Swatting Trolls v. Encouraging Saints—Who Wins When Threads Go Sideways?

[bob121]

We’ve all seen it: you ask for testimonies of grace and within five posts someone’s waving Psalm 137:9 or Hitler to prove a point.
The food-fight starts, the original question sinks, and the encouragers log off.

• Do we engage the detour in hopes of gospel witness, or gracefully bow out and let the algorithm bury the mess?
• Any practical filters you use before hitting “reply”?

Share one sentence rule you follow when the trolls arrive.
Grace,
bob121 – Tokyo

 

[linux.poet]

To answer the title question, moderators. Moderators always win.

Share one sentence rule you follow when the trolls arrive.

Debate or Report.

If reported, do not debate, and if debated, do not report. If reported, then letting any algorithms bury things is good until the mods show up. As far as I know, forums don’t use algorithms, but letting the thread roll along instead of responding is the wise course. You don’t want your posts to get caught in a moderation evaluation.

If the post breaks the rules of the forum or website, report, if it does not, debate. If the troll is making things off-topic, that’s usually against the rules of forum websites and merits a report instead of debate.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Yanno, there is a sub-forum for this kind of stuff -- the Kitchen Sink.

 

[partinobodycular]

We’ve all seen it: you ask for testimonies of grace and within five posts someone’s waving Psalm 137:9 or Hitler to prove a point.
The food-fight starts, the original question sinks, and the encouragers log off.

Just an FYI, in my opinion, asking for testimonials on a sub-forum open to non-Christians seems like a deliberate affront to the non-Christians present. If you want to share testimonials perhaps it would be better suited to a Christians only forum.

 

[Servus]

We’ve all seen it: you ask for testimonies of grace and within five posts someone’s waving Psalm 137:9 or Hitler to prove a point.
The food-fight starts, the original question sinks, and the encouragers log off.

• Do we engage the detour in hopes of gospel witness, or gracefully bow out and let the algorithm bury the mess?
• Any practical filters you use before hitting “reply”?

Share one sentence rule you follow when the trolls arrive.
Grace,
bob121 – Tokyo

You should probably post the kinds of threads you start in the Christians Only section. When you post here in the open to all area, you're probably going to get people who are antagonistic towards Christianity. When I post in the open to all section it's because I want the input of non-christians, anti-christians and so on. People usually post here to pit Christian ethics and morality against secular ethics and morality.

 

[bob121]

Thanks, Servus & Tinker—good call on Kitchen Sink next time.
Still finding my way around here—so many boards it feels like a maze!
I’ll happily take the input, bow out if it drifts, and let the thread sink.

Just an FYI, in my opinion, asking for testimonials on a sub-forum open to non-Christians seems like a deliberate affront to the non-Christians present. If you want to share testimonials perhaps it would be better suited to a Christians only forum.

Thanks, partinobodycular—point taken. I honestly wasn’t trying to affront anyone; I’m new to the board-map and simply picked the first open space. If a mod wants to slide this over to a Christians-only section, I’m fine with that.

 

[bob121]

You should probably post the kinds of threads you start in the Christians Only section. When you post here in the open to all area, you're probably going to get people who are antagonistic towards Christianity. When I post in the open to all section it's because I want the input of non-christians, anti-christians and so on. People usually post here to pit Christian ethics and morality against secular ethics and morality.

Thanks, Servus—honestly I’m still learning the lay-out here.
I’ll take the cue: next time I’ll drop testimonial-style threads in Christians-Only so the encouragers aren’t forced to wade through the inevitable mud.
Appreciate the steer.

 

[bob121]

Yanno, there is a sub-forum for this kind of stuff -- the Kitchen Sink.

Thanks, Tinker Grey—Kitchen Sink it is next time.
Still finding my way around the maze of boards; I’ll park meta / housekeeping stuff there from now on.

 

[bob121]

To answer the title question, moderators. Moderators always win.


Debate or Report.

If reported, do not debate, and if debated, do not report. If reported, then letting any algorithms bury things is good until the mods show up. As far as I know, forums don’t use algorithms, but letting the thread roll along instead of responding is the wise course. You don’t want your posts to get caught in a moderation evaluation.

If the post breaks the rules of the forum or website, report, if it does not, debate. If the troll is making things off-topic, that’s usually against the rules of forum websites and merits a report instead of debate.

Thanks, linux.poet—solid, practical rule. I’ll copy it into my pocket:
Debate or report—never both, never neither.
Appreciate the mod-work you all do to keep the place sane.

 

[linux.poet]

Thanks, Servus—honestly I’m still learning the lay-out here.
I’ll take the cue: next time I’ll drop testimonial-style threads in Christians-Only so the encouragers aren’t forced to wade through the inevitable mud.

Yes, there’s a reason why we have the Christians’ Only subforums.

But the content you placed in the OP as what trolls would do

you ask for testimonies of grace and within five posts someone’s waving Psalm 137:9 or Hitler to prove a point.

seemed like it would be more commonplace on Facebook or Twitter than here. Psalm 137:9 and Hitler would be off-topic, since you asked for testimonies of grace, and people who post off-topic posts like that repeatedly just get banned. (Calling political leaders Hitler is explicitly banned in the political sections too.)

By the way, a testimonies of grace thread would belong in the Deeper Fellowship area here, in case you were wondering about that.

In broader social media, debate or report does still apply, but after awhile you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth your time to do the debate. The problem with doing nothing is that the slanderers will drown you out if you don’t post at least one counter argument, they will come to define your message for you. You cannot let yourself be defined by your harshest critics. Still, dealing with abusers/slanderers is exhausting work, even when you have the positional and spiritual authority to manage them. I would never oblige someone to debate themselves into exhaustion over some triviality.

The way I manage my energy is just to stay off social media (aside from YouTube) and put my time into forums where I either rely on other moderators or I have mod tools to deal with rule violators myself and I don’t end up having to fight reputation battles all the time. Authority actually saves a lot of energy in comparison to expensive emotional reactions of fear and anger. But that may not be for everyone.

Instead, I would advise to pick your platforms and your battles, and learn their best practices one at a time. You do Facebook? Learn the best practices there. Twitter? Same. YouTube? Ok. TikTok? Whatever. Forum like this one? Not too hard.

 

[Servus]

I'm here to troll the trolls. It's my calling. Not really.