trolls...

Here at Stroppyblog we do not censor. We are happy to have debate and criticism and no problem with insults either. Recently though there has been a troll with a little to much time on their hands. Or perhaps hand, one typing and the other...
I think Sappho has it right, some spotty 14 year old who needs to get out more.

It seems that this troll has been on other sites. They are posting lots and lots of long comments. Mostly they do not make any sense in terms of an argument. They consist mainly of crude sexual, homophobic and sexist abuse. They have started insulting other posters and they are clogging up the debate in the comments boxes.
They seemed particularly bothered by women talking about sex.

My initial reaction was to leave it up. I don't like to delete or censor debate in any way. It has though continued with very long comments which are a stream of bile.

We have discussed this with regular commentators and the general feeling is this is not an issue of free speech. It is seen as off putting to other commentators and the nature of the comments (both very crude and insulting and also nonsense ), ones that people seem to want us to delete.

I hope this is not seen as censorship. Some of the comments are still up and you can judge for yourselves whether they constitute debate or just the disturbed ramblings of a troll.

So for now we will delete and hope they get bored, or their mum takes their laptop away.

Oh and there has also been quite a bit of spam we have had to delete. We will probably change over to haloscan to help with this.