It defeats the whole point of this system if those who criticize things are simply labelled trolls to be considered bad corporate citizens.

Chairman Mao called for a hundred flowers (opinions) to bloom. He invited criticism of the system. At first people said "It's a trap" and no one seriously criticized, only token critiques were offered. Perhaps similar to modern suggestions about policies for washing mugs, what sort of free coffee should be available in the breakroom, or if there should be a third bathroom for transgender. Things that don't represent any serious challenge to the existing order.

Then Mao made clear he really wanted criticism of the system and no one should hold back. So people started talking about what was wrong, and telling the truth about the failures of totalitarian communism. These criticisms were considered "absurd", the people were labelled trolls ("rightists"), rounded up, and executed in the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

If you want honest feedback from people, calling them trolls, with the implicit threat that criticism is wrong and should be eliminated, is not the way to get it.

The only way to have real honest feedback in a small group is to listen sincerely, and eliminate punishment of dissidents. This can only be done through trust, which is developed slowly and with difficulty. 99.99% of the time when corporate says to trust them and it's OK to make suggestions, they are lying and intend to identify and destroy anyone who seems to be a threat to their agenda.

I guarantee that if we collect a list of all the actual "troll" things that were said, most people outside your system will see significant numbers of them as representing valid criticism, and therefore unmask the truth that labeling the criticism "trolls" is an exercise of power to eliminate minority dissent.

We want input. I know the executives want feedback. Our company has a good history change through complaints and feedback. The founders were skeptical of version control, a programmer said we need it. They adopted CVS even though the founders thought it was pointless. We moved to SVN a couple years later when another new programmer said CVS was crap. One frontend/designer told the founders the brand and company name was crap. He created a new brand and name. Now he is in charge of the marketing department. We now have a UX department because one designer wanted to try it.

We have changed lots of things about our process and tools because the managers listen to what we, the developers, designers, QA, etc, say and ask for.

As we grow (doubling this year), our biggest challenge is maintaining the communication. Management wants, and I believe they are sincere, to have a way for anyone to complain or point out what we are doing wrong in an open and safe way. Part of that means being able to post anonymously. We once had a great discussion questioning why we are growing and why we focus on the market we do. These are big topics, unlike washing dishes and choice of coffee.

The problem is not people complaining or questioning what we are doing. The problem is someone anonymously saying "x sucks" then not having a discussion. Yes, X does suck, but if the person posting this isn't willing to give examples of why it sucks or suggest how to fix it, I consider it a harmful use of the anonymous post.

Thanks for the response. I'll mostly skip the first three paragraphs of use of anonymity that is good, but I will say it is a bit weird that version control advocacy required anonymity. If there is fear of reprisal from something that most normal developers reasonably advocate for, then there is a culture of fear present, which is nearly always based on past experiences of punishment. Something to look into and perhaps fix there.

The last paragraph is where you give an example of bad use of anonymity. You state a situation where someone says X sucks, and it is known that X does suck. This you say is harmful use. But it is not harmful. The person says X sucks, and X does suck. Since you know that X sucks, you yourself and others must know why it sucks. Saying it is not only wrong but harmful to state what is obvious and known at your firm is yet another indication that you have a corporate environment of fear and reprisals. Obviously someone doing "harm" should be gotten rid of, therefore, accepting your assertion it is harm, the person should be eliminated. Not considered though is that the person is obviously NOT doing harm and that stating so is unfounded propaganda to squash an unpopular statement of truth.

I think his point is when someone says "X sucks" but has a hidden agenda. Or just is destructive.

That assumes the people giving the feedback are making an honest effort at a serious, constructive discussion.

There are people who are inherently negative and will complain about absolutely anything, justified or not, if there is no moderation from social pressure.

There are also people who don't have their company's best interest at heart, or who just like to stir up trouble for the sake of it.

Many of these cases come very close to the Internet definition of trolling - adopting a controversial position not because you believe it, but because you want to get a reaction out of people. You can't just assume that all criticism is valid.

How does moderation work? I could see the bad seeds, who contribute nothing to a discussion, being filtered out by community moderation? Even taking an approach similar to HN where users who flag down a specific comment to a certain threshold could be less visible.

At least then, the "bad" practices can be discussed without the noise that the trolls bring.

We're planning to implement a rating system for comments.

In terms of participants who contribute nothing to the discussion, keep in mind that whoever starts the conversation chooses who to invite. Presumably, those invited will be relevant in some way to the topic being discussed.

We recently added agree/disagree buttons which works much like voting. There have been talks about more sophisticated things like thresholds and sorting, but it is happening slowly.

Is it an internal tool or an off-the-shelf product? Could you tell me the name? I might be interested in deploying that here.

With regards to freeversation, we're looking to implement our anonymous conversation tool in multiple use-scenarios. One of those scenarios would be to facilitate the type of HR employee feedback mentioned above.

In regards to our system, very internal, unless you want add PICK to your list of databases :)

This may seem pedantic, but ranting is not the same as trolling. Even loudly complaining isn't really trolling.