Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Blog for Arizona has had a rash of Trolls of late (you all know who they are):
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
As my dear departed grandfather used to say, "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one." The converse is also true.
The writers of this blog have differing views on how to handle trolls. I can only speak to my view.
Trolls are primarily interested in hijacking a web site through its comment page. A good example of this are the online comments at newspaper web sites. Trolls pollute newspaper web sites to such an extent that the online comments have been rendered useless – the comments are largely an online message board for trolls to communicate with one another and celebrate their "trolldom." I no longer read the comments at newspaper web sites because of this phenomenon. I will not allow this to happen here at Blog for Arizona.
We have an exceptionally intelligent and articulate readership who engage in serious and thoughtful discussion (most of the time). The goal of the troll is to disrupt this in one of two ways: they want to engage readers in tit-for-tat combat because they see themselves as some kind of self-annointed warrior for a particular cause or point of view, or they want to discourage others from commenting through intimidation and fear of being attacked by the troll.
Trolls have no respect for individuals or property (intellectual). It is all about them. So please, do not feed the trolls (DFTT). Once I have identified a troll I will remove their comments ASAP and send them to the spam file. When a troll does not get any responses to their troll postings, they will eventually go away.
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Thank you so much for this. I enjoy this blog because it doesn’t devolve to the level of idiocy you see on the newspaper comment boards and many other blogs. Francine is absolutely correct: it’s all about manipulating their reinforcement contingencies 🙂
For those of you who obviously failed history and civics in school, here is a quick primer on constitutional law.
The Bill of Rights limits the power of the federal government to place restrictions on the exercise of the fundamental rights of its citizens, which includes the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, assembly, and to petition the government.
The Bill of Rights imposes limitations on the federal government, NOT private citizens and private business.
Blog for Arizona is a private business, not the government.
For example, the First Amendment freedom of the press (the only private enterprise expressly protected by the Bill of Rights) does not require a newspaper to publish every letter to the editor it receives. The newspaper has editors who exercise editorial discretion and publish only those letters they deem appropriate. I am free to exercise this same editorial discretion on this blog.
Another example. All businesses reserve the right to refuse service to someone who is behaving in a threatening and intimidating manner towards its customers and is otherwise being abusive without regard for persons or property. The business owner is entitled to remove such person from the premises.
I do not have to permit some asshole to post here for the sport of abusing the readers of this blog or to otherwise devalue the content of this blog. This is a private enterprise, and we have the right to protect and preserve the good will of our loyal readership.
As I have said many times before, trolls can spend the $10 per month to maintain their own blog site – and exercise their notion of “free speech” to their heart’s content. Just not here.
Life is too short to trouble with trolls.
Ah. I thought you were Michael Bryan. Apologies.
The question still stands. It seemed the post was right on. Why would remove posts just because they don’t agree with you? I thought the whole point of the blogosphere was the free-exchange of ideas.
I assume you are addressing Michael Bryan who owns this domain. I have never worked for the City of Tucson.
I love a Troll free environment! Thank you
What happened to the post from Robert?
Why would you, the Assistant City of Tucson Prosecutor, be so against Freedom of Speech?
Y’know, Meanie, people tease me because I always say “it’s all dog training to me”. Let me explain. For more than 10 years, I taught people how to train their dogs using entirely operant and classical conditioning. And the first thing I taught them is that “behavior which is reinforced will continue”. Y’see? I’m right! Even Meanie agrees – “behavior which is reinforced will continue.” There is a large tendency not to realize that punishment can be reinforcing because it is a response elicited by the unwanted behavior and any response is reinforcing – and so on and so forth!!
Excellent, thanks.