I actually thought about that in my initial reply to the OP, but discarded it since the point seemed to be to help new monks adjust to the trolls - which would be the very same people who wouldn't know to change their CSS. If anything, we'd have to go the other way to help the new monks: add this to the CSS of new users while experienced ones could go and update their CSS to remove it. Not a lot better in my estimation, but still would be there to advise the new monks.

That said, it still doesn't quite help in cases where a troll may have multiple accounts - one for trolling, and one for reading (where they'd see their own highlights and get their kick from it). Not that any solution would do this perfectly, but a small barrier to entry may still be quite helpful here.

I think that is an excellent suggestion. I'd probably apply the class to the whole node.

I can see Tanktalus' point of it being less useful to the relatively novice or casual visitor. But I think the people who would really benefit from such visual cues are a certain class of user not solely novice/casual visitors. So I agree that it wouldn't help some people who could use the help, but I like the idea of it requiring a tiny bit of effort to activate it (and people being able to choose their own visual marker) so that it is a feature that people have to choose to use which will lead to it being less fretted over by the rest of "us". (I don't think novice/casual visitors would recognize the point of a subtle label anyway.)

Another idea that occurred to me was a lack of label for presumed trolls. We could show the author's current level next to their name in the by-line header. We would display no level for anonymous nor for sub-zero-XP authors.

I'd show the level name not the level number as I think the level number would be too easy to overinterprept as some indication of vetting. The level names would be a more playful addition. I think it would nicely enhance the XP game without over emphasis (which causes problems).

I haven't bothered to check whether the recent batch of characteristicly careless, terse, judgemental, anonymous replies are from one of the usual suspects. I only mention them to note that the current trolling is likely to be anonymous and thus these proposed changes won't apply.

Perhaps downvotes to anonymous nodes should be recorded against the high three bytes of the source IP address so that future anonymous nodes from the same "class C" can be similarly subtly tagged?

Another idea that occurred to me was a lack of label for presumed trolls. We could show the author's current level next to their name in the by-line header. We would display no level for anonymous nor for sub-zero-XP authors.

That reminds me to How about coloured names based on xp's?, an idea that got very little support because it would cause a raise in votes based on nodes' authors, not its actual contents (and personally, I've taken the opposite approach and did some CSS to completely hide nodes' authors).

As a side note, I'd like to point out that the labeling jdporter suggests shouldn't be blindly applied to everyone whose XP is less than zero. Some user's first messages could get a negative rep for other reasons than trolling. I'd label if XP < MAGIC1 and posts > MAGIC2 (for some low values of MAGIC1 and MAGIC2, like -9 and 3 for example) or even if posts/XP > MAGIC (with MAGIC around -3).

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David Serrano

Another idea that occurred to me was a lack of label for presumed trolls. We could show the author's current level next to their name in the by-line header. We would display no level for anonymous nor for sub-zero-XP authors.

I'd show the level name not the level number as I think the level number would be too easy to overinterprept as some indication of vetting. The level names would be a more playful addition. I think it would nicely enhance the XP game without over emphasis (which causes problems).

Did this (crudely; attribution needs a refactor which I may do later). We'll see what the reaction is.
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Online Fortune Cookie Search

We'll see what the reaction is.

You already got some reactions. (Custom CSS)++