[Imc-web] Trolls Worth Watching

[Mike Lehman]

I am starting to get pretty uncomforatble with the persistent trolling 
of Jack Ryan and his small court of admirers (who may simply be 
variations on his self-admiratory theme.) This thread in particular seem 
indicative of this trend in trolling:
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/15359/index.php

I see nothing here except something that might be covered under this 
part of our policy:

Off-Topic Posts - this is perhaps the most difficult category of
inappropriate posts to judge, since the IMC Newswire intends to be a forum
that is open to a broad range of topics and ideas. Nonetheless there are
posts that are baldly and clearly inappropriate, whose purpose seems clearly
to be other than informing, educating or adding to a public discourse. In
the worst cases their appearance on the IMC Newswire may indeed discourage
other visitors from using the site. Isolated posts are typically not 
problematic,
and so the problem of off-topic posts is usually related to flooding or
spamming. Therefore the frequency of off-topic posts of a particular type
should be considered when deciding whether to hide them.

Given both the frequency of Jack's desire to "mark" what he regards as 
his territory by posting this inane stuff, often with limited or no 
relevance to the original article, I'm thinking it's time to take a more 
aggressive enforcement line on this phenomena. I wanted to ask how 
others felt, since this is in enough of a grey area to be a judgement 
call. In my judgement, these comments, and some other similar ones in 
other threads, are in violation and the frequency of their appearance 
throws they issue over the line for me.

I know we all know the old saw about ignoring trolls and they'll go 
away, but that seems to be a failing strategy. People have taken to 
mostly ignoring it, but this seems to have only increased the 
attention-seeking behavior in this case. Plus, I've noticed a general 
drop-off in the commenting by others, which leads me to conclude that 
Jack and his buddy's comments, ignored, are creating an uninviting 
atmopshere for other users.

What are people's thoughts on this?
Mike Lehman