All right, on behalf of the site, here's what's happening with this whole "troll" fight.
Here's basically how this whole mess started. Some people have indeed been abusing the troll ratings, either by trollrating things they merely disagree with instead of true "troll" posts, or by rating troll posts up that quite obviously shouldn't be rated up. There are a whole bunch of other people who have been whining about perfectly reasonable troll posts being given -- sometimes insincerely, quite frankly. At the same time, there seems to be quite a few people going around accusing other people of being repeat trolls, sockpuppets, or closet rightwingers, then trollrating them to kingdom come even for postings that are not troll worthy.
I want to make clear that there are no "sides" to take here. There is no 'righteous' side to this debate, because
all of the extreme positions are at fault. Luckily, 99% of the users on this site fall squarely and rightly in the middle.
1. The people doing the troll rating of posts that are not appropriate to this site are, in general, doing it correctly. And for that matter, the "troll hunters" calling out other users for being repeat trolls have indeed been right in their suppositions. So with very, very limited exceptions, the community moderation is working, and all of the hundreds of people engaging in that community moderation are doing a service, and should be thanked.
(Please be circumspect about "rating up" posts that others have chosen to hide. Your recommendation will undo three "troll" ratings. Be very, very sure you're certain about what you're doing, because we have definitely seen some very inappropriate comments that were rated up that shouldn't have been.)
2. On the other hand, we simply need to stop disrupting threads with accusations of who is or is not a repeat troll, sockpuppet, etc. Quite frankly, the disruption caused by some of these "discoveries" has been far, far in excess of the actual disruption the troll ever was actually causing. There's absolutely no point in disrupting thread after thread with announcements of who is a "troll" if they are not currently actually engaging in inappropriate behavior.
Instead, please just email Kos and/or one of the frontpagers, and they'll check it out and, if necessary, do something about it. Yes, it sometimes takes a while, and yes, we certainly won't always ban someone based on your say-so. But please note that we have very good tools for checking out who is or isn't a repeat troll or a sockpuppet, and they therefore almost never stick around for long, regardless of how many people troll rate them or don't.
3. We're also aware that some users abuse the troll rating responsibility, either uprating or downrating posts inappropriately. They are VERY few in number, and Kos has been removing the ratings capabilities of some posters as we run across them in accordance with legitimate complaints or with his/our own observations. Quite frankly, we're on it already. Similarly, we don't necessarily wait for some magical mojo threshold before banning people who clearly simply are not willing to be positive members of our community. We delete quite a few actual repeat trolls and other trolls before they ever get more than a handful of negative ratings -- you'd be surprised at how many.
So please have a little faith in us. Kos and the guest editorialists aren't stupid. We have our own judgments on when someone is irresponsibly uprating troll behaviors, and when it is a legitimate disagreement about what is troll behavior, and we take action when such events are brought to our attention and are warranted. We can see who is and who isn't abusing their ratings privileges, and if we've missed someone, point us at a particular thread so that we can look.
And please have faith in your fellow posters. Actual ratings abuse is quite rare, and in 90% of the cases where people disagree on whether or not something is a "trollish" post, they are disagreeing legitimately.
One other little tidbit: despite the doom and gloom, we're just not being overrun by trolls. It ain't happening. The number being banned right now is not proportionally much different, on a weekly basis, from what it has historically been. And the amount of actual troll behavior on threads has stayed at a predictable level too, though it tends to naturally vary quite a bit from week to week according to news cycles and topics.
So that's it. Please follow the accepted community standards for troll rating. Don't go on vigilante hunts -- if someone is probably a repeat troll or sockpuppet, contact us. Don't disrupt entire threads in debates about the appropriateness of certain ratings in either direction -- if someone starts to have a history of inappropriate ratings, we'll find out about it fairly quickly, I assure you. Having those arguments in someone else's conversation is, quite frankly, rude.
Ratings, despite some claims to the contrary, do matter. They are the primary method of community moderation -- a reward for contributions to the community that are especially thoughtful, funny or compelling, and a mechanism for removing behaviors that are simply inappropriate.
For all the people who take this community seriously and who are troll rating inappropriate posts, thank you. We have certain community standards here, and we count on the users of this community to enforce those standards.