steveo 06 Feb 06

This is a pretty cool idea, but even cooler if it would “stick” with the user for, say, 1 week. IP + cookie, not super reliable, but there is not much penalty for posting a “JF sucks!” anonymously and getting a troll cap only once.

Kyle Posey 06 Feb 06

That’s a hilarious idea! I can see this spreading to other sites quite easily. But the question remains, who will get dunced first?

eric 06 Feb 06

damn…I was gonna post a blatantly off-topic and inflammatory comment in an attempt to get the first troll-cap, but I see someone in the last discussion beat me to it.

on the flipside, how about an icon for a really good post? that way you are encouraging good quality, rather than simply discouraging poor quality.

Jan 06 Feb 06

You all suck!

…

That cap looks cool, I want one :-)

Brad 06 Feb 06

I think it’s funny, but my first impression was that the people who are acting as trolls, will see this as a badge of honour or at least something worth striving for. They want attention and this gives it to them.

Dizzytree 06 Feb 06

I agree with Brad in the above comment.
I have fallen to marketing and hype of a 37s icon!

JF 06 Feb 06

We will do an icon for exceptional posts too, but for now we’re just calling out the trolls.

Troll posts will also be dimmed out so they’ll be tough to read.

Ian Waring 06 Feb 06

More like it - keep dimming it with every violation and auto delete it in short order. If people crave attention, just take it away from them…

Ian W.

MMI 06 Feb 06

“This is a pretty cool idea, but even cooler if it would �stick� with the user for, say, 1 week. IP + cookie, not super reliable, but there is not much penalty for posting a �JF sucks!� anonymously and getting a troll cap only once.”

Hrm.. they might just delete the cookie immediately… but what if the cookie hid the troll icon from that user! They wouldn’t know anything was wrong, and be less apt to clear out their cookies.

Rabbit 06 Feb 06

Ah… I like Ian’s idea. Dunno how hard that would be to implement though.

I’m sure DHH can come up with something. ;)

andy 06 Feb 06

Dimming is brilliant! Per Violation Dimming is better still. Here’s another few idea (though technologically I’ve not a clue how to do them):
- Stick ‘em in the corner by throwing all comments marked “dunce” to the very bottom, after the chronologically-listed comments. Then all of us happy nice users don’t have to muck thru them at all (unless we really want to).

andy 06 Feb 06

oops. i mean ‘all comments marked “troll”.’

Tomas Jogin 06 Feb 06

Regardless of the effects of the troll cap, it’s funny! So great idea, I’m going to use it (…when I get back to blogging again).

Pretty please though: offer a PNG file as well.

Beau Hartshorne 06 Feb 06

I think you should roll out the “wizard” cap (or whatever) at the same time, or very soon. The troll cap will make the comment stand out even more, which is exacly what trolls want.

It may be better to dim and shrink troll posts (with no icon), and instead reward smart comments with larger text, or an icon, or both.

Mike Rundle 06 Feb 06

Maybe give the ability to add a troll cap to the users ….. say like Digg does it with the dropdown ;)

Dizzytree 06 Feb 06

I think it was the TheServerSide.com that had a great option where it allowed the readers to flag a comment as NOISY. If a comment received a ‘set amount’ of flags, it was removed from the comments list.

I believe however, that the comment wasn’t deleted because you could view it later if you wished by clicking an icon ‘Allow Noisey Comments’ or something along to that effect.

Seemed to work well and it gave the readers the ability to flag unwanted remarks.

Paul D 06 Feb 06

Cool idea. You could also change the colour of troll posts to a lower-contrast text shade.

How about a guru-cap for extra good comments? :)

Paul D 06 Feb 06

Doh, Beau had the same idea. :)

Geoff B 06 Feb 06

I love the idea of a troll cap. It’s funny, and seems like it would work to everyone who doesn’t want to be percieved as a troll. You could also try a scoring system where the user community assigns positive and/or negative points to a post.

The downside (as many people have already pointed out) is that trolls like attention, and this gives it to them. Quietly deleting posts may be the best solution.

Matt Dempsey 06 Feb 06

Interesting concept, it’ll be interesting to see how well it works.

Arne Gleason 06 Feb 06

�??? OK�sure�funny hats for your detractors�sounds like it would be a great gimmick for one of those interviewer-is-always-right talk-shows (I guess it is your show � you make the rules).

Chris Gwynne 06 Feb 06

Hmm I wonder…

… This post and idea is absolutely totally lame.

Garth 06 Feb 06

I agree with letting us decide the trolls. I think the way slashdot deal with them with their rating system is effective.

RS 06 Feb 06

I see a lot of More Software solutions here. C’mon guys :)

karl b 06 Feb 06

First time poster; long time reader; great topic, love the show!

Brilliant!

I love the idea. For some reason, perhaps a nasty vindictive streak in me, I find the idea of calling a troll out very satisfying.

rich 06 Feb 06

Thing is, anyone can put in any name they like.

What’s the use in knowing that someone with a fake name and a fake email is a troll?

Where’s the deterrent? Where’s the ‘added value’?

troll 06 Feb 06

How can I mark someone being troll?

Nick 06 Feb 06

I love the word vapid.

On another note, I think it’s a great idea. Are you going to do some kind of longitudinal study to figure out what the effects of application of the troll hat policy have been?

sixtoe 06 Feb 06

This idea is idiotic. Who would come up with something like this? Probably the same people who voted for Bush.

Sharaf 06 Feb 06

Speaking of vapid comments…. I keep getting comment spam, but I have the IP address of the spammer, is there anyway to block this spammer from my blog? Using Wordpress.

I am getting lot of these and it’s getting a bit annoying…

Derek 06 Feb 06

this is a crappy idea

Brad 06 Feb 06

RS: well said.

I don’t think the idea here is to provide a robust, enterprise solution to thwart the efforts of all comment spammers on all blogs all the time, but just a quick and simple barricade across their own troll bridge; beta testing another non-product. (Who knows, the 37s of tomorrow may be a blog comment icon delivery service provider.)

Jason Cale 06 Feb 06

Hehe I like it, what the result will be i guess it remains to be seen, but Im certainly sick of reading the rubbish some individuals decide to post.. Yesterdays comments on Campfire certainly left me a little disdained ..

Jeff Atwood 06 Feb 06

So you’re giving them an award now?

My god, this will be like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Good luck. You’re gonna need it.

dmr 06 Feb 06

That’s sooo a gnome hat.

Wilson Miner 06 Feb 06

What does it take to get a *#@% troll cap on this thread?

Andrew 06 Feb 06

Dim the troll posts more, they are still easily readable!

NathanB 06 Feb 06

Don’t give the trolls attention with a special troll badge.

Instead, filter the comments so that non trolls don’t see troll comments, but IPs marked as trolls do see their own comments.

That way the troll will just think that nobody is biting and they’ll hopefully go away.

Joshua Porter 06 Feb 06

Have you tried letting your users decide what’s troll-like?

You could try a “Was this comment useful?” feature. Similar to what Amazon does with their reviews.

Digg does this type of voting almost effortlessly. You’ve probably got enough readers to make it happen, even if only 1 in 100 actually help out and click on them.

My guess is that it would still be helpful to order first by date (to keep the discussion flow) and then by usefulness.

Beta Troll 06 Feb 06

37 signals sucks! I hate them and I think they smell too. Arrogance and narcissism oozes through their pores like grease through Michael Moore’s. This troll cap idea is stupid to say the least and I hope Campfire engulfs their servers in flames!

eston 06 Feb 06

I got a laugh out of this and may have to write a WordPress plugin this weekend to flag people as trolls.

Shouldn’t the note at the bottom now say:

NOTE: We’d rather not moderate, but off-topic, blatantly inflammatory, or otherwise inappropriate or vapid comments may be removed. Repeat offenders will be in possession of the Troll Cap. People trolling specifically for the Troll Cap will be banned. Thank you.

nortypig 06 Feb 06

I’m slapping my forehead for not thinking of this one myself. Like a lot of good ideas its there in your face all the time lol.

I wonder how it would go as a universal icon though… but its a good idea on an individual site. Its the kind of insult that would follow someone for a long time getting google results which identified them for the troll factor.

Pls don’t put one on me for this comment though cos I have exams tomorrow and my head is mush from study. Great idea.

Matt O'Dell 06 Feb 06

Now I will be forced to at least scroll to the bottom of every post of yours in hopes of seeing the “troll cap” in action. This will probably add some entertainment and excitement to my day of software programming. Thank you!

Gayle 06 Feb 06

Heh! What a riot. It may be a “badge,” but at least you have a sense of humour about the inflammatory stuff… I’d get pissed and shut everyone out, I’ve got zero patience for that type of stuff.

Gordo 06 Feb 06

That is just brilliant! Another must have from 37signals! You guys are my heros.

JF 06 Feb 06

FYI, this was Ryan’s great idea.

George 06 Feb 06

Trolling is an action to determine the degree of agency available in a commenting system. The intent is to provoke a reaction and to know that you’ve been heard (since online discussion resembles the aces of men’s tennis more than it does the graceful rallies of women’s) . Viewed in those terms, this system is funny, but I don’t expect it to make much difference.

Rahul 06 Feb 06

Isn’t it funny that SVN introduces the binary troll cap “concept” and immediately commenters are scrambling all over each other trying to come up with more abundant additives to the system that make it richer, in their eyes, even though none of their suggestions have any actual utility or add anything substantial beyond glitzing it up? What’s really the point of putting comments at the bottom or toning the grey a little bit more in succession? Does it actually change the function of the troll cap? Why even make it if it doesn’t?

What happened to understanding what 37S are talking about when they say “Less” everywhere?

Jaime Smith 06 Feb 06

I’ve got to go Brad on this one. I think that most people acting as trolls would like the idea that their posts are sticking out from others. I think a better approach would be to make their posts “un-highlighted”, maybe by setting the font colors a light gray on your white background. Most readers would just blow past them then.

Ian 06 Feb 06

Trolls are now guaranteed a greater audience and a badge of courage.

I like the icon, but it’s going to make things worse.

Emile 06 Feb 06

The best thing would be to incorporate this with Gravatar so any Gravatar enabled blog (which includes a number of them) would include the princely troll cap.

Rock on!

Chris Gwynne 06 Feb 06

Do you not think this will only add to the trolls of SvN, obviously they want to get a troll hat beside their name. Hell half the people in this post want a troll cap.

Plus you’re still going to get the trolls, where’s the initial deterent to even stop them posting?

ucantblamem 06 Feb 06

THAT’S AWESOME! Thanks guys. ;-)

RS 06 Feb 06

For the humorless among you: This is not serious engineering. It’s a Troll cap.

Blatent 06 Feb 06

The thing about a dunce cap is that it looks like the modern equivilent in silliness and subjects the person whos wearing it to equal ridicule, the party hat.

However, since you’ve not yet awared the cap, can we assume that its actually a mark of honour to have ridden the fine line between normal debate and being over the top enough to get deleted?

Darrel 06 Feb 06

yay. Now being an ass looks all nice and Web 2.0-gradienty and 3-Dish!

Darrel 06 Feb 06

Here’s a theory:

Making pretty troll caps is really just asking for people to be trolls. Trolls, defined by 37sig (and others) are folks just trying to stir up a debate. Stirring up a debate is what drives traffic to 37sigs. 37sigs excel at viral/online word of mouth marketing.

So, methinks the whole ‘we hate trolls’ is just a clever way of 37sig saying ‘please, keep the crazy debates coming as that’s good business!’

Smart.

Pundits, take note!

Darrel 06 Feb 06

“Digg does this type of voting almost effortlessly. You�ve probably got enough readers to make it happen, even if only 1 in 100 actually help out and click on them.”

And that’s certainly reduced trolling on DIGG.com, hasn’t it? ;o)

Chuck Norris 06 Feb 06

I want this hat or you will get a roundhousekick in the face!

indi 06 Feb 06

well, there’s a difference between stirring a lively debate and just being an ass or troll. Perhaps there can be another symbol for master debaters …

Chris Gwynne 06 Feb 06

well, there�s a difference between stirring a lively debate and just being an ass or troll. Perhaps there can be another symbol for master debaters �

Add master debaters together and take out the de

Steve 06 Feb 06

“This icon is free for anyone to use on their own blog. Spread it far and wide.”

Is that so in a few years time, if it has actually made it around the web, you can whine about it stopping?

Steve 06 Feb 06

I’m just kidding with the comment above :)

Interesting idea.

indi 06 Feb 06

Add master debaters together and take out the de

… in the finest oral tadition ;-)

Don Wilson 06 Feb 06

Very clever idea.

Alex Cabrera 06 Feb 06

If only it wasn’t so difficult to come up with an icon for self-absorbed arrogant pricks

paramusparis 06 Feb 06

Bring. It On. Actually, PUT IT ON!

MH 06 Feb 06

I agree with Jaime—You’re hyping the cap! People are looking forward to its appearance as if it were on par with Campfire, fer cryin’ out loud!

Just dim the trolls and skip the icon. A boring (but effective) punishment for boring people.

Su 06 Feb 06

Ludicrous.

DT 06 Feb 06

I would think that any acknowledgement of tolling just encourages it.

The troll thinks:
- Delete my post, I’ll post more crap
- Give out big colorful icons, I’ll aspire to get one
- Dim/color my post, it will stand out amung all the other posts.

My idea:
When the admin “deletes” a post, it makes that post invisible to everyone EXCEPT the person who posted it. If I’m a troll, I’ll see my post, but no one else will…I’ll just assume everyone’s ignoring me, which takes all the fun out of trolling.

bort 06 Feb 06

LOL @ alex cabrera

Anonymous Coward 06 Feb 06

    .      ^
_==o+o_/ .(�). \_____

(37Signals jumping the shark, in case the ASCII doesn’t come out.)

RyanA 06 Feb 06

I wonder if you can TrollCap yourself:

:D did that work?

RyanA 06 Feb 06

Oh… it didn’t. :( If you could then trolls could at least show some insight and save someone else the effort of TrollCapping them.

Anonymous Coward 07 Feb 06

Hmm, I see a couple of things. I agree with the posters who say it would actually encourage some trollers, it would be a cool badge. Secondly, from a social perspective, labelling (and presumably punishing and putting down) someone publically seems so Scarlet Letter-ish.

Trolls are part of life. Ignore them for the most part unless they get really out of hand.

a troll 07 Feb 06

you’re a genius !!

a genius 07 Feb 06

you’re a troll !!

a Anonymous 07 Feb 06

you’re stupid !!

a Coward 07 Feb 06

no you’re stupid !!

Greg 07 Feb 06

What’s the purpose of creating and announcing this icon if you’re not going to use it?

Sammy 07 Feb 06

Problem: the troll cap looks kind of cool. Try laying out a page where all the troll comments are marked with that cap. Which ones will your eyes go to first?

Exactly. Not exactly the intended effect.

The “dimming” effect is a much better idea, although there’s a point after which it becomes counterproductive. Some of us don’t see so good, so dimming an entry to within 1/255th of the background color will serve no purpose other than to annoy your readership.

andrew 07 Feb 06

I respectfully disagree with the concept. If you want public/anonymous comments, then you should expect to see some viewpoints that you don’t agree with. I have made simple and very respectful comments in that past here that have sparked absurd and snappy shutdowns from you guys - simply because I didn’t agree. How about requiring registration, make it a bit of a hassle to quickly registered. It�s usually worth it, if the comment-makers are genuine and constructive.

andrew 07 Feb 06

yeah, we get it, its a joke. i do love though, how you considered alternate viewpoints ‘abusive’

Bob Aman 07 Feb 06

Honestly, I’ve always preferred disemvowelling as a means to keep trolls in check.

Darren James Harkness 07 Feb 06

Y’know, comment trolls are much like schoolyard bullies. The more you pay attention to them (through squealing like a little girl) the more they’ll beat on you.

As some of the posters here have pointed out, you’re rewarding the trolls with this attention, and highlighting their posts for other users — as Sammy points out, the troll cap is going to draw the eye, rather than deflect it.

Best solution, if you want to have comments at all, is to either ignore the trollish comments entirely (and trust your community to police itself) or silently remove them. Anything else is just going to encourage your trolls.

Andrew 07 Feb 06

THIS IDEA SUCKS! YOU ALL SUCK!

Don Wilson 07 Feb 06

It always surprises me what age groups read SvN. You can see the lower-end in most of the comments in this particular post.

pwb 07 Feb 06

Interesting idea although I wonder if it will actually attract trolling.

I’ve never really understood why some forum owners pay so much attention to trolls. Trolling rarely has much of an impact on threads when simply ignored.

Skelly 07 Feb 06

Heh, that’s hot. Let’s see some suckers get pwned!

Cadence 07 Feb 06

Where do you buy one of these hats?!

Brandon Blatcher 07 Feb 06

Dealing with trolls is kinda fascinating. It’s interesting that people usually try to apply a technical solution to a socail problem. Face it, some people just want to be assholes and there’s no way to stop them from posting to SvN unless you go to a membership system that requires a valid credit card and even that won’t really work on the determined assholes.

It just might come down to moderation, which sucks, but what else can you do? For whatever reason, you guys just seem to be targets for this stuff. Hell, this post about the troll cap and the icon itself is probably just fuel for those who like to troll

bort 08 Feb 06

It just might come down to moderation, which sucks, but what else can you do?

but the troll cap itself is a form of moderation, isn’t it?

a genius troll 08 Feb 06

glop glop !

wannabetroll 08 Feb 06

What a stupid idea! I think it is useless.

sammy 08 Feb 06

Hey - here’s a feature request. How about a “rube” hat for people like me who didn’t get that this was a joke?

NetDancer 08 Feb 06

I created the notrolls (at) gmail.com account, and added the dunce cap as default gravatar. Everybody is free to use this mail when editting trolls comments ;-)

bort 08 Feb 06

if it’s a joke, then why did they use the troll cap in this thread?

Dean 08 Feb 06

Hey this is just like the “douchebag” role used over at Vanilla Forum by Lussumo. It’s been used for like the last six years.

http://lussumo.com/swell/34/New-name-for-an-old-idea/

Mike K 10 Feb 06

“douchbag” has been removed in recent vanilla builds.

justin 10 Feb 06

Can we get a version with a transparent background? Perhaps a PNG?

I kind of wonder whether this will actually reward trolls rather than deter them. Perhaps if it triggered a togglable display:none on a div around the comment this would be more effective.

eston 11 Feb 06

A vector or PNG version of this so we can have transparency / change colour / et cetera would be absolutely wonderful. Any plans to release this as something more than a meme? I already started (and have an alpha of) a plugin that does this in WordPress.

Hedley Robertson 11 Feb 06

I think the cap will encourage trolling more so than discourage. It reminds me of playing Everquest “back in the day” (coding in ruby is a much more interesting game these days), as soon as a system wide rule would be enforced with an account ban as the penalty, someone would attempt to break this rule in the most visible and obnoxious way possible, earning a banned account…. I think it must be some sort of rush for them =) Or at least some sort of attention re-enforcement… negative attention is better then no attention for some folks I guess.

So in short…. cool idea… but not sure if it will actually curb the trolling.

sham 14 Feb 06

i looked around this site a while - i guess it is troll free? didn’t see any caps except those at the top of this page.

sgo 15 Feb 06

I’ve done a plugin (scratchit) that’s based on the Disemvoweler that will “scratch out” a comment.

see it in use here

it’s really quite simple and can be set to the trolls IP or done per comment by simply adding a keyword to the top of the comment.

matiasn 15 Feb 06

f**ck s**t, f***ng a***oles !!!!!

Sory, i couldnt resist i wanna wear that troll cap !!! : )

Leo Cabral 16 Feb 06

Wow! More useless fashion.

Try this:
InvisiTroll Comment
Troll.font-color = Comment.background-color

Brandon 17 Feb 06

Lol…Can I get one for real life and make certain people wear it?

IrishWonder 27 Feb 06

And what exactly does this solve? The baddest type of blog comment spam is automated mass spam - and those who use that don’t actually ever come back to read yuor blog, ya know…

test 02 Mar 06

test

aurora ronnold 16 Mar 06

fuck yall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Martin 21 Mar 06

I don’t think the troll hat is workin’…

Neo 02 Jun 06

Puta madre!

Neo ustedes y sus putos trolls 02 Jun 06

No mamen esos weyes salen en el se�or de los anillos y me salen con mamadas mejor ven a trollearme la verga hijo de tu puta madre jajajajajajajaja me encanta cuanto tu puta madre me lambe los huevos como gato jajajajaja ke putos son todos pinches gringos de mierda bye putos

Nail 15 Jun 06

Not sure if this is a right place… We have growing electronic newsletter mailing list, and I’m desperate to find decent, reasonably priced software or shareware for list management and distribution. We’ve been using Outlook and ACT and they’re not working well. I was found bulk email software for sending newsletter. Are there other good options to help save my sanity? Does anyone know of any good hosting company that can handle bulk email? We need to send newsletters to about 900 customers without the hassle of restrictions. Thanks!

Nail 15 Jun 06

Not sure if this is a right place… We have growing electronic newsletter mailing list, and I’m desperate to find decent, reasonably priced software or shareware for list management and distribution. We’ve been using Outlook and ACT and they’re not working well. I was found bulk email software for sending newsletter. Are there other good options to help save my sanity? Does anyone know of any good hosting company that can handle bulk email? We need to send newsletters to about 900 customers without the hassle of restrictions. Thanks!

Nail 16 Jun 06

Not sure if this is a right place… We have growing electronic newsletter mailing list, and I’m desperate to find decent, reasonably priced software or shareware for list management and distribution. We’ve been using Outlook and ACT and they’re not working well. I was found bulk email software for sending newsletter. Are there other good options to help save my sanity? Does anyone know of any good hosting company that can handle bulk email? We need to send newsletters to about 900 customers without the hassle of restrictions. Thanks!

Nail 16 Jun 06

Not sure if this is a right place… We have growing electronic newsletter mailing list, and I’m desperate to find decent, reasonably priced software or shareware for list management and distribution. We’ve been using Outlook and ACT and they’re not working well. I was found bulk email software for sending newsletter. Are there other good options to help save my sanity? Does anyone know of any good hosting company that can handle bulk email? We need to send newsletters to about 900 customers without the hassle of restrictions. Thanks!