A draconian suggestion that might improve the quality of discussion.
Through tapatalk i found i could mark a post as spam by holding down on it and selecting 'More' then 'Report' In the same way as you can report a post as spam, could we add 'knee-jerk' and 'troll' to that list. Then, if enough people select it, say 10, the poster gets their custom settings edited to read Chimp/Troll, and description to 'Chimp like behaviour exemplified by knee jerk reactions to events' or 'Inflammatory troll-like posting to elicit a reaction' for that post.
This could be accomplished by a generic chimp and troll account that gets assigned to them for that post, for example. You could even have rule that says X number of Chimps or Trolls in a day equalling a temporary ban? Over multiple days something more lengthy?
There could then be a setting that asks if you want not to see posts labelled as Chimp/Troll when you view discussions. It could be enabled by default. This would also, hopefully, make reasoned arguments and descriptive discourse available for readers and posters to enjoy.
This suggestion would make knee-jerking and trolling more difficult and make MOD's lives easier too, I hope. If the poster disagrees with the label they could raise it with a MOD but trollers and knee-jerkers know what they are doing if they think about it. I think an added longer term benefit would be that this type of behaviour would be discouraged with more thought put into framing responses and presenting ideas.
This is draconian and could result in unpopular posting being so flagged, but with MODDING offering redress I think this could be mitigated. I think this would also need an updated rule to the posting rules describing Trolling and Knee-Jerking as unacceptable. I would think, as adjuncts to the thread domination section. This change could then be updated to all and act going forward. If people wanted to spend time cleaning up old threads then so be it.
