Awesome experience! They have been pretty active although a bit far out from the coast, need binocs but have seen them on the Kurnell/Captain Cook and La Perouse trails.

Spot on, it’s not a race to be the first to comment, which can also degrade the quality of posting with 90% repetitive “clever” comments copied from the last time, and quality posts being buried, which then disincentivizes people with something useful to say, perpetuating that cycle. Combine that with quick karma and you fuel a system racing to the bottom.

You can also sort your feed to show new comments by default in your settings, it’s been really good in the smaller communities/instances/magazines.

I agree with Zagorath’s sentiment, at present it seems getting more users probably on balance outweighs the risk of the odd troll. However, having to answer a simple question as part of signing up doesn’t seem to be too bad at the moment (I signed up before so don’t know what the experience is). We don’t even need to verify emails at this stage to sign up.

Mature communities don’t have major trolling problems because users tend to know not to feed the troll. They’re just not engaged and as a result lose air pretty quickly. Forums are a good example - anything that isn’t on topic or just clearly a troll is quickly shut down, generally not by moderators but by other users, and there is enough nuance to know what is a valid debate (even if super heated or robust).

“Beating a test” also gives some sense of entitlement, and also it does not stop other users from other instances trolling.

With that in mind, what about a question such as "Do you agree:

1. not to feed the trolls
2. to report any offensive behaviour
3. to look out for your fellow members?"

This is not to weed out the trolls but rather to remind users in such a fashion to nurture a “mature” community that self-regulates.