Two people joined the discussion to offer some advice. One of them asked me if I could give a link to the website, before I could reply a TROLL came in and posted the url and made some rude comments to boot. I told the individual that he didn’t have my permission to post the url. The troll said that he’d remove it if I ask him “nicely”. I responded saying that I wasn’t going to feed the troll. The next thing that happened was that the troll posted links to several of my site categories.

I checked my site analytics and found out where the troll was posting from and the pages that he was accessing on my site. Interestingly, in his attempt to insult me, he read my About page but did not post a link to it. The reason was because he was attempting to undermine my credibility and if he had posted my About page it would have defeated his attacks.

The way I responded was not to complain but instead to post a link to my About page on the discussion forum. This action took all the power away from the troll. He made one final snide remark but that was it. Unfortunately the troll did accomplish part of its goal which was to disrupt the discussion (the two people whom had come into the thread to offer assistance abandoned it right after the troll showed up.)

I don’t like internet forums because they’re rarely moderated. With that particular forum, the employees look in but don’t respond often. Prior to posting my question I had looked at various threads and that troll appeared on a lot of them.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether comments should be moderated and whether or not people should be allowed to post anonymously. I advocate the use of registration prior to posting where the person must provide a valid email address (and depending on the type of online community) a first and last name connected to their profile. Internet trolls can easily cross the line to more severe forms of cyber harassment i.e. stalking which can pose very real dangers to people who post online (several of the comments on this article underscore the seriousness of trolling). If online public forums are require members to provide their real identities, it would have a huge impact on the number of trolls posting online.

Either way, I think anyone would need to see the thread(s) in order to offer any advice or opinions. And not just because we want to see some juicy conflict. Honestly.

I just started blogging this past January, signed up for coaching and after having some pretty good sessions on customer service, I was not satisfied with the level of followup (customer service) with the coaching program. There ended up being a pretty rough interaction with the blogger, which she shared with her readers.

What was worse was another blogger whom she is an affiliate for did an entire video post on dealing with ‘crappy clients’. So, without realizing I was being a Troll, I left a comment that was ‘not very nice’ on her blog. But I just felt like I was standing up for myself. While blogs are privately ‘owned’ by the blogger, does that give them the right for this kind of behavior when I clearly knew that I was the ‘crappy client’ being discussed?

At any rate, I’m glad I’ve found Copyblogger as it seems to have a level of professionalism that I aspire to in my own work, which I’m in the process of restarting due to this experience. Thanks for sharing this and any responses are welcome.