Re: Troll Warning

[Perl Mouse]

Trolls eat votes. People see a horrendous post and think it's important to downvote it, not knowing that it's already got plenty of downvotes. This is significant to those who are on a vote budget.

Doesn't the same hold for good posts? People find it important to upvote good posts (even more so than to downvote bad notes - just look at the number of upvotes vs downvotes). High level monks eat votes as well - they eat more than trolls. If you consider "vote budget" to be a real issue, you should argue for a limit on both sides: once a node gets more than X upvotes, or more than Y downvotes, voting on the node closes.

As an alternative, I would propose that posts by Anonymous Monk have a minimum reputation limit of -9. Once a post has reached that limit, the downvote option is disabled. That would act as an indicator and also eliminate the negative-rep badge incentive for Anonymous trolls.

The few trolls that would actually care about node reputation (doubtful - real trolls care about responses) and would be bothered by the reputation limit would take a few seconds to create an account. Just go to the sign-on page, enter an email address of '[e-mail]', collect your password, and you're off.

I also think you're solving the wrong problem. Trolls are not the problem. Troll droppings are: the replies. And considering there are always people eager to reply, the damage will be done before enough downvotes have been collected. For a flag to warn people about the existance of a troll, you need the flag in place before people can reply. So you might want to disable making replies before a node is at least X hours old, for some X. Which I don't think is what people really want.

[Roy Johnson]

Doesn't the same hold for good posts?

No, because upvoting isn't being baited. People downvote to discourage posts like the one being voted one, but trolls aspire to acquire those downvotes. So the downvotes are wasted (are, in fact, counterproductive). Upvotes do exactly what they're intended to do, so they're not wasted.

real trolls care about responses

As I said, I expect responses to be reduced when people know that the post has already been widely dismissed.

Just go to the sign-on page, enter an email address of '[e-mail]', collect your password, and you're off.

That gives the monks more information, so I see that as a benefit, not a tactic that completely negates my proposal. People notice new names and see that it's their first post or remember that they have a history of bad posts. That's why most trolls use Anonymous Monk.

Trolls are not the problem. Troll droppings are: the replies.[...] the damage will be done before enough downvotes have been collected

My proposal was all about reducing the response to trolls by giving people an indication that they don't need to reply or vote. You speak of "the damage" as if it's an all-at-once situation. The troll threads of the last week continued to fester for days. What I propose would start a process of containment within the first hour (based on my observations).

It did occur to me to make certain posts un-reply-able, but that would be too problematic. My proposal does not impinge on freedom (except, in my alternate proposal, the freedom to continue to downvote a trash post, and that's one reason it's not my primary proposal). The strongest criticism of my proposal is that it's not needed or wouldn't work. Nobody has given any reason to think it would do any kind of harm.