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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 c
by 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 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?