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What can we do about malicious commenters?

We should create terms of use for social networking sites, setting out the game’s basic rules and upload this to the business card section. The terms of use can include a ban on undesirable behaviour or the use of obscene words. At the Clean Air Action Group, this even applies to crossed-out words, i.e. we don't allow someone to write the first and last letters and cross them out in between, but it is still clear what they meant to write.

By the way, social media service providers usually also have strong terms of use. It is worthwhile for the administrator to read them and indicate in the terms of use of his/her own site that the terms of use (or a significant part of them) are also a standard requirement of the provider.

When you see any violation of these conditions, you should politely warn the contributor as a public comment. We often use the warning, which can include a 30-minute time limit to edit the post, otherwise, we will delete it.

It is very important not to take the same attitude toward commenters with bad intentions as they do towards you. You must remain calm, measured and reasoned in your dealings with them.

The big question is whether to respond or leave such comments unanswered. If there are few other comments or only such unwanted comments, then a response is required. If only a small percentage of the comments are such, then only the most outrageous ones should be dealt with. The aim is for civilised contributors to exclude unwanted elements from the discussion themselves. This happens very often, most of the time inappropriate comments are picked up by others and are either reprimanded or pointed out that such comments are not welcome on this site. If we have achieved a majority of people who are willing moderators of our site, we can be satisfied.

Once a post has over 100 comments, it is almost impossible to follow everything and respond. We aim to reply to about 10-20% of the posts and to use emojis to make our opinions known to the rest.

The most offensive posts (death wishes, vile humiliation, etc.) are deleted without warning and the person's profile is banned from our site forever.

Clean Air Action Group never communicates with any commenter on individual posts through personal channels or non-public messages. We do not respond to these types of requests. Of course, we do receive a lot of messages through non-public platforms, but here we only reply to those asking for advice or other inquiries not related to specific posts.

Anyone who manages a site knows that there are sympathisers who often post and are active on the site. It is important that we always pay attention to their posts and give them some kind of feedback. It's also important that if a sympathiser takes the liberty of posting obscene or otherwise inappropriate comments, they should also be politely warned.

In replies, often start with “Dear XY...” even if the person does not seem to be a nice person.

The majority of commenters are very positive that the site administrators are polite to everyone, which makes the site more sympathetic and reinforces the attitude to warn those who violate the written and unwritten norms.

It is also worthwhile to occasionally write a summary post for a post that has provoked a major debate, thanking them for their activity and reiterating the messages that are important to us. People who communicate in a normal style but have different or even radically different opinions are a very important part of our site. Their comments should be responded to, and if we feel there is any truth in what they say, we should acknowledge it, thank them, and tell them that we are considering it. It is not sympathetic to a commenter if every post is met with the same response and no understanding from the poster, so this needs to be consciously addressed.

Commentators very often raise the same or similar counter-arguments on a topic. Therefore, it is useful to collect the corresponding responses in a single document, and often a simple copy and paste can be done in a matter of moments.

Comments unrelated to the post in question should also be dealt with, for example by asking back what the intention was, or by outright asking for comments on the subject of the post.

Often, commenters do not raise any counter-arguments, but simply state (in various ways) that what we have written is wrong. In this case, we usually thank the commenter and write “Based on our decades of experience, we are always right in cases where the commenter cannot cite any specific counter-argument.”

Political incitement is very common, as is a commenter making his point by saying that you are one of one political “colour”, or that you are just supporting some political party. Since this is also prohibited in the terms of use, we can safely reply that such comments are not allowed. But delete only the most outrageous ones, most people can handle it anyway. Even if the moderator has a political opinion, it should never be revealed by replies on behalf of the organisation.

There are some commenters who are always bickering, have a problem with everything, and keep sticking to the same old gumshoe. There are not many of them, but they will comment several times (sometimes up to ten times) on a single post, or they will not only comment on the post but also on those who have the same opinion as the post. The site administrator should be aware of these up to 4-5 recurring people and it is important to always respond to at least one of their posts. We don't need to get into an end-to-end debate, we won't have the last word anyway, but the others need to see that the site is treating them appropriately.

Clean Air Action Group only uses the permanent banning tool about 2-4 times a year, it is worth trying to the end. If someone has a lot of friends and is posting with a real profile, a polite public response is also important because their friends can be notified, so they can see what they are saying, in what style, and how the other site is responding.

We are less lenient with fake profiles with no more than 1 or 2 acquaintances (who are regularly the ones who indulge in a more rude style in the guise of anonymity) and may ban them for even the most minor offences.

We have left it to the end, but it is very important that the administrator should only be someone who is not psychologically damaged by the opinions of those who are often unjustifiably abusive or who appear to draw conclusions from the title without reading the post.

If done right, the community will visibly exclude and treat as inappropriate those who express extreme opinions or are unfit for debate. If we have achieved that, then we are doing it right and we should be proud of that, not annoyed that there are trolls. Clean Air Action Group has been regularly attacked by trolls for many years, but it is steadfast in its work in the public interest.

Clean Air Action Group

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What can we do about malicious commenters?

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