Admins v. Trolls and Moles: Survival and Group Rehab

About Admins v. Trolls and Moles: Survival and Group Rehab

what follows is the original group description, but first, a personal message from rippie...

Stuff has happened very quickly in this group. Two admins of the group, including the founder, have left or been deleted. Several other members have disappeared. Groups associated with them have been put under the scope and their co-admins are all acting a bit squirrely except for one. There are two people out and about using one nic and two people out and about using another. One is a known troll nic the other a known admin nic. One each of them I know. The others, one I know who it is, and the other I am pretty sure I know.

Having interceded to reduce hostility between two parties I do know, I'm now allowing them each to engage each other with no advice or interference from me. One suffered a loss, the other asserts that (s)he had nothing to do with it.

What appeared at first to be two separate sets of incidents affecting separate sets of groups appears to have a connection between them... a couple, it turns out. In the middle of this, I've also been targeted simply for being witness. Good luck with that.

I WILL FIND OUT EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. And when I do, it will be a case study here... sadly amongst a few.

RULES: you better have a SAFE avatar. you better have a DECENT nic. you better NOT have stolen/web content. don't be a hater... if you don't know what that means... sheesh...

you MUST run groups to be here... admins and mods, any genre, any age, any style from flowers to football, car pics to kittens, naughty or nice, are all welcome here. no matter the genre, nobody wants to lose their groups, regardless of what kind of stuff is in it.

you MUST also have been reviewed. this means that nobody with fewer than 5 PUBLIC pics will be permitted in or to remain. this applies to Mods of this group as well. EVERY person here is to have been reviewed!

there is HUGE change afoot on flickr and we are seeing the first rumblings. a big power shift is in progress in Community Standards. We can adapt and live, or be idiots and perish...

end of message...

Rip


Now, the original group description, which really doesn't cut it any more:
"Who Ya Gonna Call?

Trollbusters!

Hello, Flickr friend of good will,

While it is true that this particular troll has gotten bolder and bolder and even more blatant, it is critical to remember that this group is supposed to be a forum for support and the exchange of strategies for dealing with trolls.

Not a bloodthirsty lynch mob.

Please invite your contacts to join, and do contribute your ideas on how best to survive an attack, both individually and as a group.

This group was originally founded to fight back against the trolls who wrecked several groups in April 2010, emptied their photo pools, and banned many of you...that's part of what Flickr Trolls do for cheap thrills.

At our expense.

Join us, won't you? Please help us develop strategies and tactics to stymy these jackanapes!

By joining this group, we are all fighting back against a cyberbully who thinks that he can worm his way Into the confidence and good graces of some susceptible group admin, get himself promoted, and then wreak havoc on the group until everyone flees or he bans them.

Then, the plan is to bully the remaining admins out with vague but chilling threats of retribution by deletion from HQ until finally, he is the last group member.

Whereupon the disappointed administrators resign, and then the rogue "administrators" watch with hand-rubbingly fiendish delight as HQ deletes the group as having been abandoned.

However, this particular fight has already cost the trolls in this case more than they bargained for, both in terms of time and effort.

Our point is to make it so hard for them to kill this group that they lose interest in the "game to play," as they themselves refer to group-killing in their FlickrMailed threats to me, and to cease to allow them to enjoy whatever sick creepy little thrill that they can derive from their destructive little macabre "hobby."

Thank you for your consideration.

Oh, and please feel to join any of the wrecked groups to which you have been invited, in order to help to resuscitate and to rehabilitate them.

After joining, please feel free to post as much of your work that is within Flickr's TOS as you like, and to invite any and all of your Flickr pals to join us as well, using these or similar words if you like, and do likewise.

That drives the trolls crazy!

Cheers,

Alex"