Even the healthiest online communities deal with them at some point – online trolls. Imagine this: within an otherwise thriving community you have one troublesome user who comes into your community daily, posting inappropriate comments and attacks. You block them – and 2 seconds later they’re back with a new username. Or perhaps you have a user who provokes others endlessly, then begins contacting you to complain that you’re not removing those who attacked him in return. Maybe you have a user who’s clearly maintaining 5 different usernames, playing them against one another and your community.

So how do you protect an otherwise healthy community from these “trolls”?

Action of some kind is necessary. Without it, you send a message to your quality users that you don’t care about them, and you give the trolls permission to take over your site. So what’s a Community Manager to do? The key to managing these kinds of trolls is human moderation. Let me be clear – we love automated moderation. The more machines can do for us with regard to effectively managing large content data sets, the better. That said, when it comes to managing clever trolls who are devoted to creating havoc on your site, you need humans. Smart ones. Ones that know your community well.

Some days our moderation team is seemingly playing a game of whack-a-troll, quickly identifying and blocking trolls who continually reappear on the site with new usernames. Some days we’re diffusing fights between users who constantly battle each other, either by publicly easing the tone of the thread, or by privately communicating with each offending user. Since every troll is different, a singular response to dealing with them won’t always work. And that’s what makes understanding of the community and its users intimately the key to knowing that Dave928 is actually our favorite troll in a new guise. It’s the human element that allows us to understand that Angel893 is usually well-behaved, but gets riled up occasionally and needs to be blocked for a few of days. And it’s informed judgment that tells us that Eagle82 will go rogue if we block him and will create new and evil clones all over the site unless we privately and politely ask him to check his behavior.  

Is there a benefit to automated moderation? Of course – and we look forward to innovations that allow machines to handle more and more of the load. But when it comes to managing trolls on your site, there is no replacement for human acumen. Human moderators can predict what trolls will do next, and can quickly adapt to new and creative ways trolls try to make trouble on your site. So roll up your sleeves and get in there – your community deserves it and is counting on you!