I feel for you. Its like balancing on a razor, but maybe you could consider making it easier to add people to the ignore list (like a button right next to the post). My simple (although probably wrong) perspective is that the easier you make it to ignore someone the better the community will work.
Posted Aug 15, 2012 17:57 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
That's probably a worthwhile addition, yes.
I've also been pondering ways of altering the presentation of comments posted by people who are being filtered by a lot of people. The account in question here is currently #2 on the list.
Tolerance
Posted Aug 15, 2012 18:11 UTC (Wed) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520)
[Link]
Both idea are good, I thinks.
Tolerance
Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:28 UTC (Wed) by fracek (guest, #85785)
[Link]
What do you think about hell banning people like Hacker News does?
Trolls can still post but only other hell banned people can see them. In this way they won't signup again because they were banned.
Tolerance
Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:41 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
[Link]
I would humbly suggest a "report abuse" button; check three violations of the "polite, respectful" rule, ban the user. It is not censorship but ostracism.
Tolerance
Posted Aug 15, 2012 22:36 UTC (Wed) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562)
[Link]
One problem with the current filtering I have is that it doesn't fully work work in combination with "Unread comments". Comments to a filtered comment aren't marked as such if the filtered comment is already read.
That makes it harder to really ignore subthreads started by $troll which probably leads to more answers and thus more fun for the troll.
Tolerance
Posted Aug 16, 2012 21:23 UTC (Thu) by biged (subscriber, #50106)
[Link]
Hacker News has a small collection of effective tactics (which need not be publicised but are worth looking into)
On a social/human level, a time-limited ban has been found effective on at least one site. It helps reform behaviour of those who are merely ignorant rather than wilfully misbehaving.
It's certainly worth expending some effort on this: LWN comment quality is one of the major features of the site, and as you start to lose the battle the ones misbehaving increasingly get the feeling their behaviour is tolerated or even appreciated. This is a slippery slope, and only LWN features can fix it.