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

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

bob121 said:

Share one sentence rule you follow when the trolls arrive.

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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.

bob121 said:

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.

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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

bob121 said:

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

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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.