One of the great things about Blogging is that I get to give advice on topics about which I know nothing. So………Trolls and Trolling.
Well to honest, this Blog has had absolutely no trouble with Trolls. I suppose a Message Board is different. A Message Board gets traffic that a Blog wont get……and a Message Board specifically set up to get a wide range of political opinions will get “trolls” essentially people who are “spoilers”. A Message Board which covers (say) American Football will get more trolls than a Blog on (say) the Indianapolis Colts (hi Amy) or the Detroit Lions (hi Ellen).
This Blog………I think my intitial introduction to this Board …..states that I am a socialist, nationalist and Republican written just a few weeks before I joined the Social Democratic and Labour Party…..means that my posts attract like-minded people, not necessarily members of SDLP…..but certainly people who are in that broad left, pan-nationalist frame of mind. Like-minded people who can tease out the nuances rather be confrontational.
And I think thats the difference in a Message Board and a Blog. My wisdom on the subject of Trolls is tempered by the fact that I have never had to deal with one. The rules of this Blog are simple…..there are no rules…….except dont let me get sued for libel and bear in mind an old fashioned idea that there might be ladies in the room. When I am watching a football match on TV with my sons and we doubt the referees pedigree its a different experience to watching with a group of people who might not like our choice of words. Its not prissiness on my part. Rather like the Judge in the Lady Chatterley “obscenity trial” (1960??) who asked the Jury to consider if they would let their “wives and servants” read the book……then please rest assured that your wives and servants can read this Blog.
So I have no problems with Trolls…….yet. There is a slight anticipation on my part that I might get some trolls. The readership has widened considerably recently.
I dont want to censor views but I dont want surrounded by Trolls, who are motivated just to “spoil”.
A good friend of this Blog…..the mild-mannered BangorDub ran into censorship problems when he was yellow-carded by the resident Louper on a message board. Clearly that was an unreasonable thing. As with everything, it is simply a matter of balance.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Thank you for your supportive comments Mr Fitz.
Youd have done the same….and often have.
I have to say that in the twelve months my blog has been running I haven’t had much trouble with trolls or trolling. That is either down to the calibre of the people reading it – or to the fact that it is so unimportant no one felt the need to bother 😉
I have had fairly vigorous Commenting, people arguing point and counter-point but nothing too egregious or deliberately provocative. On only two occasions have I had the need to step in when things got heated between different contributors and both times the offenders apologised to each other. Personal attacks on me have been relatively few and mostly confined to social media where a more confrontational atmosphere seems to exist. Flamewars are very much a Facebook thing, even to the extent of people doing mass attacks via Comments or mass Reporting someone for alleged abuse of rules (a favourite tactic in Israel recently as Right attacks Left – something learned from US evangelicals and extremists)
That said in the last two days I have had a well-known Irish journalist, former newspaper editor, current TG4 board member and occasional Slugger O’Toole commentator attack me for a post of mine ridiculing the unctuous nature and hypercritical double-think of the Irish news media. Apparently this drew his ire so much that I deserved to be labelled a “xenophobic” advocate of “fascism” and “Nazism”. I suppose it didn’t help that one of the articles I lampooned was in a Sunday newspaper he also writes for.
Oh well…
In relation to Slugger O’Toole (SOT?), I have to say that recently it has become an exercise in provocation by at least one of its British Unionist/Nationalist writers who seems determined to turn it into a rival online Newsletter. The most extraordinary contortions of logic are made in order to twist almost every posting into an attack piece on Irish Nationalism and Republicanism and much more than that. Fair comment is just that, and presenting a Unionist interpretation of news and current affairs is only right and proper on a site that should serve and reflect both communities in the north-east of the community. But I fear those particular articles go way beyond a both sides of the argument position and contain a genuinely nasty sentiment, and belong on a personal blog.
SOT is harming its own credibility by not tackling or at least counter-balancing the current situation and is loosing Nationalist readers and commentators in droves. Which I actually think is quite sad for an online space that did have real meaning and value at one stage and could do so again.
Seamus….The firestorm of the past 24 hours has been a consequence of Mick not addressing issues over a considerable period of time……..a lot of discontented people and too little too late to put it right?
Worried people in the old library building.
Seamus, read your and Concubhar going at it. One word, wow!
What FJH has noted above is pretty much ‘where we are’ at the moment. Mick has indulged some for too long, a bias has been noted by a lot of people and he is now trying to do some damage limitation on Pie by way of
i) admitting he is not impartial (who would have thought that) and has insinuated that this in fact a good thing. He wants a multiplicity of voices on SOT, however, he has not seemingly joined the dots that people will be unwilling to go somewhere that is biased in such a manner where they will not be given a fair hearing; and
ii) confirming that Spaceman is, in fact, not a Unionist. Really? Yeah, and I have never farted either.
As I noted on BD’s site, this one could have some legs…
Myself and Concubhar have had many an online disagreement in the past, and he generally pulls no punches. I’m not actually sure where he sits politically, bitterly opposed to SF both by political inclination and through past experiences when he edited Lá (which is fair enough), hostile to the Official Languages Act and Language Commissioner (inexplicably so to me), close to Fine Gael – or at least perceived as being so. One friend of mine described him as the Sunday Independent’s “tame house Gaeilgeoir”, wheeled out every now and again to pen something to do with the “Gaelic” or launch an anti-Republican piece from under a Gaelic cover, which is perhaps slightly unfair.
However his recent attack on me was on a very different level, and unexpectedly so. It read more like an attack piece on behalf of INM newspapers (as if they could give a damn about my insignificant blog and opinions). Maybe he just got up out of the wrong side of the bed? The man is an infamous curmudgeon.
Talking of which, I simply do not believe any claim that Pete Baker is not a British Nationalist (Unionist). He may not be a paid-up member of the DUP or UUP and may have other party political inclinations but he is most assuredly a Unionist writer propagating a Unionist line. Nothing wrong with that, SOT has had many such types, but Baker’s posts are particularly egregious in their clear attempts to provoke. He is the journalistic equivalent of a Kick The Pope band.
Many SOT Commentators have pointed to previous Unionist contributors on the site and their respect for those individuals, despite political differences, so it is certainly not about stifling debate. Nor is it to do with his alleged journalistic abilities or skill as a writer. The quasi argument that people hate him because they fear him is utter tosh.
His abilities sit up there with those of Melanie Philips, as in today’s Daily Mail with her Team GB versus Team Ireland piece. Apparently the fact that the local population in the north-east of Ireland are free to choose their own nationality is news to her. I wonder will Baker touch this piece with its clear implication that Ireland is Ireland an the UK is – well that other island over yonder?
Bakers defining characteristic is not the fact that he is or is not a “unionist”.
His defining characteristic is that he is a Troll…..a Troll who starts threads…….with an admiring band of minor (unionist) Trolls. He is a “pre-emptive Troll”.
When I was just a few weeks on Slugger (early 2010) I came to a decision that I would be extremely formal with all contributors. “Mr Fealty”, “Mr Walker”, “Mr McGregor” and “Mr Baker” among them…..I was thinking that people might respond with a certain degree of recipocracy.
To this day I know whether Mick is in a good mood….he will address me as “FJH”. If he is in a bad mood with me he will call me “Fitzy”. Its kinda reassuring.
Baker addressed me as “Fitzy” once and by way of rebuke, I asked him would he observe the niceties.
Baker doesnt respond well to rebuke, however politely put and by way of reply to that pointedly called me “Fitzy”. Actually Im ok about that because it told me the kinda person Baker is and cut to the chase early and defined how I would think of him as…..as a Troll.
Much better to find that out at an early stage.
To some extent most Slugger “core” people have gone down the road of starting threads merely to get a hostile reaction. Pre-emptive Trolling is spreading.
Its undeniable that Baker posts stuff with which his unionist cronies will agree so it would appear odd that Mick should be insisting that its a mistake to think of Baker as a unionist. There can only be two realistic reasons ……that Mick himself believes Baker is more interested in getting a hostile reaction ……which might be defined as being a contrarian or …..a “troll”.
Or… an unsubtle hint that Bakers background……his “political family tree would surprise…..at least some.
I know which I choose to believe.
Labelling people online is an inexact science.
I was completely surprised to discover that I was labelled (openly on Slugger) as “a failed SDLP politician from North Belfast”.
And even more surprised when the poster (an Alliance eejit) went further and told me I was “Brian Feeney”, a “fact” cheerfully taken up by other Alliance folk anda member of the Slugger “team”.
The only appropriate reaction is to say nothing…..but let people believe it…….and a year later some members of the Alliance Internet Army still thought I was Brian. And of course that means to playing games and watching as folks go down avenues I opened up for them.
And I suspect that baker plays that game too.
Morning Folks, hasn’t it been an interesting 48 hours indeed?
FJH, there is little I can disagree with above with your posts. I do find Spaceman is quite thorough, something that a few people were claiming may be the reason why some are ‘afraid’ of him. You know, I reckon for some that may be true, however, in the main, I do find his posts somewhat boring.
I also find the increased focus on Spaceman to be a somewhat clever ploy by MF as it does take the focus away from the state of his site in general and why many dislike it or find it a cold house for some.
I would like to say I wish him all the best but I don’t; his site has an agenda, one that I don’t like and his popping up on certain blogs to play the man not the ball is galling in the extreme. If only he would man up and tackle the criticism in the spirit it has been given; unfortunately, no one is right 9 out of 10 times.
Mick Fealty is over now at Politics.ie defending Sluggers honour. Heres a quote from Mick:
This guy purports to be a unionist… and yet we have the old nonsense about Baker the unionist (which, for the record he is not), from people who need no facts before jumping to the same old tired conclusions…
I dont know Baker well enough to know if he is a unionist or just as my Auntie Sheila would have said “as ignorant as get out”. But political family trees can be a funny thing.