- Joined
- Aug 26, 2010
A little bit off-topic, so please bear with me:
It's my impression (and therefore open for debate) that non-native speakers are more likely to be perceived as trolls or show "trolling" behavior. Their comments are usually very short in simple sentences, often brusque and rude, due to limited English proficiency and time (it takes a lot of time for them to write a simple paragraph). And they feel that their important message, which is not well articulated or elaborated, is not being heard. So they repeat the same so many times that they become rather annoying.
In the Golden Skate Guidelines, trolling is defined as "deliberately posting derogatory and/or inflammatory posts in order to bait other users into responding", which requires a lot of burden of proof before we can call someone a "troll". It's probably not so hard to prove that someone should have known by now if their messages are inflammatory or not, given the responses they have received, but it's extremely hard to prove that their intention is "to bait other users into responding". I wish we could simply use the user-name or handle as proof (e.g., "let's chat" certainly implies "I want responses") but again that would be very unfair. Thank goodness, based on the Guidelines, it is not upon us to judge and therefore not upon us to label others. I guess we should all follow the guidelines: "Do Not Feed the Trolls". Report them directly to moderators instead.
It's my impression (and therefore open for debate) that non-native speakers are more likely to be perceived as trolls or show "trolling" behavior. Their comments are usually very short in simple sentences, often brusque and rude, due to limited English proficiency and time (it takes a lot of time for them to write a simple paragraph). And they feel that their important message, which is not well articulated or elaborated, is not being heard. So they repeat the same so many times that they become rather annoying.
In the Golden Skate Guidelines, trolling is defined as "deliberately posting derogatory and/or inflammatory posts in order to bait other users into responding", which requires a lot of burden of proof before we can call someone a "troll". It's probably not so hard to prove that someone should have known by now if their messages are inflammatory or not, given the responses they have received, but it's extremely hard to prove that their intention is "to bait other users into responding". I wish we could simply use the user-name or handle as proof (e.g., "let's chat" certainly implies "I want responses") but again that would be very unfair. Thank goodness, based on the Guidelines, it is not upon us to judge and therefore not upon us to label others. I guess we should all follow the guidelines: "Do Not Feed the Trolls". Report them directly to moderators instead.
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