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> As Hess herself put it, “Policing misogyny is fabulous in theory. In practice, it’s a bitch.” It's interesting, but this seems to be very true. Creating rule

by arjie 12y ago

> As Hess herself put it, “Policing misogyny is fabulous in theory. In practice, it’s a bitch.” It's interesting, but this seems to be very true. Creating rules to behaviour seem to have the primary effect of spurring people to find ways to circumvent the rules. Any attempt at enforcing the spirit of the rules and not the letter leads to long diatribes on the nature of free speech coupled with some incredible persecution complex. The interesting part is that the culture of a community is so incredibly fragile. They do not require a majority of bad actors, because beyond a very small number, these bad actors will quickly cause the original members of the community to leave and soon the ratio becomes more and more unbalanced spiraling until the community is no longer what it started out as. Despite my aversion to overlords in real life, I find that online communities are most effective when strongly policed with unproductive dissent silenced outright. Not all dissent, just that which is unproductive. My personal hypothesis is that while we see public places as public, and private places as private in real life, these distinctions are less clear online. Couple that with the problem where you don't know if a person is undesirable until after you've let him in and things quickly become hard to control. I don't know if there is a solution.

spindritf 12y ago
Despite my aversion to overlords in real life It's the same in real life. We just like to pretend it isn't and keep policing out of sight. Many American (who can) up and move to gated communities, even join HOAs because neighbour's freedom to manage his own lawn is too much.
ObviousScience 12y ago
> Not all dissent, just that which is unproductive. And who gets to pick what's productive or not? That's always the hitch in these schemes: is criticizing decisions about what to police productive? is criticizing the beliefs of the owners productive? is not agreeing with the norm of the community productive? The person making these calls has a vested interested in not seeing certain kinds of criticism and in accruing more power for themselves, so there's an inherent conflict of interest that tends to go wrong.
- acqq 12y ago
  > And who gets to pick what's productive or not? The community! That's what we're talking about here: how can the majority of some community avoid losing their own gathering place to a minority that makes the same place unhabitable for the rest. See Hacker News. Voting. Moderating. Edit: Sometimes even resuliting in graying this very comment out. Which is OK if we beleive in the basic principle.
  - ObviousScience 12y ago
    In the case of Hacker News, not everyone agrees on what's productive or not. Saying "the community" without some way to decide between split opinions isn't a real answer to how we're going to pick. One could argue that we're already doing some form of community driven decision about what's productive on Hacker News (what, with the voting and what not), but you're clearly not happy with what people settled on through that method.
    - acqq 12y ago
      > but you're clearly not happy with what people settled on through that method. I am. And I'm also willing to risk having the post downvoted if it goes against what some "voters" would find offensive to their beliefs. For example, a lot of US people, including those on HN, believe it's not allowed to directly "talk negative" about any religion (when I just point to obvious aggresive teachings in them). And I beleive that that approach makes the world much worse.
- arjie 12y ago
  You do, as overlord (or if you share, your cabal). Hopefully, since it is your site, you will be sensible. If you aren't, then you're left with a cesspool. Even today, dang and gang actively shut down comments that are very bad. This is, imho, A Good Thing™.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  That's certainly a problem in politics, which is why in democratic countries free speech protections are usually broad enough to encompass everything short of incitement to criminal activity. But on private online platforms the owner/operator is in effect a dictatorship, and users can participate or not as they see fit. While free speech laws prevent official censorship, nobody is owed a platform for the expression of their views; so if some trolls are discomfited by being unwelcome at many social sites, so what? Why should their putative right to say obnoxious things take precedence over others' perfectly reasonable desires not to be harassed, and the site operators' (typical) choice to cater to the larger demographic?
r00fus 12y ago
You need online governance. User self-moderation, active moderators equipped with banhammers. You also need a lead figure who commands the community (possibly a rotating role) to settle disputes among your moderators. Finally, a subtle hellban so some users think they're interacting with the entire community when they're just talking to and moderating each other.
acqq 12y ago
> I don't know if there is a solution. I'd say there is: constant vigilance: HN still mostly manages to keep the quality by acive sppresion of the unwanted behaviour. There isn't "fire an forget" solution to such a problem.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
>I find that online communities are most effective when strongly policed with unproductive dissent silenced outright. I basically agree but I don't see Twitter or Facebook for example as communities. Those services are more like everybody at once all lumped together whether they like it or not. In the real world things like proximity and social interdependency force people to be more measured in behavior, interactions are mediated by cliques and groups with reputations and social pressure. In focused online communities you can make assumptions about content because it's opt-in and there is infinite space for alternative communities. I guess what I am getting at is that Twitter and Facebook are bad systems in that they don't give us bearings to make good social decisions on how to act (usually the opposite.) Facebook might actually be worse than Twitter in that it simulates communities but really a planet ruled by a weird dictatorship that doesn't care too much if you kill your neighbors as long as you don't embarrass the government. Twitter is like as if you have an instant 1-1 connection with every other living being which is why you get situations where a million people are each slamming the same person with one insult. It's horrifying but it's also very clearly not recognizable as a natural sort of social interaction so you shouldn't even expect it to be sane. It is a thing that literally should not exist. Something resembling Facebook could exist and be good, just not the Facebook we have now.

by arjie 12y ago

spindritf 12y ago

Despite my aversion to overlords in real life It's the same in real life. We just like to pretend it isn't and keep policing out of sight. Many American (who can) up and move to gated communities, even join HOAs because neighbour's freedom to manage his own lawn is too much.

ObviousScience 12y ago

> Not all dissent, just that which is unproductive. And who gets to pick what's productive or not? That's always the hitch in these schemes: is criticizing decisions about what to police productive? is criticizing the beliefs of the owners productive? is not agreeing with the norm of the community productive? The person making these calls has a vested interested in not seeing certain kinds of criticism and in accruing more power for themselves, so there's an inherent conflict of interest that tends to go wrong.

acqq 12y ago
> And who gets to pick what's productive or not? The community! That's what we're talking about here: how can the majority of some community avoid losing their own gathering place to a minority that makes the same place unhabitable for the rest. See Hacker News. Voting. Moderating. Edit: Sometimes even resuliting in graying this very comment out. Which is OK if we beleive in the basic principle.
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  In the case of Hacker News, not everyone agrees on what's productive or not. Saying "the community" without some way to decide between split opinions isn't a real answer to how we're going to pick. One could argue that we're already doing some form of community driven decision about what's productive on Hacker News (what, with the voting and what not), but you're clearly not happy with what people settled on through that method.
  - acqq 12y ago
    > but you're clearly not happy with what people settled on through that method. I am. And I'm also willing to risk having the post downvoted if it goes against what some "voters" would find offensive to their beliefs. For example, a lot of US people, including those on HN, believe it's not allowed to directly "talk negative" about any religion (when I just point to obvious aggresive teachings in them). And I beleive that that approach makes the world much worse.
arjie 12y ago
You do, as overlord (or if you share, your cabal). Hopefully, since it is your site, you will be sensible. If you aren't, then you're left with a cesspool. Even today, dang and gang actively shut down comments that are very bad. This is, imho, A Good Thing™.
anigbrowl 12y ago
That's certainly a problem in politics, which is why in democratic countries free speech protections are usually broad enough to encompass everything short of incitement to criminal activity. But on private online platforms the owner/operator is in effect a dictatorship, and users can participate or not as they see fit. While free speech laws prevent official censorship, nobody is owed a platform for the expression of their views; so if some trolls are discomfited by being unwelcome at many social sites, so what? Why should their putative right to say obnoxious things take precedence over others' perfectly reasonable desires not to be harassed, and the site operators' (typical) choice to cater to the larger demographic?

r00fus 12y ago

You need online governance. User self-moderation, active moderators equipped with banhammers. You also need a lead figure who commands the community (possibly a rotating role) to settle disputes among your moderators. Finally, a subtle hellban so some users think they're interacting with the entire community when they're just talking to and moderating each other.

acqq 12y ago

> I don't know if there is a solution. I'd say there is: constant vigilance: HN still mostly manages to keep the quality by acive sppresion of the unwanted behaviour. There isn't "fire an forget" solution to such a problem.

A_COMPUTER 12y ago

>I find that online communities are most effective when strongly policed with unproductive dissent silenced outright. I basically agree but I don't see Twitter or Facebook for example as communities. Those services are more like everybody at once all lumped together whether they like it or not. In the real world things like proximity and social interdependency force people to be more measured in behavior, interactions are mediated by cliques and groups with reputations and social pressure. In focused online communities you can make assumptions about content because it's opt-in and there is infinite space for alternative communities. I guess what I am getting at is that Twitter and Facebook are bad systems in that they don't give us bearings to make good social decisions on how to act (usually the opposite.) Facebook might actually be worse than Twitter in that it simulates communities but really a planet ruled by a weird dictatorship that doesn't care too much if you kill your neighbors as long as you don't embarrass the government. Twitter is like as if you have an instant 1-1 connection with every other living being which is why you get situations where a million people are each slamming the same person with one insult. It's horrifying but it's also very clearly not recognizable as a natural sort of social interaction so you shouldn't even expect it to be sane. It is a thing that literally should not exist. Something resembling Facebook could exist and be good, just not the Facebook we have now.