h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My Twitter feed's thrown up a very interesting piece on someone shutting down the forums attached to his online content (in his case, a blog):

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/12/why-i-shut-down-the-forums/

Two sentences just leapt down my throat:

"Some people seemed to feel they could annoy other members as much as they wanted as long as they stayed within the gray area of the rules."

And

"[W]hen it came to controversial bans involving one of the regulars, they had a hard time pulling the trigger. They frequently opted to keep giving warnings instead. But this response amounts to what’s called intermittent reinforcement conditioning. Effectively this rewards the negative behavior and conditions the offender to do more of the same by proving that s/he can get away with it."

Wow.

Who'd be a moderator, eh? Come down too hard and the community turns on you, keep letting the trolls off the hook, and you're basically giving them carte blanche to run riot.

Seriously though, if you can read the whole piece without developing a newfound respect for the trouble the behind-the-scenes team here at h2g2, then you're a far more heartless person than I.

.603

That was a great article- I'm going to share that with the Moderation team, as it's a very useful perspective! Thanks for sharing.

Hang 'em all I say.
I think we all know who the serial abusers are, and for many of us their continued participation is an amazement, though of course they don't worry me because I'm a big boy. The problem is the more delicate souls, not the serial whingers, but those who are genuinely hurt by being out down, or having their opinions stamped on.

One aggresive person can scare of 5 of those, or drive them into the arms of the whingers, thus adding to the general suffering on the site.

I'd go with 3 strikes and you're out.

Glad to be of use PC!

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Some sort of 'ignore' button would work wonders. It does on many other 'big boy' forums.

(First person to say 'did somebody say something?' gets a kick in the teeth).

B

I'm not a fan. I've used it before, and it leads to conversations like this:

"1) I believe that we should all be nice.
2) Agreed
3) +1
<<>>
5) I don't understand. Do you not like to be nice in Peckham?
<<>>
<<>>
8) It's not my job to explain even the most trivial minutae to you, it's fairly obvious!
<<>>
<<>>
<<>>
12) I am not a fascist corporate puppet!"

So yeah. Life with an ignore button is like reading a thread 20 minutes after all of someone's effing guff has been Yikesed and removed. You only get half a conversation.

I had thought that, and realised some sort of 'automatically unsubscribe from any thread once XXXXXX posts to it' would work perfectly well.

The effect of a habitual troll is either to ruin a thread or provoke pointless arguments to the same extent. Either way, unsubscribing is a win-win situation.

B

One of the most striking effects of an ignore button is it shows how threads end up revolving around the troll. On the Noesis board during the hiatus, I put someone on ignore and was astonished to see a number of threads end up being all about her. That highlighted to me what trolling behaviour is - it's not about being provocative or airing strong/obnoxious opinions, it's about attention-seeking and "me,me,me" behaviour.

>> That highlighted to me what trolling behaviour is - it's not about being provocative or airing strong/obnoxious opinions, it's about attention-seeking and "me,me,me" behaviour.



What you've said there is an epiphany moment for me swl.

Thank you.

Spot on SWL

Why on Earth has Post 7 been yikesed?

B

what did it say?

I've been a troll on a sci-fi programme message board - and I have the scars to prove it (went through 3 fandom wars before I threw in the towel)

I am in two minds about applying the type of moderation we had there (very firm) here: and that is that the consortium really want to be inclusive. And that means they are keen to... hmmm... retrain? socialise? some people who come here who might be classed as Trolls elsewhere and get a ban.

Two minds because I really want to be fluffy and inclusive, but on the other hand I just don't want my enjoyment of this place ruined.

it's a bit like a school where they cant expel the annoying disruptive abusive abhorrent child because then they wouldn't get an education while no-one around them can learn a thing because said child is busy throwing books at them

as I mentioned in the other thread - I think the community could take more action themselves and either yikes and yikes and yikes or point out the behaviours there and then.

The community really should be setting the tone here.

>> I've been a troll on a sci-fi programme message board



The way you told it last time, you were a Mod.

I did wonder, but I thought I'd let it pass.

I prefer to think of myself less of a troll than a flamer. A troll with deviousness and intelligence, if you will.

B

It's why we love you, B.

Has #7 been de-Yikesed?

It looks like it was referred to the community team who passed it. The message was always 'referred; not hidden.