Don’t feed the trolls.

I’ve been blogging here in SB Nation for more than two years now and from my experience, trolls will never stop trolling until you stop replying to them. They will try to provoke by making inflammatory remarks or downright stupid statements. Sometimes you can’t help but hit back or put them in their place.

What the moderator from the Titans community usually does is to give out warnings once personal insults are used or if the commenter is obviously a troll, and/or puts a stop on the commenting if the thread gets out of hand. Rarely or probably never did he ban anyone.

1. I think we can turn this post into a memo on what type of community we want the blog to be. We do this by keeping a link to the post readily available, and if a troll does come in, instead of just completely ignoring it, respond with a link to this post so they know why no one is rising to the bait.

2. This might come off as sounding a bit harsh, but we have to take a look in the mirror and make sure that our contributors are living up to the standard we are looking for from rival fans. I’m not saying that any Lakers fan should be turned away or discounted, but regulation of the good guys here is just as important as regulation of the bad guys, lest we end up looking like hypocrite douchebags.

Along those lines, I have to point out that the whole reason this post even exists is because of a post that WE had about the Blazers. Josh, I’m definitely not telling you how to run the blog, but I don’t think anybody would disagree with the fact that the Blazers post was a bit antagonistic. Was it relevant to previous posts from Blazers fans? Yes. Was the reaction to it overblown? Yes. Did the less desirable of the BEdgers take it and run to whatever kind of flame-war starting topic they wanted? Absolutely. But it’s sort of like a reverse "Field of Dreams" effect, "If you antagonize, They will come." The post’s title alone was antagonistic, because the truth is that the Blazer’s (and their fans) britches won’t be re-sized until something actually negative comes out of their playoff series. What if the Blazer sweep the Rockets with ease in 4 double digit victories? It’s extremely unlikely, but to say that they’ve been put in their place before anything has actually happened, well let’s just say I could see why the BEdgers might get a little butt-hurt over it. The topic could definitely have been addressed more respectfully. So, in summation of all of this, if we want a fun, friendly site where everybody is groovy, then we have to be proactive about taking the higher ground at the beginning so that the degenerates don’t even have an excuse to jump in.

MiledAnimal — Unlike many, I could care less if you want to “shout” “First!” It really doesn’t hurt me in any way that I can think of. I’ve never done it (in truth, it puzzles me), and yeah, it’s probably silly — but isn’t it even sillier to get worked up over something so inconsequential? I won’t have any rules against that.

Pinoy Titan — well-put advice. I will admit to you guys that it’ll be a new approach to me, at least as a blogger (as I said, it’s one I’ve used on my sister, and to great success). My approach at Respect Kobe was to always focus on the agruments, rather than the arguer, but to debate the point as long as they want to. If I can be permitted to say of myself that I’m a pretty strong debater, it usually ended up that they got tired and left, and we haven’t had any trolls on there in quite a while.

That said… I’m making a commitment to go with the approach you guys are advocating, and I do hope that it works.

olf — Good ideas, and we’ll definitely be working on a shortlist of rules that will be unacceptable. The rest, though perhaps undesirable, we’ll just have to ignore.

FryingDutchman — Let’s continue this discussion until we get things pretty well figured out, and then we’ll draft something that sort of serves as an SS&R manifesto. That can be something we use to clue people in to how things are done around here.

I wholeheartedly agree with your point that Lakers fans must be held equally accountable for their behavior. To that end, last night I did ask a couple of Lakers fans to steer clear of the personal insults, and when putting an end to a flame war, I let both parties know how I felt about it, and that they’d both be banned if they didn’t help me out by just dropping it. I was glad to see them willingly do so. In our rules, when they are decided upon, it will be made clear that Lakers fans are equally “bannable,” and that we should hold each other accountable to a higher standard of conduct. I appreciate that in practice, some are already rising to the occasion and doing just that.

Point taken about my post. I’m with Sideout11, for the most part, in that I really don’t think it was inflammatory. Meanwhile, I don’t really see a problem with discussing other NBA teams on an NBA blog, as that seems relevant to the overall topic. That said, referring to the Blazers’ britches was perhaps a bit antagonistic, and while that wasn’t my intent, it was a mistake on my part. Thanks for being willing to speak up.

That said, it’s led us here, to a point where we’ve immediately realized a need to make certain things clearer, and to take steps to build a stronger, more intelligent, more enjoyable community — rather than just assuming that it will happen naturally. I think that’s a very positive by-product of the whole discussion, and I welcome all of your input, and your efforts to make this a fantastic Lakers community.

We want to develop a community with all of the positives of Blazers Edge or Celticsblog, but without some of the strong negatives that we’ve become keenly aware of over the past couple days. I’m confident we can do that.

so it’s no surprise that we are the most hated franchise

…but as a Suns fan, it beyond completely annoying to see Lakers fans troll the boards on YouTube, ESPN, FoxSports, and even AZCentral (the main local paper in the Phoenix area). Most of the time, they’re telling us that Kobe is the greatest player alive and that he could own anybody and any team, especially our Suns. Honestly, the only intelligent Laker fans that I have been “privileged” to see are at Forum Blue and Gold. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see that here too, b/c compared to most other sports sites/blogs, fans at SB Nation are much more respectful and much less homeriffic. Hopefully, the same can be said about Lakers fans on Silver Screen and Roll. Congrats on the SB Nation blog, btw!

They should put this on the SBN front page!

As a Laker Legend, I just want to say Thank You for putting this Blog up for all Laker fans.

Haters will be Haters and as I know from my Great Career—-there are always Haters!
Even if you score 100 points in a game!

You can’t please everyone or control all their actions.
The World is a mess and maybe I’ll come back to clean it up!

Thanks again and keep up the good work.