Alsalamualaikum,
The admins/moderators of this forum should have the ability to detect and counter trolling. And what do I mean when I say trolling you might ask? Well, this is a list of some of the key attributes of what I'm referring to as a troll:
- He/She is a provocateur and display obvious characteristics of dishonesty, lack of understanding and a lack of ability to learn and better himself/herself. Basically wasting everyones time. Because think about it, what reason is there to talk to an Internet user in the first place, isn't it to hopefully help a real person? This is why unless we have the science to truly understand the person behind that Profile Name we are shooting in the dark when replying to people.
- This person is lying about who he or she is. This could be the person's gender (could eventually get access to the sister or brother sections without "qualifications" if kept ignored for too long). This could be the person's religion. I've seen many trolls of this type lately, more than when I first joined this forum. They sometimes display obvious kufr and lack of understanding of basic rulings of Islam. When they engage in a discussion they usually come from a narrative of a kafir, it's not hard to see when they expose themselves. This does, however, not apply to a person that creates an account for one question and explicitly state that he/she doesn't want to be identified.
- They usually have disposable accounts. You will never see a user with a 100< post count acting blatantly stupid and consequently provoking users into answering his/hers ridiculous questions and statements. Of course the troll will not be satisfied with any answer, because he or she is nothing more than a provocateur. For argument's sake, lets say that a user with a large amount of posts is a troll. This person would value his/her account enough to not make bad moves that would jeopardize his/her credibility. Such a move would be asking a stupid question and keep provoking people for a long period of time into engaging in a discussion that will lead to nowhere.
- They have in many cases a bad character. They can be rude or disrespectful. They, as I explained earlier, probably have disposable accounts, i.e. post counts of around 5. The combination of rudeness and a low post count is not a good indicator.
As moderators you should, in my opinion, start to identify trolling and counter it. And as a community we should answer people's questions, how stupid they may be. But if it goes too far and the questioner contradicts him-/herself too severely and in multiple times display those characteristics that I've described above, then we should report him/her. And the moderators should take such reports seriously and investigate the matter and make fair judgments.
A final notes: I'm in no way interested in seeing real users getting shoo'd off from the forum.
I'd rather see a troll stay than seeing a real user getting mistreated or worse, banned. This thread is made only to enlighten the community about the issue of trolls. And I'm using this term because it's so vaguely defined on the Internet that I can easily fit all the points above in it, so it's very efficient. I know that the rules of this forum are very well defined and cover most of the issue of trolling. We should be proactive, creative and smart. Not just punish people that do stuff like swearing (I know you do more than punish people that swear, but for the sake of the argument). The thing is: There are some trolls out there that call themselves muslims, make kufr multiple times, have a low post count and are rude. This is what encouraged me to make this thread, to make sure that these points that I brought up are focused on by moderators.
We need to make sure that trolls have to do more than start a new account and say stuff like: "I muslim, I support gay, I do gay, whay Islam no accept gay?" and have honest muslims give them elaborate and lengthy replies.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially from admins and moderators.