User blog comment:Sannse/Don't Feed the Trolls/@comment-108.193.108.73-20120911215244/@comment-8-20120913171949

This is an interesting example, so I'm going expand on it some (with apologies to the original poster for using you as an example :)

My first thought on reading the comment was also "this might be someone trolling by asking a question that's answered in the blog post". But Anon is right, that's jumping to a conclusion that might not be justified. Sometimes people simply miss something that might seem clear to someone else.

So here's a situation where someone might be trolling, and might be asking a genuine question. We don't want to feed the troll if there is one, but we also don't want to dismiss or over-react to someone who is genuinely looking for answers.

So the key is to "assume good faith". That means choosing to act with the the assumption that the person isn't malicious and is acting genuinely. It doesn't mean ignoring other possibilities, but it's giving them the benefit of the doubt, and understanding that there can be several different interpretations of the same thing.

And that's exactly what SuperSteven4 and Spike144 did in answering directly and matter of factly. Their replies gave information, and assumed good faith, but did that in a way that didn't inflame the situation if it was trolling. Good work both!

If they had ranted about how the poster should have known the answer, maybe with a few insults thrown in, that would have been the worst way to reply. It would have been hurtful to someone asking the question genuinely and would have fed the troll if the person was asking in order to get a reaction.

Calm and genuinely helpful replies like the once from SuperSteven4 and Spike144 are the best choice. Good work both!