Trolling and Flame Wars

Cory Doctorow's article was very interesting and I am shocked that he has had to deal with so much hate mail and trolls. The technique of "devoweling" negative comments is very clever and I have never seen any blog owner use such a technique. After searching through my communities (Freshman 15 blog) archives, I was unable to find any negative comments. The community is a guide for first year university students written by first year university students. Every post on the Freshman 15 blog is positive and helpful and it is completely understandable that negative comments have not occurred yet. To comment or reply to posts in the community, you must first create an account which may discourage some trolls who are purposely out to provoke the bloggers. If a troll was to comment negatively on a post, I believe that either the member of the blog who created the post, or the blog administrator would remove the comment as the blogs ethos is overall very friendly, welcoming and helpful. When you are posting a comment to the blog, you must post through a choice of Facebook, AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail which can ruin the anonymity factor is a pseudonym is not used for these websites already. This would also discourage trolls a great deal as they are more likely to have to deal with the consequences of their negative comments.