> My entire goal was to recreate that site minus the trolls, and I ruthlessly enforced one simple rule. Do not directly insult other users of the site. I've po

> My entire goal was to recreate that site minus the trolls, and I ruthlessly enforced one simple rule. Do not directly insult other users of the site. I've pondered this issue a lot, and I've also noticed that, as you indicated, lots of troll messages would be acceptable under your rule, but many responses to those messages would not be. My favorite example comes from a discussion group about hamsters as pets. Someone -- clearly a troll -- posts a recipe for barbecued hamster. 100 people respond something like, "You're sick!" In that case, it seemed to me that it was not the trolling that wrecked the discussion, but the response to it. And of course the troll is not violating your rule, but those who replied to him are. So I like your rule. > And occasionally a good user gets made at something and calls someone a moron. It leaves a bad taste in their mouth if you come down with an iron fist on them. Hmmm ... but directly asking them not to do it again would probably work well. If they can't even handle that, then you probably don't want them anyway. (And really, is the iron-fist policy so bad? So someone gets a bad taste in their mouth. That someone was wrecking your community.)