Question: how to deal with trolls? Can't anybody do something about them?

In practice, it doesn't work that way unless every other poster who is interested in the thread also puts the individual(s) on Ignore. Otherwise, one ends up with a lot of posts addressed to someone who "isn't there", and eventually people just stop posting to the thread because it's not worth the hassle, and the OP decides to close the thread rather than deal with all that nonsense. If you don't consider that to be a problem, then it's not a problem. But it's illogical to encourage people to leave, even though there is likely an unending inflow of new beginners to take their places.

 

One person's troll is another person's useful perspective, sometimes.

 

Thanks, for cleaning up those posts.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply and address my concerns.
As Mick was saying ... "You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes well you might find / You get what you need"

 

A big thumbs-up for MS and B1.

 

That's pretty much the function of the moderator of a debate. The OP of a thread is in the position of knowing what's on topic or not. Otherwise he never would have opened the thread. Being "emotionally effected" is not the issue, rather the continual arguing with those who have no interest in the thread in the first place other than disrupting it. That's a large part of what trolls are all about.

But it's your site, so that's that. ET won't collapse just because I choose not to open any more threads.

 

You're underestimating your contribution. It won't collapse, but it would experience a great loss. You're one of the few posting reasonable, well thought out, logical, scientifically repeatable processes ...consisently, over and over. Without you a large number of users would have to resort to researching historical posts or spending their time on other forums

 

Hi Baron

How about this feature as an option to be selected/decided by individual thread starters:

Logically All the Ignore members of a thread starter should Not be allowed to post in a/the thread started by the starter!

That should be very easy to implement, I think!

 

lol