Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6941549-20140812084143/@comment-24590102-20140812165716

What a tiny bit of annoyance has to do with backbone, I have no idea. But if anyone's got some spare backbone for sale, I could use some   :^)

Anyways, I come here to get away from politics, so you may as well ask what on Nirn I'm doing on this thread? Oh, that's right! I'm procrastinating. I said it the day before and I said it again yesterday. I'll give up procrastinating tomorrow!

Back to the OP. I think this might be a general complaint about an issue which may have been misunderstood and mismanaged largely because the whole concept of trolls, trolling, and trollery may have been a tad oversimplified. Those who've had a little contact with trolls might benefit by spending maybe 25 minutes reviewing behaviour of politicians during question time in parliament - with a critical thinking cheat sheet in hand. The similarities between forum trolls and parliamentarians are scary and depressing - well, at least for me.

That said, I would caution folks that things like "respect", "courtesy", "non-offensive language" (which is really racist given that the "offensive" language classification almost exclusively singles out words with Germanic roots while ignoring synonyms with non-Germanic roots), and "abuse" are either side-issues or too vague to accurately base any behavioural analysis on. Trolls are political animals. They only "disrespect"/"abuse" when they perceive it furthers their political agenda by altering perceptions or attitudes to alienate people whose point of view they wish to censor. It is this attempted censorship which is harmful, not the disrespect or abuse which, although aggravating, are trivial by comparison. However, because trolls are political they are almost always suckers for loopholes (pettifoggery) and can be identified by their use of sophistry to evade factual discussion - which makes sophistry, in my opinion, absolutely diagnostic of and inseparable from trollery. I'd wager that if you start banning people for ad hominem arguments, straw man arguments, and other formally defined deceptive "debating" practices collectively referred to as "sophistry" or more ambiguously as "fallacies", the trolls will be left with no further wiggle-room to adapt in. And don't be deceived when (not if) the trolls start trying to confuse people by strategically “misusing” the term “ad hominem” to refer to statements which are meagrely insulting or disrespectful comments but which do not form the basis of the argument to censor or disregard (and, thereby, cannot be an actual ad hominem argument). The key, when dealing with trolls, is to believe nothing they say - even if one does appear to have quoted you correctly - always revisit the source of the quote as they will often make subtle changes to exaggerate and, thereby, distort perceptions of the character and, in a subtle way, the meaning of your expression when "quoting" you.

I think that MindArk have had a lot of success controlling the issue of trolling in Entropia Universe which they achieved through a focus on banning deceptive behaviour with their Terms of Use - specifically section 8(g). Because political agendas inevitably deviate from unanticipated facts, proponents of political agendas will try to "tow the political line" at all costs by attempting to warp perceptions around the unanticipated facts (i.e. trying to make the tail wag the dog). This forces politically motivated behaviour over the line into deceptive territory where the disruptive person (i.e. troll/psychopath) can be nailed by the ToU.

This is just to say that I think it's ok and even healthy for people to express their frustration and that the real problem is when trolls use any one of a variety of methods to censor inconvenient points of view – sometimes by exploiting the classification of aggravation as “rudeness” but mostly by trying to discredit and alienate their victims with dishonest debating tactics. Sophistry, moreover, is the language of psychopaths. If you prohibit sophistry (on the grounds that it is deceptive behaviour – which it is) the trolls won't be able to operate here. Period.

For my part, this is just food for thought.

Bon Apetite! :^)