Yahoo News Message Boards Close - Hundreds of Trolls Made Homeless

The Yahoo News Message Boards - a forum to discuss the articles on Yahoo News - have been closed today, seemingly due to trolls and other vocal users ruining the experience for everyone else. Yahoo News General Manager Neil Budde posted this message:

As they were set up, the Yahoo! News message boards allowed a small number of vocal users to dominate the discussion. In addition, related discussions from similar news articles were not easily linked. Over the next few months, we plan to offer new discussion forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest features to foster a better discussion for all of our readers.

Here’s betting that Yahoo News copies the voting systems of Slashdot and Digg, allowing users to rate contributions and flag offensive comments - this is the most reliable way to keep social systems under control, although it sometimes results in unpopular viewpoints being buried (even if they’re factually correct). In the meantime, however, it seems that hundreds of trolls have been made homeless overnight, and will need somewhere else to spew their venom. We invite them to join Mashable’s Insulting Comments Contest (aka the “Adopt a Troll Program”), where homeless trolls can find shelter this winter, and may even win $500.