Those people are called Trolls. Everyone hates them. They deserve to be banned. Would you like to join my Anti-Troll Club? Just put Anti-Troll-Club Member in the About Me section in your profile.

We have an anti-troll club, you should join it. They are called trolls and something should be done about them, because, they usually do not contribute and just cause trouble. I had an idea: I noticed that many of these people or "trolls" rate you a (-1). I feel that the staff should not give voting power to someone until they get to level 10. ****Talk about Irony, some idiot rated this down!!! The sniveling little devil.. again..

Even if I totally disagree with an answer or an opinion, I won't vote it down. In fact, I've only ever rated an answer down once, and that was because I knew the answer to be incorrect for definite.In fact, most questions are quite ambiguous and subjective, therefore the answers will be.

sometimes, but everyone has a right to their own opinions. it also makes you rethink your questions and maybe realize something you didn't before.

It doesn't really even bother me. All that is happening is that my answer is being moved down on the list of answers. It doesn't affect my overall point total. I think most people think your points toward levels goes down too, but don't worry, it doesn't.

Yes, I am annoyed by negative ratings without supporting comments. Could you be more specific about the sanctions? What is considered excessive and what type of limits would be imposed?

It doesn't bother me so much anymore, but it certainly used to. I'm not sure how one would go about applying sanctions or limitations judiciously or fairly. I look at it sort of like being subject to the proliferation of pornography as guaranteed by free speech. It's just part of the landscape and the the good will naturally rise to the top, while the bad will sink to the bottom.

Yes. Absolutely! Rules make sense. They reflect the intention of the community. Just like one shouldn't be able to rate the same person as helpful too often (in a week, I think), so also (it seems to be the community intention that) one shouldn't be able to neg too often in one week. The bitter feud would be in drawing the line: how many negs per week. I do neg absurd questions. I never neg questions that are in English, that I can read, that make sense, and seek genuine, helpful or funny responses. And almost never neg answers. _____________ I do not believe that this is, technically, inconsistent with my main philosophy. But I will direct you to the following question/ answer. I have been thinking about all this "troll" stuff lately. My newest position is on another page. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/113177

yep

This is a place where one can say what is on their mind, so too many sanctions would be counter productive. But I do agree that if a person is going to rate it negative there needs to be at least an explanation for the action. Now we would have to respect the negative rating if the expaination was reasonable. When you rate a positive it is a given that you agreed with all or part of the answer, so no explanation needed. So yeah something in the way of why would be nice.

Not just yes, but HELL YEAH!!!!! I had an idea on a possible idea too. It's not terribly hard to implement if you are a decent coder. (At least, I know three people who would call it simple.) It come in two parts. 1) Each person has a "trollishness counter" that starts at and never goes above 0. Every time you give a negative rating, this counter decreases by 1. Every 4 hours, the counter increases by 1 2) Giving negative ratings will PERMANENTLY lower YOUR point total by your trollishness counter (see above) minus half your level (rounded down). If your counter is 0 or above, then giving a negative rating will not affect you point total. The rationale; -This will make low-level people think twice about trying to 'police' AB until they have earned the right while allowing the veterans a bit more leeway. -Once you run out of 'free' downratings for the day, the cost of future downratings increases rather quickly. Power-trolling will be EXPENSIVE! For instance, the person who left me twenty-five -2 ratings the other day... Let's assume they were level 17 like me. They would use all 8 of the "Not Helpfuls" they'd be entitle to (17/2 = 8.5, rounded down) and be fine. The 9th would cost 1 point, the 10th would be 2, 3 pts for the 11th and so on up until they got to the 25th which would cost them 17 points. 17+16+15...+2+1 = 153 points. I think that that sort of penalty would make people think twice. And if they carpet-bombed a thread and hit 30 answers they disagreed with, they'd be level 1 again in no time! Thoughts? Feedback? EDIT - 13 DEC 06 I figured the syntax slightly better: C = Cost to downrate an answer N = Number of 'Not Helpful' ratings given recently L = Rater's level / 2 BEGIN DOWNRATING IF N > L THEN C = N - L, ELSE C = 0 END DOWNRATING In order to allow the regeneration of allowable 'Not Helpful' ratings, the value of N will automatically reduce with time. I was thinking of changing it to ( L / 24 ) points per hour, keeping fractions to at least 1 decimal pace for obvious reasons. What this means is that every 24 hours, you will recover all of your allowable 'Not Helpful' ratings. BEGIN HOURLY RECOVERY IF N > 0 THEN N = N - ( L / 24 ), ELSE N = 0 END HOURLY RECOVERY

Yes and no. I see a lot of good points made here. I, like Auntie Em and Jervinator, remember the days where a negative rating required a comment. One can look at that two ways, it forced the trolls to account for their rating. If you rated a troll down on a legitimately wrong answer, depending on the troll, it usually resulted in a barrage of bad ratings back at you. Spiteful ratings that ding correct answers or answers that by the nature of the question are opinion/advice based are just wrong. Realistically, users who ASK questions and need an accurate answer or solid advice/opinions are the people who really lose on this deal, not the intended troll targets. A perfectly good/solid/accurate answer tends to get buried when rated down after all. On one of the many incarnations of AB one could see a ranking of users based on how many positive and negative ratings they had handed out which made it easy for the rest of us to see a troll ranking, for all intents and purposes. Kind of nice if used properly. I once pointed out to a troll that they didn't like a lot of AB answers and could stand to be less critical. I'll be darned! The troll reponded in a positive manner and eventually chilled out. So, what to do? I think a daily limit is a good fix, some sort of software that red flags a person who appears to be going nuts with the negative ratings. Perhaps, temporarily disables their AB account and issues that individual a warning to cease the excessive negative rating activity or be locked out for good. Just brainstorming here.

There is a restriction on negative ratings. I know, because I reached it with b2tl.

I'm actually growing more annoyed at the bullsh!t questions being asked, for points and the number of people with more than one ID, using them for point grabs. Not to mention the people that are posting multiple answers under one question, again, point grabbing. Quality has gone the way of the Do do in here. Little wonder some of the better AB'ers have had it. If anything, the positive rates need to be addressed.

Yes. I would love for you to have to post the reason for the neg.

I've upset stacks of people on here. I find it all most amusing. Please do not suggest negative ratings etc should be stopped - who cares about comments. I have a personal best to beat and who else will answer some of the stuff in the Religion category?

why does everybody have to be so serious. Most of the questions asked require an opinion not a fact for the reply. Even this question is asking for peoples opinions. Everyone has a different opinion, nobody has a correct opinion or an incorrect one. A negative opinion is not incorrect even if negativity is a recurring theme in that persons answers. So what is the big deal about? A good solid answer to a to a question of opinion may only be good, solid and correct in YOUR eyes - in your opinion. Get it? But no, it seems to me that when some users receive negative ratings they get out of their prams - they do not like this at all and want an explaination!! And on we go to the Troll thing. ....."I once pointed out to a Troll....blah blah.....to be less critical". The Troll responded......and eventually chilled out. I am absolutely lost for words. This comes across very very badly. It is patronising, self important, lacking in common courtesy and manners and written in the same manner as one would use to address or refer to an animal of lesser intelligence. That 'Troll' was a human being! A person, any person, even those people who are considered beneath some idividuals have as much right to be critical as they so desire, whether you like it or not. You talk about a 'positive manner' and yet talk to others in a style that promotes a negative and defensive response. What do you think this person said about you afterwards exactly? I daresay they agreed with you when confronted. Do you always pick your targets so well? Did it occur that the person may have been young? Young enough to lack the courage or written skills required to respond? Or perhaps the person was critical because they suffered with depression or perhaps it was the way they are, we cannot all be rays of sunshine. Some are naturally pessimistic and negative, who see the dark side of things long before the bright one. Perhaps this person was old lady, because human beings can become sharp and critical in old age. Of course, none of this entered your mind at all, did it? Way above your head this kind of thing. This site is about the opinions of people, all different people and all views and opinions are valid and worthy of being heard. I wonder if you will respond to me in the same manner? Are you going to call me a name as well. This is playground behaviour - children call each other names and are told not to be spiteful. To do this as an adult is, to say the least distasteful and shows a lack of education and poor judgement. How dare you criticise another person of who you know practically nothing aside from a few answers amounting to how many, lines of text exactly? I do not believe you are qualified to enforce your opinion onto anybody least of a virtual stranger. On a final note, stop calling people names. It is spiteful and nasty - they are some who do not have much self confidence, some none at all and it is those people who your name calling will impact. Calling somebody a Troll and referring to them as non-human has the power to hurt feelings and damage self image. You haven't said it directly but hey, you haven't yet referred to me in this manner and yet just above this text, it is displayed for all to read. There is a saying I recall that you would be wise to remember before you receive another angry comment such as this one. 'If you cannot say anything nice, then don't say anything at all'. Got it?

I must say i am a member of the anti-troll club as well. I can't stand negative feedbck without an explanation i must say. Just because someone doesn't like my opinion i get negative feedback without explanation. Mind you i think a lot of us have been getting -1 feedbck from people in the past few days, amateur beginners with nothing else to do in their school holidys. As a side note i thought there where limits on negative feedback, i am probably wrong though.

I am mildly annoyed. I think superpanda2 has the best solution though.

Jodie44 put out a survey this moring about ratings/comments: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/117332

They already have sanctions on negative ratings so all the pages that they do must be on different accounts. Joel told me they are only allowed so many negatives same as positives

I got three -5 ratings today without explanation. -5 means the person's been in AB for a while and should be mature enough to explain the issue, I think. I very rarely DR anything. If I don't like something I've read, I just move on. I think if ur going to DR something, you should have to explain or the DR shouldn't "take."

Yes. I hate them. I would support habitual downraters to have their accounts deleted by AB staff. On another website I used to go to (neopets.com), bad behavior gets your account frozen, which means you can't even log in. I know neopets is a different type of site, but bad behavior gets your account frozen. It's still the principle.They need something similar here. I don't think the penalty box (whatever it is) is working. The accounts need to be permanently frozen or deleted. And this needs to happen every single time someone is found to be a habitual downrater.

Nope. I don't want an explanation if the person just doesn't like my answer and there's nothing wrong with it. They can down rate me all they want if that makes them feel better about themselves. If that's the case, though, they are wasting their time because I don't even care. On the bright side, at least they aren't out killing someone if they're too busy down rating my stuff.