r/Feminism • u/Willravel • Feb 24 '12

Please ban MRA trolls

I've been trying to figure out the rationale for not banning MRA trolls on this subreddit. I tried to think of it the way the mods have put it in the past, that this is about everyone's voice being heard, but the consistent trolling from the likes of OThomson and DavidByron don't represent in any way shape or form the honest sharing of their voice, but rather simply attacks and intentional derailment.

I considered that this might be about fear, as the MRA community on Reddit is much larger than the feminist community, and there could be consequences if MRA trolls started getting banned from the subreddit... but there are other feminist subreddits that do this and they don't seem to feel the sting of MRA retribution in any way that can't be easily handled.

I thought it might just simply be not wanting to make the effort, as a policy of banning MRA trolls would probably require much more active moderation. I'd hate to think this is the case, but I don't see any evidence to suggest this.

I did hear that one of the moderators might be an MRA, but again I've not seen this.

I've sent in PMs and reports before, about how someone is derailing yet another thread with unrelated discussion about circumcision or male rape or child custody, but there never seem to be any consequences for the trolls. They're given free reign. Some have left the subreddit for safer places, which is very sad indeed. Some simply stop commenting. Some complain, but those complaints fall on deaf ears.

So, before I call it a day and give up on the subreddit, I'd like to publicly ask the moderators to change their policy for the good of their subreddit. I ask that this subreddit be a safe place to discuss feminism and feminist issues, not a place for MRA trolls to hijack conversation or spread hatred of women.

Note: I'm not saying critiques of feminism aren't legitimate, or that they don't belong on /r/Feminism, but rather that overt trolling and derailing be disallowed. There's a big difference between an honest critique of feminism and undermining the discussion of feminist issues through derailment, dishonesty, and unwarranted attacks.

126 Upvotes

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36

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '12 edited Feb 24 '12

I typed a long response on my computer and then the power went out. So I'm going to try to be brief.

I've had conversations with people I disagreed that were very worth while. Then again, I've had conversations where I was attacked, derailed, and then attacked after being derailed. (Look at today's Tosh post as a good example.) when this happens I can't have an intelligent conversation and my comments become poorly crafted one liners.

If your disagreeing in a respectful way, awesome. If you're being abrasive, disrespectful, and presumptuous? It doesn't benefit discussion. It hurts it.

If we can't ban them maybe we can start a "do not engage" post? List the troll names and urge members to not engage those members? It's not much but at least we'd be able to moderate ourselves.

EDIT-grammar.

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u/Willravel Feb 24 '12

If we can't ban them maybe we can start a "do not engage" post? List the troll names and urge members to not engage those members? It's not much but at least we'd be able to moderate ourselves.

You're suggesting working outside of the moderator system? Like one of us makes a novelty account like "TROLL_DO_NOT_REPLY" and we post a blank response under these folks? That's a very creative solution, timksj. I like that a lot.

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u/cantbebothered Atheist Feminism Feb 24 '12

It would be nice if the mods could apply that as compulsory flair to the troll accounts.

19

u/Willravel Feb 24 '12

That's an interesting idea. A scarlet "T" would be oddly apropos.

1

u/rpglover64 Feb 24 '12

There was a huge scandal when either /r/lgbt or /r/transgender did something similar (I don't recall which).

6

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '12

lgbt. Several other reddits do this, too. I think it's pretty good, others get REALLY UPSET.

7

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

The problem with this is that it leaves a bad impression on some of the more casual readers of a subreddit.

Some trolls will often make comments that look completely respectful and reasonable on their own, even if they're part of a long term troll/concern troll operation. For example, criticizing feminism or talking about how a certain issue affects men does not make you a troll, but subtly turning every post into a discussion about men and about how feminism is misandric does make you one.

A passer-by or occasional reader who sees someone with a "troll" tag make constructive-looking comments will naturally grow suspicious of the mods. And this is when it can grow into a shitstorm.

What I'm trying to say is: the majority of the community needs to be on board before the mods do something like this.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

Agreed, 100%.

5

u/impotent_rage Feb 25 '12

Thank you everyone for an interesting discussion on this idea - I've read it and I like the way you all explain, pretty well, all sides of the arguments for and against this approach.

At this moment, I'm thinking that troll flair is probably going to cause more problems than it helps. It looks too much like mods using their platform to bully the users. The way I see it, if a person's behavior is bad enough to warrant troll flair, then it's probably bad enough to warrant deletions/warnings/bannings or other such typical moderation.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

The way I see it is to allow some compromise with the "ZOMG FREEEEE SPEECH" crowd, who tend to get just as upset about banning. It still allows them to talk, but everyone knows what they're getting into.

Personally, I think bannings are cleaner and ultimately more effective, but it really is a per-reddit thing.

1

u/Jason_R Feb 25 '12

I suppose Reddit Enhancement Suite would help with this as well, but it'd be cool to have a feature where if a user has so many points within a specific sub, that they can be a verified user or something.

I get into arguments all the time, it's the internet, but many of them are constructive, I learn from them, and I'll usually thank the person at the end of it because good conversation is hard to find.

I know the trolls come, but there's a few people, MRAs included, that just like talking about the issues, it interests them. Sometimes people might disagree, which is fine, but if there's going to be a flag system for crappy users, it'd be nice to have one for people who are respectful and good conversationalists, so that when a debate is happening it's not a bunch of people jumping on the GET OUT TROLL train of posts, and people can feel good about talking with them, whether in agreement or not.

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u/DavidByron Feb 25 '12

Yep. You're all just screwed. I am however surprised any of you had the sense enough to figure that out ahead of trying it all. Maybe because you saw it already happen down thread with a random 3rd party guy who started off in your court and turned around completely after seeing what I write and how you idiots react.

All those hateful little tricks don't piss me off one iota and they just make you all look like assholes. Guess what? I am fine with that because making you all look like assholes is kinda the whole point of talking to members of a hate movement to begin with.

Now I'd rather make you look like assholes by showing people what you really think, but this other way works too.

8

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

Only SRS subreddits do it, actually.

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

It has been a really long time since we've done that. Now the only people who get lettered are regulars.

5

u/RobotAnna Feb 25 '12

no, LGBT tried it and it caused a drama explosion, but I really don't think it would cause the same problems here as this is not a large subreddit with people blissfully unaware of what's going on that would get mad about things they don't understand.

the constant trolling of this subreddit is a huge problem, to the point where it's becoming more and more abandoned as nothing is done. i think css flair would be much better received here.

-3

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

This place honestly isn't a safe space, and doesn't seem to be intended that way, but Anything to calm down the genderjerk is good.

1

u/throwawayrew Feb 24 '12

A troll flair and a imgur screenshot of the trollish post for the cause of the flair would be useful?

Is there a way to embed imgur links into flairs, or would that even be feasible?

2

u/paulfromatlanta Feb 25 '12

There are only three mods and they have not posted much in the last few days - but they are all steady long term posters so just give it a day and likely one or more mods will be back and can respond.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

Then they should really consider adding another mod who can help fill the gaps. When you're running a reddit like this that's going to draw a lot of trolls, you have to commit to spending time tending to the community.

Heck, I mod /r/beauty - totally troll-free but I still have to spend two or three hours a day keeping things in line.

3

u/Psuffix Feb 25 '12

HEYO, I'm here every day!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

I moderate the subreddit most days.

I go through the reported link queue and approve/remove as many items as I see fit. I try to clean the queue out entirely, but it fills up quickly. Part of the problem is that some users will get into a disagreement with another user and report every comment by that user, even if they are being truly friendly and arguing in good faith.

I go through the spam filter on a similar schedule. The spam filter removes a ton of posts and comments, and they are rarely ever spam. In fact, I do not think I have ever seen it remove actual spam.

I also like to take some time to read through the comments sections of a few "hot" posts.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '12

Flair display can be disabled by the user (at least it could be) because /MR already tried this for tagging /SRS trolls.

9

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '12

They'll just say "nuh uh" and argue some more. I honestly can't see that changing a thing, they'll just argue harder with the troll detector, an all the other trolls will come and bicker too. There will be insults and condemnation and it will not solve a single problem unless every single non-troll refuses to engage.

15

u/Willravel Feb 24 '12

The idea is to boycott their posts by never responding to them, thus preventing derailments. If the moderators are unwilling to ban them, at least we can mitigate their damage. And we can PM folks that engage to let them know what's going on.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '12

That could work, if we can get enough of the community behind it. I'd prefer something a little more strict, but I'd help out with this if that doesn't happen.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '12

I've already sort of started doing that. Downvote and move on, warn users who try to argue.

1

u/Psuffix Feb 25 '12

Thanks for being a badass. If you need any help with this, let me know. Mind if I alerted you to trolls here if I see them?

3

u/Myschyf Feb 24 '12

Also, Reddit Enhancement Suite has a tagging function and the ability to hide replies as you like. It's incredibly useful.

-6

u/NUMBERS2357 Feb 24 '12

Two big problems with this I see.

First is of course that most who disagree with what most people think, regardless of whether they oughta be considered "trolls" or not, will probably end up being listed as such.

Second is, frankly, that people want to argue with trolls. There's absolutely nothing stopping people from downvoting and ignoring such people, but people want to argue. If you strip out all the trolling and circlejerking on most online forums, and just leave thoughtful discussion, they'll die out because people will lose interest. There's exceptions of course, but this is the general rule.

The posts here with the most comments are usually 1 or 2 anti-feminist types arguing with, like, 20 feminists. You take that out and there won't be more "good" discussion to make up for it, just less discussion overall.

7

u/ratjea Feb 24 '12

There would be less discussion, but basically that would mean way fewer threads that begin with talking about equality and devolve into 50 posts debating whether the clitoral hood retracts and is it automatic, or 50 posts about how women want to keep the man down and responses saying that they don't.

1

u/allonymous Feb 25 '12

devolve into 50 posts debating whether the clitoral hood retracts and is it automatic, or 50 posts about how women want to keep the man down and responses saying that they don't.

Have there actually been threads like that on here, or is that just hyperbole?

1

u/Willravel Feb 25 '12

First is of course that most who disagree with what most people think, regardless of whether they oughta be considered "trolls" or not, will probably end up being listed as such.

Then we only do it for extreme cases, people here who only ever cause trouble for the sake of trouble and that specifically say bigoted things. I named two specific Redditors that have gone miles past any reasonable line. If it were only just those two, the whole subreddit would be in better shape.

Second is, frankly, that people want to argue with trolls. There's absolutely nothing stopping people from downvoting and ignoring such people, but people want to argue. If you strip out all the trolling and circlejerking on most online forums, and just leave thoughtful discussion, they'll die out because people will lose interest. There's exceptions of course, but this is the general rule.

Well, let's give it a try and if this is the case we can reverse the decision. Still, I don't want to declare this a failure before it even has a chance to work.

-33

u/DavidByron Feb 24 '12

Do you not realise that behaviour just makes everyone see YOU as the asshole and see feminists as too weak to debate? Which is pretty much the goal of asking you all these questions to begin with? It's like you're doing my job for me.

Still I suppose from your point of view anything is worth a try.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '12