How To Deal With Trolls

Trolls are attention seekers. Their mission is to derail the conversation and community you have built up in your channel and have everyone focus solely on them.

The best way to discourage trolls is to not let them know you're upset or bothered by them. The less reaction and attention they receive the quicker they'll get bored and move on to another channel where there are people willing to give them the attention they're seeking.

Regular users shouldn't respond to trolls. Instead they can private message the channel ops to let them know there is a problem. You don't want to say anything in the channel because you'll be giving the trolls the attention they're seeking.

Channel operators should warn the trolls just a few times and then kick and ban them. Once they're banned refrain from discussing the user or problem in the channel. Pretend it never happened because, trolls often join the channel with several different nicks to wait and see the reactions. By talking about after the ban you'll give them what they want and then they'll try to evade the ban to get more attention.

As a channel operator don't forget that you set the tone for your users. If you get upset or go nuts about a problem, your users will follow your queue.

If you should need assistance in dealing with a troll or ban evader you can always join #help and ask the WyldRyde staff for assistance.