing me for the past week. I'll go into a diary and make productive comments that are well received by other posters, when, suddenly, this TU will pop up and say, "This guy is a troll! Don't give him any mojo!" Or he'll take part of a comment I made in a totally different diary, and he'll post it out of context, saying, "Look at what this troll said! Don't give him any mojo!" And I'm put in a position, where I either have to let the trusted user smear me, or I have to defend my own reputation at the expense of the diary's topic.
Now who is really trolling here? Me? Or is it the trusted user who disrupted the topic of the diary to harass me?
These witch-hunts need to stop. Trusted users, whatever their intentions, have a responsibility to use their power productively, for the good of this community. And when their methods begin to do more harm than good, then their methods need to stop. To accomplish this, I suggest the following practice: Troll-rate comments, not people.
If a person is really a troll, most of their comments will be trollish, and thus they will be troll-rated anyway. But this regular practice of troll-rating a user's comments, even productive ones, only because you suspect he or she is a troll - this must stop. For every actual troll trusted users have nabbed, I wonder how many genuine Kossacks they've squeezed out. These trusted users aren't growing the liberal community, they're diminishing it. They're not protecting it, they're destroying it.
Jesus, I voted for Kerry. I'm on board. But imagine starting at a new school, and for the first week people keep shoving you from behind, yelling "Bully! Bully! Bully!" Then you finally lose your cool and slug someone, and one of them says, "See, I told you he was just a bully!"