What yahoo doing about Trolls?

There is little, if anything, that can be done about trolls. In fact, anything that is set in place to limit or remove trollish behavior, would either severely curtail the amount of total activity on Yahoo Answers, or it would be abused by the trolls themselves.

Think about it this way.

If Yahoo became more restrictive when people set up their accounts, or required people to suddenly add more specific information to their accounts, Yahoo Answers would have a radical drop in usage. Setting up a Gmail account requires verification... one of these ways is to have something texted to you that you will turn around and re-enter on a validation page. A feature like this could easily be added to Yahoo and Yahoo Answers, where each account can be attached to only one unique telephone number, and only people with unique telephone numbers could get a Yahoo Answers account. But, that means that if you don't have your own phone number, you can't get on Yahoo Answers. Yahoo chooses to not be that restrictive, which opens up the ranks for anyone and everyone to create accounts. It is an honor system that is abused by those without honor. I personally would prefer to see a system where each individual here is held accountable for their actions... requiring a name, valid and confirmed address, valid and confirmed and unique telephone number, etc. Sure, it would make Yahoo Answers a better place, but Yahoo wouldn't make nearly the money on advertising they do now. So... we would be asking Yahoo to make less money, in order to make the place Troll-free. As long as Yahoo gets their money, they don't care about what happens on the site.

As far as ways to report and get trollish behavior removed... having these in place would mean that trolls could use them as well... in fact, trolls would be more likely to use measures like that, just *because* they would love the irony of using troll-removal tools against regular people. Trolling the troll tools, as it were.

Until Yahoo wants to close off Yahoo Answers to a large portion of the population, AND make less money on the endeavor, we can't expect them to do anything about Trolls.

Trolls are in here and it is best to ignore them. That's all we can do. A lot of this stuff is being blamed on kids. It is best to get an enjoyment out of answering questions and helping people.

Here's what is going on with me.

Example- the thumbs up and down. Someone is going through my answers and giving them thumbs down and the other answers will not be touched, just mine, or maybe one answer will have a thumbs up. That is someone that does not want competition and that person thinks the thumbs down will hurt me. Well thumbs down does not really count anymore. That person is wasting their time. I can lol on that one.

Then some people in voting get 54 to 74 votes while others get 0 or 1 or 2 votes. It is best to ignore this.

Some make their Q & A private to keep the trolls and some others out of it.

Example- A person will answer every question I answer and say what I say is not right.

So to make it harder on that person, they have to look for my answers in all the other answers.

Then about a year ago a troll answered most of the questions I answered in the last minutes of answering and when she/he voted and she/he answers were always the best answer and they got 25 votes and more. There were other complaints about this person and this person changed their avatar real often.

I was reported some time ago and I won the appeals. Now, I am very careful of how I word things and have not been reported in a long time. Some people take things the wrong way.

Things are getting worse rather than better as is immediately noticeable with the speed (or lack of) removing reported Q and A. Whenever we get a sustained troll attack Community Moderation buckles under the strain.Catch 22 situation, ignore them and they just carry on. Report en masse and we screw the system up. I wish I could offer some positive action we could take but it seems that only Yahoo can solve it.

I have to defend Sly Ole Mole (and he isn't in real life!). I have known of him for over 4 years now and no way is he a troll or just as bad. He has a some valid points and it just isn't fair if everytime someone sees a viewpoint that offends them they are reported. What ever happened to innocent until you are proved guilty?

not much; but you are just as bad -- you can't call out other users like that. If you copy and paste that crap and send it to the uk team they generally do something. but you can't just post links to their profiles; that is a violation of the guidelines just as much as what they are doing. Anyway, Community Moderation hasn't been working for days..