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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 site
by 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 agoStrong 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 agoI'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 agoI 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 agoThe 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.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoInteresting 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 agoThe 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 agoExactly. 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 agoUnfortunately, 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 agoIt'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.