Troll behaviour

[diogenes]

It seems to me that this troll likes the weekend to come out from under the bridge. Can Admin develop a simple deletion algorithm using key unique word combinations to automatically prevent this from appearing at all? Similarly for any new ones in future.

[RedApple Administrator]

Diogenes, Admin would love to be able to do this. Unfortunately, we have no such facilities available to us to control trolling or spamming. HealthUnlocked techies are the only people who can do this, and we have tried in vain to get them to do more. They seem to prefer the 'lock the gate after the horse has bolted approach'. The admin team are beyond frustrated at being so powerless over these pathetic individuals who apparently gain so much gratification from trolling.

[diogenes Remembering in reply to RedApple]

What computer language does your techies use?

[RedApple Administrator in reply to diogenes]

We are not privy to such information. May I suggest you communicate with them by visiting this link support.healthunlocked.com, where on the far right you will see links to 'Contact Support' and 'Give us Feedback'.

These are the only means of communication we have with those behind the scenes at HealthUnlocked.

Admins would absolutely welcome your help in trying to get HU to deal with this issue on a permanent basis.

[RedApple Administrator]

Thank you for your support Hidden If I sound pessimistic about there being a 'permanent fix', it's because this is by no means the first time admins of this forum have been targeted in this way. Another admin and myself were the subject of a long spell of defamatory troll postings some time back, and HU did nothing useful then either.

[Angel_of_the_North]

Deleting based on keywords rarely works as intended (I've worked in IT since the 80s). In spite of all the banging on about AI-type algorithms, you really need a human.

[helvella Administrator in reply to Angel_of_the_North]

One of the fundamental problems, of course, is that if someone finds their posts being blocked, they will adjust the posts until they find something that doesn't get blocked.

[Angel_of_the_North in reply to helvella]

Certainly. But it is more likely to block legit posts. LinkedIn do something similar and it became impossible to use the word "book" or "seminar" in groups. Really useful for the copyeditors group I was in and the online trainers group. Another casualty was Microsoft Exchange (usually abbreviated to MSExchange), and of course the problem of not being able to sign up to AOL (in the good old days) if you lived in Clitheroe or Cockermouth. Plus, most trolls use disposable email addresses (but HU could ban the main spam/troll domains)

[diogenes Remembering in reply to helvella]

That's true, but if we don't let on the word combination used in blocking a particularly persistent troll, it will take a lot of time before they find out how to avoid deletion, especially if they are trolling a named person which is usually the case.