The Wall Street Journal looks at people who troll political sites, but surprisingly leaves out a major source of trolls this year–supporters of Ron Paul. While typically problems with trolls from most sources are limited to people working alone or sometimes with one partner, many Paul supporters use trolling other sites as a planned tactic, failing to understand that this only results in creating antagonism and harming as opposed to helping their candidate. The nearest we saw to this phenomenon in the past was when some supporters of Howard Dean behaved this way in 2003-4. At least that year many more responsible Dean supporters, as well as the Joe Trippi, made statements regarding how counterproductive this was and urged them to cease.
There are some common traits of trolls. One is that many simply want attention, and unfortunately articles like this will only encourage them. Another is that they have little understanding of “netiquette.” A troll featured in the article is quoted as saying, “If you’re on a site and you’re just agreeing with each other all day, where’s the argument?” and “I love to argue.”
What they fail to understand is that there are specific forums and sites which are devoted to argument, but many people do not want to spend all their time on such sites. Such trolls are just as rude, and no more welcome, than a people who might come up to the door of your home to argue their political views whether invited or not. Besides, those who are only interested in the argument are never going to change their minds and to debate them is pointless. It is also a poor use of time for many bloggers. We have lives outside of our blogs, and want to use our on line time effectively. It makes far more sense to spend time on main blog posts which are read by far more people than the comments.
Another problem is that it is both a waste of time and tedious to repeat the same debates continuously. If I have a post on, for example, evolution, I will receive comments each time with virtually the same creationist talking points. It is not worth repeating the same debate over and over. Those who are ignorant of modern science and believe that “evolution is only a theory” or that there is no evidence for evolution are not going to listen to the facts. Blog posts will also frequently contain both links to other sources and tags to pull up previous posts for those who legitimately want to see more of the material supporting a view expressed in a post. It makes far more sense to periodically post on a topic as new material is available for those who are really interested in the facts as opposed to arguing for the sake of argument in the comments. I also find that many of the posts here, as well as other blogs, wind up being linked to by various debate forums which use them to back up their arguments. This is a far more valuable contribution to the debates than to waste time with every troll who wants to debate in the comments to every post.
Some trolls whose comments are not put through will inevitably cry censorship, but a blog or forum owner has the right to determine what is posted on their site. A blogger restricting comments has no relationship to a government which restricts freedom of the speech or the press. Posting a blog comment is more analogous to sending a letter to the editor. While some blogs will post every comment, other blogs see the comment section as reflecting upon the quality of the blog and will exercise editorial control to maintain a site which is worth reading. Trolls who work in large numbers present a particular problem as they will often attempt to hijack a discussion preventing any meaningful discussion of points other than those they want expressed. In the case of Paul supporters, more reasonable arguments are seen when I limit the discussion to meaningful points and exclude the bulk of comments which primarily contain insults against anyone who doesn’t agree with them one hundred percent, racist or anti-Semitic remarks, references to various conspiracy theories, or other arguments which simply defy logic.
