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So it's freedom, just not for the list manager. Can anyone provide a defense (from Zed or anyone) for the idea that a healthy community needs trolls? I can un

So it's freedom, just not for the list manager. Can anyone provide a defense (from Zed or anyone) for the idea that a healthy community needs trolls? I can understand the need for dissent and argument, but it seems to me that trolling is categorically different from those.

gloob 17y ago
A not-very-good-but-still-fun argument: Trolls are the predators of internet communities. They prey on the sick, the weak, and the perennially outraged (mostly this last group) and, if they are successful, drive them away from the community. A community without perennially outraged people is better than a community with them. The question is whether this benefit is worth the potential cost, which is probably something that almost entirely dependent on the nature of the community and the personalities of the trolls involved. Edit: By "perennially outraged", I am referring to people who are constantly angry or miserable for no reason other than that such an emotional state is "what they do". They aren't trolls themselves, any more than a particularly unpleasant customer is a troll. They're just constantly unhappy and vocal about it.
- petervandijck 17y ago
  Trolls drive away the GOOD people, not the weak/sick ones. They're more like a fungus infection than like a predator.
  - gloob 17y ago
    I think who they end up driving away is mostly determined by the kind of community and the kind of trolls. Most of the places on the Internet where I hang out, the trolls like the community they are a part of and are rather uninterested in destroying it. They do their thing primarily to get an emotional reaction out of people, and the easiest people to get an emotional reaction out of are the people who are constantly emotional. Because the overlap between permanently unhappy people and the "good" people (the latter group consisting of, e.g., core devs, or mods, or various other "central" members of the community) is (for most types of communities that I'm interested in) pretty small, that's not really a problem. On the other hand, turning 4chan loose on a Neopets mailing list would probably end badly for the community, yes.
    - Perceval 17y ago
      4chan users are not trolls. They're griefers and sociopaths. Like you said, trolls are generally part of a community, or make an attempt to get a rise out of people through détournement, not through outright antagonism. Over at kuro5hin.org we experienced a 'trollocaust' as it were, wherein the trolls successfully drove all the emotional beautiful souls off to another site (hulver.com). If the critical mass of trolls grows too large, community can't really be sustained.
- zedshaw 17y ago
  No, not hardly at all. Generally there's three classes of trolls (this is just my opinion): Griefers are what you describe. People who are more interested in gaming the implied social norms of the community in order to destroy it. These people suck, but totally blocking them eliminates the second class: Dissenters are people who just disagree with you, and considering nearly every open source project is started by opinionated dissenters it's just bound to happen. I believe that without these people though your project dies because your ideas stagnate and you never really deal with actual criticism until it's too late. Also, they may just be the vocal part of your user base that wants something you don't. Finally, moderators who use their moderation powers to "indirectly troll". By this I mean people who unilaterally deny people's communications because it would interfere with their hidden agendas. If you go look at nearly every failed community, at the heart is someone like this. What I think, and what we'll find out, is that what really drives people away is not the presence of all of these, but the dominance of one of these types of "trolls". My idea is to just balance them out and give the community a real vote on what is what.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    We have different definitions of "troll." Your second category does not fit into mine; I do not consider someone who is genuinely trying to communicate to be a troll. Your assumption is that it's impossible to differentiate category one from category two. I see no reason for that to be true.
    - zedshaw 17y ago
      Nope, I never said it was impossible to differentiate, I just said that the differentiation shouldn't be controlled by a few people who potentially won't understand the difference. Here's a question for you: If you moderate a list, do you let subscribers see what you've moderated and why? If it's for the benefit of the mailing list community, then why not?
      - scott_s 17y ago
        You should make this clear on librelist.com; right now, it appears that there will be no mechanism to deal with trolls. If I did moderate a list (which I don't), and there was an ability for subscribers to see the raw feed, I'd allow that. I am curious if your approach will work. It's similar to how things operate here, but I wonder if it can work with no moderators. (HN does have editors who monitor flagged articles and comments.)
- jerf 17y ago
  If we define the emotional state of a person relative to the sort of messages they send to the list, rather than their "true" emotional state, which is more relevant to the list, the the trolls create "perennially outraged" people. I don't think that argument works.
Quarrelsome 17y ago
I guess the premise is that they are (objectively speaking) a valid part of any community. Perhaps in some way it is better to have "troll trolls" than people who appear to be normal but are actually very trollish. I remember a community where a bunch of people would just answer all questions with: "OMG WTF? NOT THIS AGAIN. Use the search FFS." Now this was more or less encouraged behaviour as Admins and Mods did this but these guys took it too far. So it eventually was trolling all but in name. To be honest i'm not sure I believe all that but at least he has a "troll rating" system.
- zedshaw 17y ago
  Look at my previous reply on the subject, but I'm hoping tons of really smart people can think of a solution that is not so binary as: moderation=="list nazi moderates all dissenting opinion away" OR troll=="full frontal goatse porn for all!". In other words, with the librelist code, it IS possible to have a middle land where the community can voice their opinion of what's spam or troll without eliminating real dissenting opinions and debate.
  - Quarrelsome 17y ago
    As my name suggests I am a bit trollish myself as I am a fan of swears, passion and strong opinions. I certainly look forward to a community where the "owner" is less able to control people's input according to their own tastes. Stackoverflow has recently banned swearing.... because. This the kind of thing that pisses me off.
    - count 17y ago
      It's like the new War on Swearing. Fucking nazis!

gloob 17y ago

A not-very-good-but-still-fun argument: Trolls are the predators of internet communities. They prey on the sick, the weak, and the perennially outraged (mostly this last group) and, if they are successful, drive them away from the community. A community without perennially outraged people is better than a community with them. The question is whether this benefit is worth the potential cost, which is probably something that almost entirely dependent on the nature of the community and the personalities of the trolls involved. Edit: By "perennially outraged", I am referring to people who are constantly angry or miserable for no reason other than that such an emotional state is "what they do". They aren't trolls themselves, any more than a particularly unpleasant customer is a troll. They're just constantly unhappy and vocal about it.

petervandijck 17y ago
Trolls drive away the GOOD people, not the weak/sick ones. They're more like a fungus infection than like a predator.
- gloob 17y ago
  I think who they end up driving away is mostly determined by the kind of community and the kind of trolls. Most of the places on the Internet where I hang out, the trolls like the community they are a part of and are rather uninterested in destroying it. They do their thing primarily to get an emotional reaction out of people, and the easiest people to get an emotional reaction out of are the people who are constantly emotional. Because the overlap between permanently unhappy people and the "good" people (the latter group consisting of, e.g., core devs, or mods, or various other "central" members of the community) is (for most types of communities that I'm interested in) pretty small, that's not really a problem. On the other hand, turning 4chan loose on a Neopets mailing list would probably end badly for the community, yes.
  - Perceval 17y ago
    4chan users are not trolls. They're griefers and sociopaths. Like you said, trolls are generally part of a community, or make an attempt to get a rise out of people through détournement, not through outright antagonism. Over at kuro5hin.org we experienced a 'trollocaust' as it were, wherein the trolls successfully drove all the emotional beautiful souls off to another site (hulver.com). If the critical mass of trolls grows too large, community can't really be sustained.
zedshaw 17y ago
No, not hardly at all. Generally there's three classes of trolls (this is just my opinion): Griefers are what you describe. People who are more interested in gaming the implied social norms of the community in order to destroy it. These people suck, but totally blocking them eliminates the second class: Dissenters are people who just disagree with you, and considering nearly every open source project is started by opinionated dissenters it's just bound to happen. I believe that without these people though your project dies because your ideas stagnate and you never really deal with actual criticism until it's too late. Also, they may just be the vocal part of your user base that wants something you don't. Finally, moderators who use their moderation powers to "indirectly troll". By this I mean people who unilaterally deny people's communications because it would interfere with their hidden agendas. If you go look at nearly every failed community, at the heart is someone like this. What I think, and what we'll find out, is that what really drives people away is not the presence of all of these, but the dominance of one of these types of "trolls". My idea is to just balance them out and give the community a real vote on what is what.
- scott_s 17y ago
  We have different definitions of "troll." Your second category does not fit into mine; I do not consider someone who is genuinely trying to communicate to be a troll. Your assumption is that it's impossible to differentiate category one from category two. I see no reason for that to be true.
  - zedshaw 17y ago
    Nope, I never said it was impossible to differentiate, I just said that the differentiation shouldn't be controlled by a few people who potentially won't understand the difference. Here's a question for you: If you moderate a list, do you let subscribers see what you've moderated and why? If it's for the benefit of the mailing list community, then why not?
    - scott_s 17y ago
      You should make this clear on librelist.com; right now, it appears that there will be no mechanism to deal with trolls. If I did moderate a list (which I don't), and there was an ability for subscribers to see the raw feed, I'd allow that. I am curious if your approach will work. It's similar to how things operate here, but I wonder if it can work with no moderators. (HN does have editors who monitor flagged articles and comments.)
jerf 17y ago
If we define the emotional state of a person relative to the sort of messages they send to the list, rather than their "true" emotional state, which is more relevant to the list, the the trolls create "perennially outraged" people. I don't think that argument works.

Quarrelsome 17y ago

I guess the premise is that they are (objectively speaking) a valid part of any community. Perhaps in some way it is better to have "troll trolls" than people who appear to be normal but are actually very trollish. I remember a community where a bunch of people would just answer all questions with: "OMG WTF? NOT THIS AGAIN. Use the search FFS." Now this was more or less encouraged behaviour as Admins and Mods did this but these guys took it too far. So it eventually was trolling all but in name. To be honest i'm not sure I believe all that but at least he has a "troll rating" system.

zedshaw 17y ago
Look at my previous reply on the subject, but I'm hoping tons of really smart people can think of a solution that is not so binary as: moderation=="list nazi moderates all dissenting opinion away" OR troll=="full frontal goatse porn for all!". In other words, with the librelist code, it IS possible to have a middle land where the community can voice their opinion of what's spam or troll without eliminating real dissenting opinions and debate.
- Quarrelsome 17y ago
  As my name suggests I am a bit trollish myself as I am a fan of swears, passion and strong opinions. I certainly look forward to a community where the "owner" is less able to control people's input according to their own tastes. Stackoverflow has recently banned swearing.... because. This the kind of thing that pisses me off.
  - count 17y ago
    It's like the new War on Swearing. Fucking nazis!