The solution is the same as it was in 1991 as well: don't feed the trolls.

praptak · on Jan 31, 2020

This was shown repeatedly not to work. The only troll-free forums are those with good moderators.

kerkeslager · on Jan 31, 2020

By what metric was this shown to not work?

I've been on lots of forums where the only rules were "no personal attacks and no porn" and they worked just fine. If the forum has a topic, then moderating to keep on topic is reasonable. Polite disagreement and discussion is the hallmark of a healthy forum.

There is of course more to curating a community than its moderation policy.

thinkingemote · on Feb 1, 2020

In terms of forums, the trolls existed but people knew how to ignore them. They didn't remove the troll, they just didn't feed them.

praptak · on Feb 2, 2020

You may ignore the trolls. Still there is always enough trolls and enough easily baited people for the S/N ratio to drop.

"Just ignore the troll" is a good personal advice it is just not sufficient for the forum as a whole.