Well, I have yet to meet a true troll here. However, only recently I’ve ventured into live games, so I expect to encounter them soon.
Maybe the userbase grows faster than the mod pool, or the geographical distribution of mods is uneven…
Counterpoint, I’ve been playing here for almost a year now and have had no encounters I can recall with trolls.
It’s statistically inevitable that the number of trolls will increase as an online community grows. The best thing to do is not feed them. Report and move on. Eventually they’ll stop getting a rise out of it and move on.
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Thank you! You’d be surprised how many players here encounter bad behavior and do NOT report it. That user trolled 12 other games before you were the first to report. We absolutely rely on reports to catch bad behavior, so I can’t exaggerate the part y’all play in helping keep OGS relatively troll-free.
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Thanks, mark5000. I think all serious go-lovers appreciate the respectful tone that goes with the game. Therefore we should do whatever we can to maintain a decent atmosphere here. If the trolls can go on with their destructive behavior, several players will just quit this site quietly. This would be a shame, because you have done a tremendous job in creating and maintaing this site.
I’ve experienced that the administrators are very responsive and helpful. Also I think it has become a lot better with the rollout of the new version recently, I understood that the procedure to create a new account has improved (made more difficult). And finally, when you know this can happen it makes it easier to deal with it, it’s just a nuisance for me now, I just report and move on. It’s their problem and not mine basically.
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Same here - I’ve played 300-odd correspondence games, and encountered zero trolls and only one sandbagger (he didn’t bother me, but it was interesting watching him resign a pile of games after 19 moves to drive his rank down).
Live play is obviously a different kettle of fish. But the slow pace of correspondence go obviously doesn’t gratify the need for instant attention that drives your average troll.
Related: Do you see much trolling in tournaments? I would suspect not.
I have a new motivation now to get near 1k just to meet this mentally challenged individual. I have to see this for myself 
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ignoring may be better than a forum post everytime - the worst case for trolls 
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I’d recommend online poker instead. Not only you can encounter such individuals in abundance there, you can take their money as well 
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You know, at online poker at least I can kinda get that people get pissy when they lose a lot of money, but why here? poor guy must have some issues. Maybe he needs a hug.
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Amusing :). However, you can view their games if you want in their profile. The 6d? troll, under several aliases, had an MO of timing out and seems to have been shut down. What his actual strength was is impossible to tell. The “new” troll (perhaps the same) has a different MO. He is actually a sandbagger who likes to be nasty. In various aliases, he has an excellent win record and seems to be a dan-level player. Last time I checked, a few days ago, he had 5 or 6 aliases, all rated either 1k or 2k, some provisional and some not. One of his aliases had a 9-0 record against comparable opponents. “Pustebu,” mentioned above, seems to be brand new.
The same troll seems to be back. See https://online-go.com/game/8156271, and note the “misclick…cheater” badgering.
Indeed! Thanks.
Instead of trying to get rid of them, why not welcome them? Create a group for them to join Trolls and Sandbaggers Unlimited. Then users could search them out for abuse, aggravation or amusement.
Someone can easily create masked e-mail addresses and make accounts faster than you can catch them.
How about charging a membership deposit? You make a deposit of $10 to create an account. If you are carefully documented as a repeat offender you lose that account and your deposit. Anyone ls allowed to recover their deposit when they want to terminate an account. There’s not a great necessity for users to have more than one account is there? Maybe something can be worked out after more thought.
Then invite the trolls to join. Keep all the money they want to leave behind.
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We don’t want to scare off all new players, so maybe without the deposit you could play a limited number of games as a trial? Then if you like it pay the deposit and/or become a site supporter then you get unlimited games?
Yah, the free trial lets you play all the games you want against trolls.
Just my opinion, but if you start asking money (even if only as a deposit) I bet like 80% (my extra precise estimate) of people will switch to elsewhere. (I know I would, and I like it here a lot…) I don’t think trolls are such a big of deal to take such drastic measures. Or maybe I am just lucky, but I have not yet had the “pleasure” of meeting one in any of my games…
Also I bet some legal issues would stem from that…
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Even if you somehow managed to turn OGS into an elite paid club, people would start selling “well-established” accounts to trolls and sandbaggers. Humanity is kind of unfixable
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If $10 makes it “elite”, what would be a more egalitarian price for the disadvantaged masses who can afford to pay for internet access, cell phone service, smartphones, laptops or desktops and have the free time to play Go instead of working a 5th job to pay the bills? $5, $1, …?
If someone wants to pay good money to buy an account that they will turn into a trolling platform which will quickly get their account closed thus losing the “deposit”, the price paid and the account bought, by all means please do it! On top of that, you could go after people who sell the accounts.
Legal is whatever draconian conditions you put into the T.O.S. If you say accounts can not be sold or transferred and you lose your head if you do it, that’s that.
Consider a bold attack against trolls a unique product attribute and a competitive advantage against other sites that are less successful at attracting trolls.