A Brief History of Charas’s conflict with TrollKingdom
(it’s long, but I’m writing it for my own benefit if nothing else. History must be remembered)
It has been six days since this crisis began, and two days since I realized that I could not end it entirely on my own. My head is still spinning a little as I ponder recent events and try to figure out exactly what happened and, more importantly, why. Maybe I will never quite get it right. But here is how I remember it at least.
Details are sketchy at when, but at some point Lord Raffles went to TrollKingdom and revealed Charas to them. Trolls have a method. The more they can get us to ban people, the more they can get us to restrict the forums, the less fun it is for everyone. For you guys. You’ll get confused, get bored, and wander off for greener pastures. Forums dry up like grapes in the sun and become husks of what they were in their glory. And another badge would be added to their histories; another forum destroyed. Another victory for the trolls. Proof of their power to change the world.
I’ll admit it; we’re an odd forum. Us moderators are somewhat harsh because people let us get away with banning people without reason because we’re trusted not to abuse us. And with Alex mostly not around there are some creeping forum glitches (quote bug anyone?) that people are told not to use but are never fixed. We were prime targets for trolls. A low average age, a carefree place, dreamers that would rather work on programming video games than deal with a serious and dedicated assault.
And so we were targeted en mass. On Monday, Riff Raff, Omega Weapon, Lord Wang, and others came over and were as controversial and as offensive as possible. The Lord Raffles alarm bells went off immediately of course, but we quickly realized that this wasn’t all him. It wasn’t all one person. This was a different sort of threat.
Trolls expect a few of their accounts to get banned. What they did not expect perhaps was the fierceness and effectiveness of our resistance. We banned the lot of them. Monday night, a large chat room was held with Lord Raffles, myself, and 8 other Charas members. Raffles proclaimed the doom of Charas (again) but at the end said he was joking. We all had a good laugh and a solid night’s sleep, believing that Monday would be the end of it.
It wasn’t. More trolls showed up on Tuesday. Many were caught and banned, but the mods began to worry about how long this would be going on. I created a forum, Sanctuary, as a test to see how well I could shelter forums against people without many posts.
Wednesday was a third day of troll madness. More accounts were banned on Wednesday than either of the two previous, and I began to wonder how long this was going to go on. The common Charasite (has that terminology discussion been concluded yet?) discovered Sanctuary and began to post there, and so my little test turned into a place where the Charas loyals freely talked about what was happening to our forum. TrollKingdom was discovered; the home of our enemies and also a great tool of our defense. Completely unaware of our watching, the TKers posted their troll screennames and discussed tactics to catch us off guard, and these were used quite effectively in catching trolls before they could cause any havoc. Some pushed for an immediate full-scale invasion of their forums, others hacking, others a diplomatic solution, and many wished to simply wait and watch. The watchers won out, for a small time.
On Thursday, many things happened very fast. After the usual bunch of trolls were banned the mods began to talk and discovered another forum being targeted by TrollKingdom: a locked-down paranoid husk of a place that was clearly once an open-minded peace-loving community named Ex Isle. The Charas mods contacted one of the administrators in a chat room with the intent of warning them about TK, only to find that they were quite well aware of the trolls. It seemed that Ex Isle had been bearing the assault of TrollKingdom for YEARS. The assaults came and went, the admin told us, and they kept everything locked down tight all the time to prevent most of it.
I had no intention of letting Charas fall that far. After a long talk with Trevlac and Alex (Yes, ALEX, the Master!) about IP banning and how useless it would be against trolls with proxies that hide their real IPs, the mods finally decided it was time to send several undercover operatives into TrollKingdom to win their trust and possibly undermine their assault on Charas. We were too late: a poster named CHARAS UNITED publically advertised the TK forums on Charas. It was none of us; clearly the trolls knew we were watching them. The time for secrecy was over and I authorized anyone who wanted to go over there and cause trouble.
The “invasion” sparked a lot of controversy here on Charas. Some people had clearly had enough and wanted some payback. Others were appalled by the move, claiming we had sunk to their level. Many people thought there must be a better option, though some admitted they had no idea what it was and thought the attacks were okay. A few people pointed out that there was going to be fighting one way or the other and it was better over on THEIR forums rather then OURS, but others steadfastly believed that having trolls attack us every day of the week would be better than an immature spamfest since no matter what we did, it wouldn’t shut down their forums. A few people went so far as to be openly disgusted in public, and Osmose felt this was the “last straw” and resigned from being a mod on a team of who’s policies he disagreed with and where he had no real duties.
The invasion did take place. Dozens of posts, both from invading Charas posters and from TK members appeared within an hour or two. Support the war or not, almost everyone believed that it would result in incredible backlash on our own forums from very annoyed trolls. Realizing how little public support I had and how I very much needed to step away from the situation and stop trying to run it all myself, I vowed to take three days off and not log in at Charas at what everyone believed was the most crucial time of our defense.
To my own personal amazement when I checked in later, the counterassault didn’t happen. Though a few trolls registered on Charas immediately after the invasion, none of them seemed too interested in, well, trolling. A couple even openly wore their TK login names. No threads needed to be deleted. No logins needed to be banned. And I’m really not sure why.
I write this late on Saturday night, six days after the trouble started. We’ve entered an almost peaceful coexistence with TrollKingdom. A few invading Charas members remain over there and several of their people are on Charas. While I wouldn’t call them our allies, we seem to be tolerating eachother for the time. Maybe it’s a trick by the trolls to lure us into a false sense of security before they attack again. Who knows. Though Raffles continues his threats, they at TrollKingdom certainly have no love for him. I guess I can’t expect courtesy among trolls. Charas will still have to watch for suspicious activity both on our own forums and on several others but least at this point, on this night, Charas is at peace. Perhaps history will not judge my actions too harshly after all.
