Why is trolling tolerated?

[AndrewGrant]

I'm pro SHID, but for the entire website.

[phhnguyen]

Why is it a hard problem? We don’t need to change nor vote to change the rules of the forum. Just move those posts to Chess players forum since they don’t relate to programming. Even we may create a total new forum for those posts if people in Chess players refuse

[Rebel]

I'm pro SHID, but for the entire website.

And then what ?

I don't like discord.

[hgm]

Unfortunately it is not against the charter to be wrong, to be stupid, or to fake that behavior.

I admit that I do not like the current level of trolling. But acting against persons based on how much they are disliked invites (moderator mediated) mob rule. That makes it a sliding slope, that eventually could lead to censoring every minority opinion. So I do not see an easy solution.

And as I see it there are two sides to this problem: apart from trolling, there is an ever increasing atmosphere of intolerance and hostility. Even in cases of genuine differences of opinion. A few years ago, hardly any post was reported. But nowadays reports flood in, requesting removal of postings for stating opinions the plaintiff doesn't like, or for making claims that aren't valid. Usually these are reported for being 'off topic'.

It seems to me there also is the tendency to greatly blow things out of proportion. I identify two members here who behave like they are rather stupid. It woul be very easy to avoid the topics they create; they don't even create that many. The real problem is that there is hardly any interesting stuff posted. Therefore the moronic postings still get to dominate the forum, and people keep reading those, because there is nothing else to read. The lack of interesting postings will not be solved by culling away the stupid ones.

[Guenther]

Unfortunately it is not against the charter to be wrong, to be stupid, or to fake that behavior.

I admit that I do not like the current level of trolling. But acting against persons based on how much they are disliked invites (moderator mediated) mob rule. That makes it a sliding slope, that eventually could lead to censoring every minority opinion. So I do not see an easy solution.

And as I see it there are two sides to this problem: apart from trolling, there is an ever increasing atmosphere of intolerance and hostility. Even in cases of genuine differences of opinion. A few years ago, hardly any post was reported. But nowadays reports flood in, requesting removal of postings for stating opinions the plaintiff doesn't like, or for making claims that aren't valid. Usually these are reported for being 'off topic'.

It seems to me there also is the tendency to greatly blow things out of proportion. I identify two members here who behave like they are rather stupid. It woul be very easy to avoid the topics they create; they don't even create that many. The real problem is that there is hardly any interesting stuff posted. Therefore the moronic postings still get to dominate the forum, and people keep reading those, because there is nothing else to read. The lack of interesting postings will not be solved by culling away the stupid ones.

Well permanent lying or pretending things, which can be proven wrong easily should be a point for warning(s) and later timely ban(s) and then disclosure of accounts. This already happened in the past, even if it is/was not literally written in the forum rules. So what?
We would have saved us already 2-3 trolls in the programmer section and 2-3 trolls (just the hyperactive ones) in the main section... (making more than 50% of all posts sometimes)

Ever thought that people don't write any interesting posts anymore, because they don't want to be a part of this troll forum as it is?

[Karlo Bala]

The real problem is that there is hardly any interesting stuff posted. Therefore the moronic postings still get to dominate the forum, and people keep reading those, because there is nothing else to read. The lack of interesting postings will not be solved by culling away the stupid ones.

Very true.

[Bo Persson]

Well permanent lying or pretending things, which can be proven wrong easily should be a point for warning(s) and later timely ban(s) and then disclosure of accounts.

Or it would make you qualified to run for President. Just call the evidence Fake News.

[mvanthoor]

The real problem is that there is hardly any interesting stuff posted.

If my level of PM's to and from different people is an indication, much of the interesting stuff is posted in PM's; and I think the reason for that is that in the past, there were posts of people who were not interested in "insignificant" or "low-end" engines.

The authors of Koivisto were right: the top-end engine programmers (who write neural network implementations from scratch and/or invent those concepts) don't post on this forum (or any forum) anymore; everything seems to goes through Discord. The problem with that, same as with IRC, is that information only exists if you are there at exactly the right time. You can't imagine how many useful posts I've found across the internet in (archived) sites, newsgroups and forums, sometimes as far back as 1995, while starting out on writing my engine.

On discord, all that information would be lost as soon as the chat is done and/or the server closes down; at least as far as I know.

It's one of the reasons why I'm attempting to write a website for Rustic. If I'd ever want to write a new engine in another language, I'd have all the information I'd need right there, written by someone I can understand perfectly well: me, myself and I. Nowadays, if I find interesting information somewhere, I actually archive it myself, such as the old Bruce Moreland website.

[Michel]

Don't feed trolls! That is the approved way to get rid of them.

Exactly. I do not understand why known trolls are able to create long threads. What they are posting is obvious nonsense to anyone. Why not simply ignore their posts? They will go away soon enough.

[DrEinstein]

Don't feed trolls! That is the approved way to get rid of them.

Yes, that's correct. But sometimes it's hard not to feed them, and, not to forget, it's hard for a lot of people. Some always will get weak and start writing... q.e.d.