Why is trolling tolerated?

[hgm]

Well, let's analyze the situation a bit. There is this thread about 'Las Torres', which at this moment has 104 postings in it. But only 3 of these postings are by the alleged troll, and in each of those he makes an absolute fool of himself. If this discussion is so unbearable, who is mostly to blame for that? The troll or the people responsibl;e for those other 101 postings? A large part of that thread is a serious discussion about the fast incremental perft, b.t.w.

People must be bored stiff that they are willing to post in a thread that starts with such a moronic premise as that playing from an opening book give you a super engine. But if the OP inspires people to post serious stuff, it doesn't seem entirely useless, insane as it might be on its own merits.

How many postings are needed to point out a person is wrong or lying? And is there any use to continue a discussion after that?

Moderation is not the same as a thought police. It is not the moderator's task to judge whether what people claim is factually correct, and delete everything that isn't. Wrong claims can be debunked by any member, and it is useful to keep the claim and its debunking on record, so that readers can be educated by it.

[gflohr]

Moderation is not the same as a thought police. It is not the moderator's task to judge whether what people claim is factually correct, and delete everything that isn't. Wrong claims can be debunked by any member, and it is useful to keep the claim and its debunking on record, so that readers can be educated by it.

I agree, but only partly. It is really not the moderators' duty to chase away trolls. They will create new accounts faster than any moderator with a healthy social life is able to ban. It is the community's task to bore them away.

Debunking wrong claims of trolls is a futile task. Trolls are aiming at gaining attention. When I claim that one pawn outweighs two queens I deserve nothing but utter silence. And keeping records of such obvious nonsense is an utter waste of resources.

Remember, never feed the trolls!

[AndrewGrant]

Well if we get those moderator elections up and going again, and I am chosen via the large support from the open-source authors that are tired of the trolls and thieves on these forums, I would vote among the moderators to ban these posters on site. I check the website a few times a day. I have no issue banning repeat accounts.

[Ras]

Moderation is not the same as a thought police. It is not the moderator's task to judge whether what people claim is factually correct, and delete everything that isn't.

Sticking to the charter may be inconvenient, but it's the best way to be fair in moderation also to posters whom a moderator doesn't like. It creates at least some degree of objective standards. Tossing that out of the window might solve the specific problem at hand, but it would create long-term problems down the road. That's why sticking to the "rule of law" approach is best overall.

If the community wants moderator actions against trolling, there has to be an objective definition of trolling agreed upon by the community (we already saw a first attempt falling flat here) and included in the charter through democratic majority vote of the TC members. That's how the community can control moderation activities.

[Daniel Shawul]

Stockfish/lc0 discord is moderated well without the need for "the charter". Use common sense moderation for something like a technical discussion forum -- which should be the easiest of moderating jobs. We shouldn't reduce to tolerating trolling posts under the principle of "don't feed the troll" when you can just get rid of it.
Take stackoverflow for instance, it is hard to prevent your technical question from being closed despite honest intentions to ask a legit technical question. I am not saying this forum be as strict as stackoverflow, but if we want the forum to be a gallery of chess programming discussions, getting rid of trolling posts is a minimum IMHO.

[benb]

... And moderators should delete their additional fake accounts.

Am I to understand from this that an individual signing up with multiple accounts is not a bannable offense here? That's bannable on every forum I've been or wanted to be a part of.

[klx]

Agreed all of the above. Good discussion.