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A fellow IRC moderator once warned me: "Carefully handle your "troublemakers". They're both the bane and life of your site." In other words, it's often your o
by ckozlowski 11y ago
A fellow IRC moderator once warned me:
"Carefully handle your "troublemakers". They're both the bane and life of your site."
In other words, it's often your outspoken (and sometime inappropriate) members that are driving the most interesting discussion. I see this on Facebook quite a lot (I moderate a very large group) where the people who are often stirring up trouble in one thread are also generating a very lively discussion in another.
It's hard drawing the line sometimes between what seems like a vehement disagreement in opinion and insulting of someone else, and a tap on their shoulder to "hey, just keep in line please" can either set them off, or defuse the situtation.
But either way, it is difficult. Too heavy-handed in moderation and you drive them off the site, leaving a lot of silent people sitting around with little discussion, and therefor, little reason to stay. Too little moderation and your comments and threads become a cesspool, eliminating any beneficial conversation and catering to the lowest common denominator.
I don't blame Vice for finding this difficult, and really, I'm not sure I'd prescribe a solution for them. I agree with them in the sense that it comes down to their resources and best use of their time, and given that they produce their own content (and not reliant on their members to do it as in other social forums) then it may be better to dispense with them altogether.
But dispensing with a forum is a sort of "scorched earth" policy of eliminating an out of control board, a "nuclear option" when you're just finished with it all. It'll provide some relief, but they lose at the chance of growing something better in the end.
- untog 11y ago> In other words, it's often your outspoken (and sometime inappropriate) members that are driving the most interesting discussion. I disagree. I'll admit that I haven't done any kind of exhaustive analysis, but every now and then I'll click on the profile of an obvious troll on HN or Reddit. 9/10 times they are consistently trolling and contributing nothing to the community.
- ckozlowski 11y agoNot quite disagreeing with you, but I think in this case there's a difference between your trolls and the "argumentative/easy to be offended" types. The latter are what I'm referring to.
- haylem 11y agoSure, but I think what ckozlowski was saying is that even though these particular users may have no value in themselves and their (lack of) discourse, they bring attention of other well-mannered users that then get into intelligent discourse. Trolls are a bit like political extremists: if they weren't here, you wouldn't talk about the ugly stuff so much and make sure it's kept in check.
- backtoyoujim 11y agoDo trolls say that they have no evidence for statistics ... then use them anyways?
- mentos 11y agoI think a better solution for medium would be to hire moderators not to remove unwanted comments but to elevate the desired comments into a "medium highlighted" area. This would then drive thoughtful competition to get your post to the top.
- gwbas1c 11y ago... And once there's a few good comments, hide the discussion part by default. (Click the arrow and all the comments expand.)
- snowwrestler 11y agoI agree that is true, if you want to have a thriving community. The question is whether Vice needs to host a thriving community on their own site. Why not leave community management to the experts? For example, the dialogue here on HN--which is a well-managed community--will be way more substantive and productive than it would have been on Vice's site.
- philipov 11y agoIf the community isn't hosted on your site, it can't drive ad revenue as people involved in discussion reload the site to see new comments. People want to own the community because it brings traffic, and they're not interested in driving that traffic to someone else's website. It's a sort of cargo cult.