4 ms·

I wonder how that translates into online communities - both in terms of wrongful behaviour (spiteful and illiterate comments, trolling) and in terms of user exp

by strlen 18y ago

I wonder how that translates into online communities - both in terms of wrongful behaviour (spiteful and illiterate comments, trolling) and in terms of user experience impacting quality of user generated content (wow lot of user- related buzzwords in the last sentence). An interesting experiment would be a video/music/file sharing site which specifically prohibits (and removes) copyrighted content and one that doesn't -- and how that affects other interactions (e.g. comments, forums).

robg 18y ago
I really think there's something to that - broken "windows" in online communities. A wakeup for me was how trolls are dealt with here and comments on other sites. Different communities appear to take on the conditions of their founding and then that DNA spreads as it replicates. However, any mutations along the way left unchecked become cancerous.
- iigs 18y ago
  Strong agree. Case in point: the politics and automaker bailout stuff that has had more of a pass since the election. Even in the weeks leading up to the election the articles were policed more heavily than now. Not sure it doesn't beat another half dozen articles on BS ruby infighting, though.
- pg 18y ago
  I'm a big believer in the broken windows theory. I was living in NYC when Giuliani took over. I was also a Reddit user when it was overrun by trolls. It was clear there was a correlation between trolling and other types of badness. That's why News.YC not only bans trolls, but also does things that seem unrelated, like fixing spelling mistakes and typographical abuses in story titles.
  - robg 18y ago
    I like how you've set the example and then folks here have taken it upon themselves to help police things. It really has felt like a community watch. I wonder if the folks at Reddit could have stomped out trollish behavior if they called it out as it developed. Did users try to do so? Or was it like a mob smashing windows every where?
    - pg 18y ago
      The founders of Reddit had a deliberate policy of never censoring anything. They only banned spammers. And the trolls arrived gradually, so there was never a point where it was clear that something had to be done about it. Exactly like happened to NYC, actually. All this stuff is still being figured out. I do think that trolling (in the broader sense) is temporary, though. It's just the kind of bug that happens in any new system before it stabilizes.
      - palish 18y ago
        Is Reddit a stable system? If not, will it ever be? There is a lot of trolling on present-day Reddit.
        pg 18y ago
        Reddit is stable in the literal sense of not changing, but not in the sense of being (socially) bug free.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    Interesting that you mention one place where things got worse and another where they got better -- any chance that the reddits could reverse the trend?
- Alex3917 18y ago
  The tipping point seems to be when low-value comments get more attention than thoughtful posts, because that's when the valuable contributors leave. At least on K5 that's what happened, all the smart contributors left because every time they'd submit an article the response would always be "-1, faggery" or whatever. So I guess my theory is that trolls are toxic not (only) because they pollute the signal to noise ratio, but because they cause thoughtful contributors to feel less valued.
  - quantumhobbit 18y ago
    Exactly. Would anyone who posts here willingly visit 4chan? Slashdot may be one exception though. Trolling increased there until Digg and Reddit became popular. I think many of the slashdot trolls left for Digg and Reddit, and the amount of trolling on slashdot has subjectively decreased. Thoughtful posters go where the feel like they are heard and appreciated. Trolls go where the system permits them to do the most damage.
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      Unfortunately, on of my good friends started to visit 4chan regularly, and he's been harder and harder to deal with, of late...
    - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
      /b/ is somewhat interesting from the perspective of trying to make a community that is NOT like /b/. Kind of like the smelly cave woman in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who gives out a list of every choice she's made in life and tells Arthur that if he makes the opposite choices maybe he won't end up nearly as bad off as her.
      - thwarted 18y ago
        It's been a while since I read HHGTTG, but I don't remember this. Was it in one of the many other mediums? Time to buckle down and read (listen, watch) the rest of the stuff DA produced in the HHGTTG non-canon canon.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
tdavis 18y ago
I saw the translation first-hand over a number of years. There used to be a forum community I was a part of (it was regarded by some as a spin-off of the Something Awful forums, but that's another story). Many moons ago (roughly 4-5 years or so) it was a great community full of intelligent, witty, fun people. There was almost never a thread that wasn't worth reading in any number of forums there and the moderators took their jobs quite seriously. Basically, good people and good content were everywhere. Then, as time went on, things started going down hill. It's impossible to attribute this to a single event, but a series of circumstances changed that caused the site to lose its quality, both in members and content. There was some serious alienation of Moderators caused by the site owner, the board started becoming more popular via Google and drew many, for lack of a better term, "Publics," etc. Due to these and other events, the best moderators jumped ship or just stopped caring (likely influenced by the owner's lack of involvement, too). The members who contributed the most worthwhile content started leaving as they noticed the boards being overrun with worthless posts. And so it went, until a few months ago when the original owner sold off the site to somebody new who promptly shut the whole place down (after saying he had no plans to change things, or so I heard). It started as a place to make friends, share ideas, create witty banter, etc. Hell, it even lead to a few in-person meet-ups (if you've never attended a party held in another state by some random person you've never met in real life, I highly recommend it). It eventually degraded into "just another forum community" where the few people who still worked to make it a place worth coming to were drowned out by the masses of peasants clamoring "LOL!" There's a 5-year experiment for you ;)
- strlen 18y ago
  > if you've never attended a party held in another state by some random person you've never met in real life, I highly recommend it This somewhat off-topic, but I'd highly recommend this as well. In general, I've been a member of a few Internet (IRC, forums, mailing lists) communities that would organize real-life events and made good friends and formed important associations through this. I've also seen several degrade into "just another $medium community". In many cases they would be forked many times into smaller/more selective communities that'd would maintain the feel of the older days (you could say reddit this with news.y.c and programming.reddit).

by strlen 18y ago

robg 18y ago

I really think there's something to that - broken "windows" in online communities. A wakeup for me was how trolls are dealt with here and comments on other sites. Different communities appear to take on the conditions of their founding and then that DNA spreads as it replicates. However, any mutations along the way left unchecked become cancerous.

iigs 18y ago
Strong agree. Case in point: the politics and automaker bailout stuff that has had more of a pass since the election. Even in the weeks leading up to the election the articles were policed more heavily than now. Not sure it doesn't beat another half dozen articles on BS ruby infighting, though.
pg 18y ago
I'm a big believer in the broken windows theory. I was living in NYC when Giuliani took over. I was also a Reddit user when it was overrun by trolls. It was clear there was a correlation between trolling and other types of badness. That's why News.YC not only bans trolls, but also does things that seem unrelated, like fixing spelling mistakes and typographical abuses in story titles.
- robg 18y ago
  I like how you've set the example and then folks here have taken it upon themselves to help police things. It really has felt like a community watch. I wonder if the folks at Reddit could have stomped out trollish behavior if they called it out as it developed. Did users try to do so? Or was it like a mob smashing windows every where?
  - pg 18y ago
    The founders of Reddit had a deliberate policy of never censoring anything. They only banned spammers. And the trolls arrived gradually, so there was never a point where it was clear that something had to be done about it. Exactly like happened to NYC, actually. All this stuff is still being figured out. I do think that trolling (in the broader sense) is temporary, though. It's just the kind of bug that happens in any new system before it stabilizes.
    - palish 18y ago
      Is Reddit a stable system? If not, will it ever be? There is a lot of trolling on present-day Reddit.
      - pg 18y ago
        Reddit is stable in the literal sense of not changing, but not in the sense of being (socially) bug free.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  Interesting that you mention one place where things got worse and another where they got better -- any chance that the reddits could reverse the trend?
Alex3917 18y ago
The tipping point seems to be when low-value comments get more attention than thoughtful posts, because that's when the valuable contributors leave. At least on K5 that's what happened, all the smart contributors left because every time they'd submit an article the response would always be "-1, faggery" or whatever. So I guess my theory is that trolls are toxic not (only) because they pollute the signal to noise ratio, but because they cause thoughtful contributors to feel less valued.
- quantumhobbit 18y ago
  Exactly. Would anyone who posts here willingly visit 4chan? Slashdot may be one exception though. Trolling increased there until Digg and Reddit became popular. I think many of the slashdot trolls left for Digg and Reddit, and the amount of trolling on slashdot has subjectively decreased. Thoughtful posters go where the feel like they are heard and appreciated. Trolls go where the system permits them to do the most damage.
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    Unfortunately, on of my good friends started to visit 4chan regularly, and he's been harder and harder to deal with, of late...
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    /b/ is somewhat interesting from the perspective of trying to make a community that is NOT like /b/. Kind of like the smelly cave woman in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who gives out a list of every choice she's made in life and tells Arthur that if he makes the opposite choices maybe he won't end up nearly as bad off as her.
    - thwarted 18y ago
      It's been a while since I read HHGTTG, but I don't remember this. Was it in one of the many other mediums? Time to buckle down and read (listen, watch) the rest of the stuff DA produced in the HHGTTG non-canon canon.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

tdavis 18y ago

I saw the translation first-hand over a number of years. There used to be a forum community I was a part of (it was regarded by some as a spin-off of the Something Awful forums, but that's another story). Many moons ago (roughly 4-5 years or so) it was a great community full of intelligent, witty, fun people. There was almost never a thread that wasn't worth reading in any number of forums there and the moderators took their jobs quite seriously. Basically, good people and good content were everywhere. Then, as time went on, things started going down hill. It's impossible to attribute this to a single event, but a series of circumstances changed that caused the site to lose its quality, both in members and content. There was some serious alienation of Moderators caused by the site owner, the board started becoming more popular via Google and drew many, for lack of a better term, "Publics," etc. Due to these and other events, the best moderators jumped ship or just stopped caring (likely influenced by the owner's lack of involvement, too). The members who contributed the most worthwhile content started leaving as they noticed the boards being overrun with worthless posts. And so it went, until a few months ago when the original owner sold off the site to somebody new who promptly shut the whole place down (after saying he had no plans to change things, or so I heard). It started as a place to make friends, share ideas, create witty banter, etc. Hell, it even lead to a few in-person meet-ups (if you've never attended a party held in another state by some random person you've never met in real life, I highly recommend it). It eventually degraded into "just another forum community" where the few people who still worked to make it a place worth coming to were drowned out by the masses of peasants clamoring "LOL!" There's a 5-year experiment for you ;)

strlen 18y ago
> if you've never attended a party held in another state by some random person you've never met in real life, I highly recommend it This somewhat off-topic, but I'd highly recommend this as well. In general, I've been a member of a few Internet (IRC, forums, mailing lists) communities that would organize real-life events and made good friends and formed important associations through this. I've also seen several degrade into "just another $medium community". In many cases they would be forked many times into smaller/more selective communities that'd would maintain the feel of the older days (you could say reddit this with news.y.c and programming.reddit).