>A Tale of Two Trolls

>About a year ago, I was feeling a little bit discouraged about blogging.

I would write the most ordinary stories about my life and my various foibles and mistakes, only to get reamed in the comments by readers accusing me of being spoiled. Or mean. Or dishonest. Or attention-seeking.

Of course, I didn’t think I was any of these things, and the overall number of negative comments (compared to the positive) was low– but if several people per week could perceive these awful attributes in me when they read my writing, was it possible that I really was a horrible person and just didn’t realize it?

The question nagged at me in the back of my mind as I wrote. It made me think twice before I published anything. It made me very, very careful– too careful– with what I chose to say here.

And then someone told me about Disqus. This is not an advertisement for Disqus- there are other commenting systems out there work just as well- but when I set up Disqus to handle my comments, for the first time, I could see the IP address of my commenters. I could use it in conjunction with my Stat Tracker to figure out where they were coming from, and even where they worked if they were using the computer from their place of business.

And I could, if I wanted to, ban someone from commenting.

I’ll admit, I wrote a couple of slightly provocative posts after I installed Disqus on my blog. Nothing out of character, but posts that would definitely make my trolls’ heads explode. And it worked. The negative comments started rolling in– and surprise!

They were all coming from TWO PEOPLE.

All that angst and anxiety and concern and self-doubt had been caused by two people who pretended to be lots of different people, all complaining about me.

I banned them– and the negative comments pretty much stopped. Since then, I’ve had one or two more people show up who’d decided it was their job to come here each day and tell me how many ways I suck. And I’ve had the very occasional drive-by UR MOM SHOULDN’T HAVE HAD U, LOLOLOL kind of comments.

I banned them too.

My blacklist is a very, very short one- It consists only of a handful people who clearly only came to my blog to argue with and insult me and other readers– and yet my negative comments have almost entirely come to a stop. I get a negative comment every four to six months, max, and that’s much lower than the number I was getting before I could tell who was behind them.

I tell you all of this because I have a theory that 80%-90% of the evil, negative, trollish comments on blogs are written by less than 1% of the blog reading population. I believe my trolls likely troll other blogs, too. In fact, I know one of them does. And I also believe that these trolls only read blogs to get some kind of perverse pleasure out of making other people feel bad about themselves.

I don’t want any blogger out there to let that “less than 1%” of your readership make you doubt yourself or your writing. If you can, install a system that lets you see who’s leaving comments on your blog. And get rid of the trolls. I see our personal blogs as virtual living rooms- You wouldn’t invite someone into your home who came over only to berate you and make you feel bad about yourself (MILs excluded, anyway).

Why on earth would you put up with it on your blog?

I’m writing this now only because it’s come up in conversation a few times recently with other bloggers, who didn’t realize that there were ways they could monitor who was commenting on their sites, as well as bloggers who were feeling beaten down by negative comments. When one person is coming to your site over and over again to verbally pummel you, it is a form of bullying– Don’t put up with it. The vast majority of blog readers out there are kind, supportive, wonderful people. Don’t let one bad apple destroy for you what should be a positive and fulfilling blogging experience.

Have you had any troll trouble? What do you think of banning commenters?