MetaChat - i'm in a web-based quandary.

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07 September 2007

i'm in a web-based quandary. i don't want to be "that guy", but i'm afraid i may not have much choice...→[More:]

i help run a local political website, and we have a persistant troll that's been leaving comments that have been filled with opposition party-line rhetoric (rove-ian "democrat party" kind of stuff) at best and mildly abusive at worst. we've been tolerating it for the most part, mostly because we really don't have to counter him at all - his own words make him sound like a homunculous buffoon. but lately it's been growing rather tiresome - and profane. and in a few cases, patently offensive.

thanks to the software backend, we know that the lion's share of his posting activity comes from the computer network of a rather large us government agency.

here's my dilemma: should i just ban his ip address (thus ruining it for everyone who happens to share the same pipes), should i publicly "out" him as a government employee who is effectively bilking taxpayer money to regale us with garbage, or should i forward a selection of his offensive comments to abuse@fill-in-the-blank.gov?

post by: syntax at: 13:24 | 5 comments

I think you're missing a few choices here. You could post a nonspecific warning (Acceptable Use Policy for the site). You could give him a specific warning. You could ban his user account, not his IP. You could ban the IP for a week so that he gets the hint (though he might just think the site is down?). Perhaps there's a WordPress script that inserts asterisks in place of offensive words?

The guy doesn't agree with your politics and displays assholish behavior, but I don't think that justifies outing his place of employment or ratting him out to his boss.

posted by desjardins 07 September | 13:32

Outing him sounds fun, but I suspect that desjardins has some better ideas to start with.

posted by richat 07 September | 13:56

I think you should apply whatever restrictions and limits that apply to everyone else. It's galling that he's posting from a government site, but it's no more significant, necessarily, than someone posting opposing viewpoints from any high-profile IP - someone posting from microsoft doesn't Represent Microsoft.

I've seen some alarming IPs and troubling behavior even here - one of which was especially disturbing to me, because I wondered if it was putting other people at risk in some way, but I determined to hold back until there was anything at all that I could legitimately act on, and it came soon enough. But I didn't out the person, and I wouldn't, except in extremity.

I did, however, make a post warning people to be careful about the combination of revealing too much about themselves and having anything online that could personally identify them, and got a few snotty comments along the lines of "fuck you! you aren't the boss of me!" ... So. You can't really win. You can only try not to lose too bad.

posted by taz 07 September | 14:03

I humbly disagree with desjardins' final sentence. If he's posting from work, you should have no compunctions about "ratting him out" to the folks there. The first rule of work computers is to Never Use Work Computers for Anything You Wouldn't Want to Read About in the Newspaper. (Viz: Karl Rove, et.al. use of RNC email accounts from the White House to circumvent communications archive statutes.)

He is perfectly welcome to spew his bufoonery from his home computer systems, or the local library, or any other connection he pays for. (As a right-wingnut, he must support the idea of paying one's own way, or else he is a hypocrite of the highest order.)

In the past, I've sent such nastygrams using language along the lines of: "A user appearing to originate from your network has repeatedly violated our AUP, sections A,B &C, on dates X,Y & Z. The next such violation will result in an N day ban on your netblock; subsequent violations will result in longer exclusion. [optionally: We would encourage your staff to investigate this users' activities in light of your own AUP.]"

posted by Triode 07 September | 14:04

after thinking about it, "outing" him might be a bit extreme in this case.

say for example one of our contributors were to write a piece on hubbert's peak oil theory. if someone were to leave a comment asserting that hubbert was full of it and that oil reserves are plentiful, that would be fine in and of itself. if the commenter's ip address belonged to exxonmobil, then we would have absolutely no problem "outing" that sockpuppet.

i'm embarrassed to say that we don't have an acceptable use policy - at least not yet. the site started out as a blogspot blog, and i don't think we've ever really felt the need to draw one up. maybe now is the time. once we have one in place, triode's suggestion sounds like a good idea.

posted by syntax 07 September | 14:10

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