Trolling, is defined as...

"To make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them". 

In other words, to antagonize a person or people. Trolling is just a modern way of saying antagonizing. It isn't simply saying something that ends up pissing everyone off. It's saying something with the sole intent OF pissing everyone off. There is a huge difference between the two and I feel some of the moderation team here at vgchartz either doesn't understand the difference, doesn't care or is using the trolling rule as a way of ridding the forum of "unpleasent" or "disagreeable" members. 

I propose new rules that better deal with trolling so these matters cease. No one should get a warning or a ban simply because he/she said something that ended up making everyone angry. This has happened to so many people on this forum that I felt compelled to confront it with this thread. 

We need a more thorough process. We need more oversight. No one moderator should be able to simply slap a warning down on someone for trolling without showing a precedent first. How do we do that? Simple... post history. One quick glance at someone's post history and you can quickly see if they're a troll or not. When you look at mine, you'll see everything under the sun. Some posts will be agreeable and some will be argumentative. Some will be thought provoking, some will be stupid. Some are funny, some are serious. In short, there's absolutely NOTHING about my history that shows or indicates that I'm a troll or have ever been one. This is the number one way to weed out who is and who isn't trolling.

Again, there is a huge difference in someone saying something that 90% of the forum hates and someone saying something that they know 90% of the forum hates and is only doing so to piss them off. One is an opinion, one is trolling. We HAVE to stop labeling everything as a troll attempt because it's not good for the community as a whole. This isn't a Nintendo, PC, Sony or Microsoft website. This is a website for ALL gaming and I feel diversity is the key to having a great community. It should be a place for people to talk about their favorite games, share codes, ideas, make friends, argue, debate, agree, get gaming help... everything. Ideally, we'd all love a perfect world and a perfect message board where everyone gets along and everyone agrees on everything but this isn't an ideal world and I feel that sometimes, people are targeted here because they don't "fall in line", so to speak. This needs to stop imo and I hope someone high enough sees this and at least gives pause on the subject. 

Thanks.

Personally, I believe we should form a digital hard labor camp and force all trolls to mine for polygons until such a time as they can create a pixelated "I'm sorry" message.

And yes, I am getting my pickaxe ready.

It's nice to see someone use the "Website feedback" for it's actual purpose. Nice thread, Mr. AlfredoTurkey

Anyway, what the internet and forums label as "trolling" is normally confused with (the more fitting name) "baiting". Trying to get other people furious by subtly insulting/making fun of some dumb opinion. I dont usually see trolling as a bannable offense (maybe cause I'm not good at recognising it), but baiting is easier to catch, and is much worse than trolling imo.

But maybe they're synonyms and I'm making a fool of myself...

Already posted:

htIp:///gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=218279&page=1

Perhaps VGChartz can allow voting for whether the member gets banned or not.


I used to troll quite a lot. Compare my posts from then to post-apology and your point stands. There's a clear difference between a troll and someone whos simply stating their opinion(even if it's a...well, unique one).

nice post- I agree-

Trolling is also a term people abuse when they don't like a comment.

A lot of what you bring up I would personally consider baiting, which can overlap with trolling (and flaming), but isn't necessarily the same. The key is whether of not the user intends to cause a stir, or if they simply are conveying a poor opinion, or a good opinion in a very poor way. For example, saying something along the lines of "Gaystation only does movie games lel!" would constitute trolling, regardless of if the user is trying to annoy others, or really feels that way. On the other hand, saying something like "Yet another movie game from Sony" isn't something I would consider trolling on its own, unless the user has a history of making poor comments like this, without backing their reasoning up.

Of course, we do take precedent into account, which is why we don't jump straight into long bans on users with clean histories. Warnings aren't meant to be a bad thing on their own...and I think a fair amount of people sort of miss the point behind them. A warning, in my mind, is essentially a way of letting a user know that their behavior could lead to a ban if they don't correct it. Consider it a slap on the wrist. I personally believe we're more lenient here than other forums, and the fact that we give users warnings before jumping into a ban is evidence of that.

I hope that helps.

Maybe it's my exposure, but VGC is incredibly strict on trolling and language. For someone who frequents VGC and sports forums, people wouldn't last an hour on here.

Talking bad things about a console from one of the three big is as bad as talking bad things about an user it seems (mostly because users who love the brand from the console you attacked will feel attacked and will attack you to defend their lifeless but loved console).