straw man, no straw

For some time, there have been those who believe that we should start putting our trolls to death. A number of our number have asked us why we continue to feed them. Just ignore him, they say, he’ll go away. Or ban him.

Wally, for example, has said:

Dudes, ban him or quit feeding him. Let the troll spew his crap somewhere else.

Iman has said just ignore him, he’ll go away.

Even the venerable Prodigal Son has said he’s tired of a specific troll and he should go back to freeperville.

I certainly sympathize with all of these opinions. At least one of our trolls is a savage racist who has no place in the polite society we’ve built here.

Nevertheless, so far we've taken a pretty laissez-faire attitude toward our trolls. For the most part that policy has worked for us. We've even found some common ground with the more rational wingnuts.

And, as for those with whom there is no common ground, I think blogarillo has had the right idea when he sais: Let the world see the unmasked face of the right wing. He may seem extreme, but he speaks for a great many people.

Thing is, if I were to create a straw man wingnut to argue against on this site, he wouldn’t be as batcrap crazy as some of this stuff spouted by the trolls in the comments. We get all of the advantages of inventing a straw man with none of the trouble. Also, our page views go up when there is controversy.

But what do we do when they cross the line and become personally abusive? My skin is as thick and prickly as a stegosaurus, but I hate to see commenters get harassed. Basically, there are four options:

I haven't started moderating or deleting comments or banning IP addresses yet, and, honestly, I'm struggling with it. This is a group blog and everyone should have input. Let me know what you think, in comments or e-mail.

spacedark