in reply to Penance Highlighting?

I was going to say that replies to a troll will likely get downvoted and result in a good learning experience. But then I noticed that you 1) mentioned the troll by name and 2) actually linked to the troll's home node!! Looks like he got you again -- without even trying! :-)

All kidding aside, I can see some benefit in highlighting based on penance but I'm not convinced it's worth it. Not all trolls are created equal and there are examples on this site where some people consider a user to be a troll while others find the posts humorous. Do we really want to go down the path of branding someone with a scarlet letter??

Ignoring all of that, I'm not actually convinced we have a problem with trolls posting from an actual account. The methods discussed in Do Not Feed the Trolls!!! should be enough to deal with them.

The real problem is with Anonymous Monk. Any countermeasure we use to deal with trolls posting from an actual account will drive them towards posting anonymously. That's where the real battlefield will be and that is where we should be focusing our attention.

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Re^2: Penance Highlighting? (troll food--)
by tye (Sage) on Jul 09, 2008 at 02:46 UTC
    I was going to say that replies to a troll will likely get downvoted and result in a good learning experience.

    If only. I downvote a fair number of troll-food replies (replies to trolling nodes) and they almost always still end up with a positive reputation. There appear to be plenty of people who upvote the misguided taunters of trolls and also the unaware responders.

    - tye        

[reply]
      That's true. It seems like your node on what a troll really is should be required reading for everyone.

      For what it's worth I also make an effort to downvote responses to trolls.

[reply]

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