If someone thinks he has spotted a troll, that person should alert on the suspected troll, not write an accusatory post.

It's hard to tell whether that could be classed as jokey or an alertworthy accusation.

There's enough tension around right now without people alerting each other willy-nilly, either for being a suspected troll or for insinuating somebody else might be one, but you're right - according to the TOS, an outright accusation would be alertable.

It would be easier just to stop doing it in our threads altogether.

"When you fish, do you cast or just drag the lure behind the boat?"

Granted, I am in Alabama and they are fighting like crazy for Roy Moore on every public FB post, but this is real. I just reported 2 in the last hour on FB. We call them out so others will realize they are bots and trolls then we report them and hope for the best.

I'm not telling someone here how to respond to people they see as trolls.

a 30-something putting his hands down a 14-year old's pants (Moore) I say, if the Valenki fits, wear it. They usually disappear.

Had to look up Valenki. Is that something everyone else knows? Sometimes I feel so out of the loop. Especially since my kids call me out for not knowing something they know every chance they get.

I get to learn new words.

... that I lose track of who's accusing whom of what liberal offense on each particular day. The repugs know we do this to each other and use it against us. They set us up, like the Franken deal, and set back and watch while we tear each other apart. Sooner or later though, we won't take the bait anymore and find more effective responses.

But, in the meantime

Yup. I've seen it so many times over the years. Some even boast about doing it on some of the anti-DU sites.

Repugs or "Russians", doesn't really matter - similar agenda, similar tactics.

You can usually find past posts via a Google or advanced search, but there's a danger of that turning into stalking and just feeding more paranoia.

I wouldn't be against introducing that sort of transparency, but for whatever reason, admin have chosen not to provide it (I've been a member of, even moderated, forums where it's available, and it can be a mixed blessing).

You should learn the facts.

"That's really MIRT's job if it's somebody with fewer than 100 posts. They can see a lot about metadata that we can't."

If it's a member of longer standing, despite MIRT's best efforts, I guess a message to admin might do the trick.

And if we're offering advice, you should learn some manners!

For posting that you should get the facts. I'm ashamed.

And that out of the blue.

It would be nice if this didn't turn into a head for trolling and backbiting.

Just how many innocuous posts they need.

Why, it's almost as if MIRT is the only DU body that can take action on true trolls.

Anyway, don't you have some "victimhood" you should be pursuing?

They were still capable of escalating a troll not caught over 100 posts to Admin at that point, but I also don't think we had the "5 post hide detention" yet then either.

as an example. Real people know how to respond and clear the air.

troll can't really operate effectively.

Usually obvious trolls are obvious, and they do have a forum where they keep track of less-obvious potential "trolls" to differentiate between truly malicious intruders and opinionated new people.

But I've only done that when submitting a report to MIRT because someone has been acting in a way I remember from my time served there is truly suspicious.

It's best not to try to play detective publicly, though. We do have great people who do exactly that privately.

... you get to snoop through everything someone posted.

That probably does help keep amateur witchhunts to a minimum.

The people reposting the oh-so-juicy retweet bait by those trolls were sadly caught by the tasty bait.

Not trolls.