Ok, I am gonna put this here, despite the fact that it is both gonna be controversial, and some work:

Rules.

You want as few as possible. Where there are rules, people will both press them to see where the boundary issues are, and they will game them to act against others from a position of relative impunity.

Rather than define how shitty people can be to one another, assign doing that a risk, and set the expectation of treating others right, with mutual respect as the ONLY safe thing.

Agency in conversation.

The hard truth is most people are either lazy, or unaware of the full set of options in dialog.

Example: getting called an ass by a clown

Weighting comes first. They are a clown. The weight here is modest on a good day.

Then comes options. The number one response is righteous indignation. "How dare you..." They are clowns, trolls, or just toxic. Of course they dare, and that response is exactly what they expect.

And you can bet your ass their weighting on whatever indignation you express is near zero too. They will not care and consider it all entertainment.

Other choices:

Rate the garbage. D -not feeling it, etc...

Ignore and redirect. "Dude, at least try, now back on topic..."

Humor. SPIN it and have fun.

You get the idea here.

Denying them the basic, standard response disincentivizes that behavior, leaves you in control of the overall dialog, and puts others on notice and you as the person having higher ground.

Conversations go bad when you let them go bad. Don't let them.

Super important: when a moderation even happens, and a user could have employed agency to recover and maintain a good dialog, tell them that and ask them to try next time.

Do this with a no blame, just building strength approach. Everyone can improve in how they employ agency and when they do the outcome is amazing. Model it for them, if need be.

The troll or abuser totally is out of bounds. But their impact has more to do with people being effective at managing dialog than it does whatever shit they said does.

Not everyone will play that ball. Fine. Perhaps they can go somewhere else too. No joke. (Without this, moderators end up baby sitters, and fuck that. Babies can be as much or more trouble than toxic people can be.

No blame, no fault. Just improve, seek better and it will happen for them, and everyone, next.

(I know, work and high controversy, but oh so effective.)

Norms vs rules

Most of what I just put here are norms. They get distributed among members of the community by modeling them successfully. The more they are seen and used, the more potent they are. Secondly, unlike rules, norms are much harder to game.

I have done this in communities to a degree where trolling all but goes away.

Why?

Risk reward. Someone trolling can do so at very modest cost. The rewards can be huge! Bans and other blunt instruments are expensive and inhibit real, even heated, but otherwise high value interactions. Chilling effects and ripple effects abound!

(Ban impacts people and others connected to them)

It is hard to raise the cost, but the reward can be impacted significantly. Low risk reward = low nefarious actor potential.

Cost to post.

Rather than ban, cost to contribute can be increased, and this can be done while leaving the discussion and potential for better all on the table. And it works well for everyone to see things are being done.

No four letter words, for example. If a post contains them, it is rejected. They try again. This is hard to do, expensive, but not crippling. When the norms are well placed, it also is fun, and the person who is needing help often gets it. When they improve, remove the no four letter words restriction, all forgiven.

Disemvoweling. No vowels for x number of posts, days. Do not just use one or the other. Both work well. 3 days and 10 posts works great.

"Sry ppl"

There are other tools along these lines that are not bans, that do not shut people out, and that really do cultivate a strong culture that is inoculated against trolling and abuses of various kinds.

When they complain tell them this community does not exist for their nearly free entertainment. Pay up, or play nice.

The beauty is others see the nefarious person "paying" and will actually often demonstrate better agency in dialog! It is far less impactful when a troll is trying to troll in a clear way. Funny most of the time.

Some will leave, some will reform, some will rage. Ban the ragers, let the rest play out.

Moderators.

The best way to strengthen a community and be valued is to participate and help.

Make it clear when an expression is moderation vs just being a user.

You have all the power. You should never, ever let a troll get under your skin. Weigh things lightly, model good discussion options, offer help.

If needed, have another moderator use the tools. Moderating a discussion you are in sucks. Get help.

Cultivate two things:

No victims. There will be a few, but empower them, help them, and do that which makes the community strong and them feel secure more able.

No fear. Being among people there, helps make family, reinforce norms and people will have real conversations about problems. The moderators hidden in the citadel are vulnerable to a whole range of subversion attacks that well loved, servant type moderators are not.

Help includes finding resources, searches, publishing good group findings and having fun, even encouraging it at regular times.

Done right, the community will be innocualted, well equipped to deal, welcoming and helpful to others, and will laugh more often than it cries or is indignant.

All of the things you, moderator, will have modeled, cultivated and empowered the community to do.

It scales. All it takes is a few great users to hold the norms, and the actual moderation duties are light.

Automate spam and make abuse, criminal speech moderation simple, effective and well understood.

Bottom line is everyone in the community is responsible for their part in it. Step up and it gets exponentially easier as people come to realize they just do not need to be impacted.

(HN actually uses norms in an exemplary way, well done moderators. I am a fan)

The moment they do?

Game changer. Trolls and others will smell it right away and often just leave long before an action gets taken.