Dear Fed Up,
We feel your pain here at Lifehacker (which is why we have a more involved and curated comment system than you'll find on most sites), and while there are a lot of great solutions out there, none of them are all-encompassing, and none of them are foolproof—but we can give you a few tips for doing the best you can on the sites you visit.
(Note: To clarify for those unfamiliar with the language, an internet troll—according to Wikipedia—is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.)
Cleaning Up the Web with Add-ons
A great example of a site-specific tool is the previously mentioned
YouTube Comment Snob extension for Firefox. While it looks like it doesn't currently work with the new version of YouTube (though it is still in active development, so we hope to see a fix soon), it does a good job of separating good, earnest comments from spam and trolls. Within the extension, you can create pre-set filters for, say, excessive capitalization or frequent misspellings, and hide comments containing those features. In fact, we wish that this add-on existed for the entire internet, but sadly the world is not that simple.
The closest thing we could find to a "
Comment Snob for the entire internet" was this handy Greasemonkey extension. It's more of a profanity filter than a comment blocker, but at least you can block the words you don't want to see and replace them with ***. It's not quite as useful, but you can at least make trolls easier to spot and thus ignore.
There are some other add-ons and scripts floating around out there, but like YouTube Comment Snob, they're all for specific services. For example, Lifehacker reader KosciaK wrote in to tell us about
Buzz Troll Remover for Chrome and
TrollEyBuzz for Firefox, which allow you to block certain people from showing up in Google Buzz. The best way to go about blocking trolls is on a site-by-site basis. If a site you frequent is popular enough, there's a good chance you can search Google for Firefox extensions or Greasemonkey scripts that aim to manage trolls in that particular forum. Also, be sure to read up on that forum's built-in commenting features, because many sites and forums have features for blocking people, reporting spammers, and voting certain comments up and down to get them hidden from view.
Last Resort: Rid Yourself of Comments Altogether
If the pain is just too great and there's no other way to avoid them, you could try blocking comments altogether on that site with the
CommentBlocker Firefox Extension. It's designed to work on a large range of sites, but if you want to participate in the community on that site then this won't do you much good.
Do Not Feed the Trolls
Apart from that, the most important advice we can give is whatever you do, don't feed the trolls. Trolls thrive on getting a rise out of people, and if you reply to their comments, you're just giving them the attention they so desperately crave. And, if you respond in a negative tone, you end up becoming just as bad as them and fan the flame war, so to speak. Be sure that you're setting a good example and adhering to the
best netiquette practices.
Our most important suggestion: The best thing you can do is learn to deal with, and when necessary, entirely ignore the trolls. Unfortunately, it's something we all have to do, both in real life and on the internet, and while there are certain tools to help you avoid them completely (depending on the site), no solution is sweeping and foolproof, so the best way to get past it is to hold your head high and power through.
Sincerely,
Lifehacker
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