Purposefully Misleading Comments

[TheNewTeddy]

I have a question about comments that are purposefully misleading. From where I sit, these are half spam (typing because you like to see your own words on the screen) and half trolling (saying things that you know will get people upset just to make them upset) and I'm wondering what the official forum policy is.

I made the mistake of looking in on the US politics board and it is jam packed full of this stuff.

[jacee]

Examples pls?

[Greg]

I have a question about comments that are purposefully misleading.

That can be fairly subjective, and I would rather not have the moderators or facilitators (or myself) making a judgement on whether a post is high quality or not.

From where I sit, these are half spam (typing because you like to see your own words on the screen) and half trolling (saying things that you know will get people upset just to make them upset) and I'm wondering what the official forum policy is.

We do have a rule relating to type of postings:

POSTING CONTENT

All posts must contain some aspect of an argument or attempt to stimulate discussion. Simply posting a URL to an outside source or posting statements that are only one or two sentences long will not be tolerated and the post will be deleted. In addition, use the search feature to ensure that the topic you are posting is not already being discussed somewhere else in the forums.

It is also important that you stay on topic and keep the discussion focused. If the thread begins to wonder off into a new topic area, start a new thread and continue the discussion under the new thread. If you feel a thread is being watered down with too many different topic areas and you do not want to start the new thread yourself, feel free to contact the Admin and request a new thread.

and another on trolling/flaming

NO TROLLING/FLAMING

Do not post inflammatory remarks just to annoy people. If you are not bringing anything new to the argument, then do not say anything at all.

Some messages are not so much offensive as simply nuisance value. An example would be a person who persistently creates conflict without contributing anything useful. In newsgroup circles, such a person is known as a "troll". We define "trolling" as a message that serves no constructive purpose and is likely to cause offence or arguments. We define "annoying" as any message that results in a complaint from a registered user -- we will then decide whether to take action.

If you believe a posting or a topic falls within these two rules, send in a report. Otherwise, if its just someone who is being intellectually lazy in their argument or seem to be playing the devil's advocate, then take them to task and point out the flaws in the argument. If everyone took the high road and choose not to feed the trolls, they would all get bored and leave. Likewise, if someone is just being lazy, the quickest way to get them to respond intelligently is to counter their argument with an intelligent debate.

[TheNewTeddy]

I will report anything I see that fits, but as for the lazy, some posters here seem to refuse to use their brains no matter what which is sad.