I wonder if there's something we can do to encourage a cultural shift in attitudes toward online communication. If we connect trollishness to a greater social stigma, perhaps the prevalence of it would decrease. I'm thinking of the kinds of PSA campaigns that have made drinking and driving socially unacceptable (or not fastening your seat belt, or smoking, or etc.) How would you go about crafting such a social campaign?

Or would it not even work and I'm just too much of an optimist?

You've laid this all out so clearly -- and yet it must be *some* kind of rocket science, just based on the empirical evidence. Making Light is one of the only blogs in the entire English-speaking Internets where the posts routinely exceed 100 comments, and the comments are still well-worth reading. Usually the community completely falls apart well before that level of traffic.

There must be some "X" factor here that keeps people from being ruthless enough about protecting their community, but I don't know what it is.

Okay, let me get this straight: This Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales we're talking about here, right? This guy is the poster child for anonymity gone horribly wrong in the form of Wikipedia. At first, he wanted it totally open to anyone. Then when every idiot and his brother started ruining his vision of a encyclo-utopia, he encouraged people to log in as to better monitor them. Then he added more strap on rules as he went along: admins with total power, unquestioned and god-kings who could wipe clean anything from Wikipedia without a trace.

This guy has no shame. When it was suggested to him to rid of anonymous logins as a way to tamp down on vandalism he refused, saying "it would ruin the mission of Wikipedia". What??

He needs to practice what he preaches before he opens his mouth.

I think that places like Making Light do a good job of regulating themselves, anonymity not withstanding, and without the moderators having to step in all that frequently. That's my impression anyway. Jejeune elements wouldn't last long here.

One reason (among many) that Making Light's comments work so well: People here know each other. I've never met TNH or PNH, but I know a few of the other commenters here personally.

I suspect this is true for a lot of the other folks who comment here. The community vibe is a lot stronger here than anywhere else I've seen. (Sci.physics.research used to come close.)

Serge, re #4:

Well, this is the thing. When you have a well-run site, the trolls and freaks become less interested because they don't see the spoor of other of their kind. It also draws in people who want good conversation. Both of which make moderating easier.

Serge (4), moderation always takes work, no matter who's doing it. If people value and feel they have a stake in an online forum, they'll help maintain it. It's one of signs of a healthy community.

How to do it wrong: I've seen online forums where long-term regulars were smacked down for explaining the local rules to newbies. The administrators there called it "back-seat moderation". Any feedback or comments the administrators got in the wake of an intervention was labeled "backchat" or "backtalk", and similarly penalized.

And yet it's a friendly forum! How do we know? Because rule #1 of their long and minatory set of rules says, "this is a friendly forum."

Hoo boy.

A.J., some people here already knew each other from other contexts, but quite a few of them got acquainted here.

It's always struck me, at least here, that the basic rule is "Would I do this if I was at a gathering in the blog-owners' home?"; if the answer I got was "No,", then I knew it was something that I shouldn't do in this virtual living room.
Conversely, if you, the owners, wouldn't stand for it in your house, then you have a right not to put up with it here. Among the obligations a host owes to their guests is the freedom from abuse by the other gusts--and all the guests should be able to either accept that limit on their hosts' hospitality, or find another party.

There is, however, a tendency I've seen in a lot of places, to feel that saying "No, you can't do that here," is a form of rudeness, perhaps because you're not giving people what they want. Too many people have lost both the ability to disagree politely (however intensely they may do so) and the ability to speak up against bad behavior (however much they may privately deplore the bad behavior). Expressing either disagreement or disapproval are both seen as negative acts--and goodness knows we must never be negative! It's every bit as bad as not being "nice"* is to a Southern woman!

Either that or passive-aggressive behaviors are the new national epidemic.

*These values of "nice" can easily be confused with passive-aggresive behaviors by those who are unaware that failure to be "nice" is the equivalent of social suicide to those who think this way.

The other site I visit that routine runs long thread is Firedoglake.

It has mods, but they're behind the scenes. People will report trolls, though ('may we have cleanup on aisle [post number]?') and the (generally unwritten) rules will be explained, sometimes several times to the same person. The trolls learn to behave, or they go someplace where it's more fun.

One of the reasons I love this site is the level of discourse. Folks may get intemperate on occasion, but they're almost never offensive.

Mind you, even if they were, I'd still come for the poetry.

You know, the issue of web civility came up a couple of months ago on Charlie Stross' blog. Someone complained bitterly about the lack of politeness and the downright meaness of people these days as evidenced by the flaming and insults that pass for discourse. I replied that I've been watching this happen for more than two decades, and in those online communities that survived and flourished, the members of the community were outraged when the first such acts occurred, and as a community, immediately took steps to chastise or exclude the offender and design mechanisms to prevent further abuses.

Oddly enough a couple of days later, on that same thread, the complainer got into a slanging match with someone*. When I got tired of it**, I compared them both to little children on the playground, and they both shut up.

Now that's Charlie's site, not mine, but Charlie didn't say anything to me about the incident, so I don't think I offended him by commenting. Which shows that community norms can maintained in many cases even if the moderator is busy and/or not yet annoyed enough to swat someone.

* He was badly provoked, I think. But better for all of us, himself included, if he'd kept his temper and his dignity.

** I admit I was admiring the invective for awhile there, and I think others were as well. But there comes a point where artistry has to take a back seat to civility. Maybe I'm more thin-skinned than others, and I reacted earlier than need be, but I don't apologize for it. If you think I'm wrong to do something like that, tell me. That's what community is about.

Teresa @ 7... I hope I didn't come across as saying that ML's moderators didn't put in a lot of time. Nothing could be further from my mind. In fact, I wonder how you all manage that and everything else in your lives, in spite of the fact that, as John Scalzi pointed out, people hang around here because they want good conversations, even when it's about Bugs Bunny and cross-dressing.

I would buy a book by you on moderation. Heck, I would buy it as an e-book (ala 37signals 'Getting Real').

Note the prior art in this area:

'Community Building on the Web' by Amy Jo Kim

'Online Communities - Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability' by Jenny Preece

'Design for Community' by Derek Powazek

All of these cover moderation to some extent, but none focus on it exclusively.

While I'm making requests for book length works, I would really love to read one on 'Lost Fandoms' ( http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/001424.html ) that also explicitly makes the connection to recurring patterns of human behavior in the current 'blogosphere', as well as older incarnations such as The Well and RASFF.

Insert 'History, Tragedy, Farce' quote here.

Teresa: Wordy McWord. Your post is super, and the comment about mods going wrong when they slap "backchatting" users likewise.

fidelio: "would you say this in someone's living room"... I think that's not necessarily the best way to look at it. I've seen a lot of people saying stuff like "why are you mad that X said women shouldn't be a part of this because they smell so good it's distracting! His blog is his living room and you're just guests!" But it's really not. Anyone can wander into a blog on the internet: not the case with a living room.

An online discussion site is more like a cafeteria in a hospital, or a roving con party... Someone's responsible for it, and it generally only attacts people interested in it, but it's still a public thing. A better rule might be "would you say this in the lunchroom at someone's business."

Fidelio, #9: amen, sister! Though I would have said "Southern lady" instead of "Southern woman," precisely because I'm a Southern woman but not a traditional Southern lady. (Alys Vorpatril, now, she kind of reminds me of my grandmother. They can both eviscerate someone with a perfectly timed smile.)

Anecdotally, I know Scalzi is absolutely correct in #6. F'rex, the comment threads at Fark.com can devolve quickly into trollish flamefests, though some of the most egregious can be lifted by moderators, especially since Fark uses a login system for commenting. Some of the comment threads can be very good, and they tend to stay good (and relatively low volume). Longer and more controversial threads almost always run long and get filled with "troll sign" quickly as commenters snap back and forth at one another in flurries.

As has been mentioned in comments on this and similar situations, the general coarsening of the public discourse has been a trend for a long time. When a person can stand on a soapbox in the town square and shout "F*** You!" repetitively without sanction unless they block traffic we have lost the reins.

This is the death of a thousand cuts as the courts and the influence peddlers ask of each individual act "what is the harm", but taken together unrestricted self-expression stands over civility, respect, and compassion and places its foot on their throat.

On the major media reasoned and respectful political discourse is virtually gone and in the "blogosphere" flame is the coin of the realm. Unless the people who believe that courtesy and respect are part and parcel of any useful dialogue act in a way to defend it we will be huddled down behind our keyboards with the delete key worn down to a nub.

Well said! I've been following this controversy closely since it began, and I've been agape at the cluelessness the whole shitstorm has engendered.

You're my shero, Teresa.

Yes. Well said. One would think it's self-evident that a site owner should moderate the comments. But clearly, this is not so. It is a mystery.

One of my basic principles is that you can only be reasonable with reasonable people. If the other side isn't going to be reasonable, don't rely on their better nature. Do what you need to do.

The most powerful piece of online-management advice I got was after an issue that ended up having to be handled by a moderator-equivalent due to emotional messiness. When I apologised for making his life harder, he pointed out that if he hadn't been willing to do some difficult conversations and moderation, then he shouldn't have taken on the responsibility. End result: if you're not willing to civilise your space, don't put it up/make it open/whatever.

All of this said, I notice that none of the stuff I've seen on this (though maybe I've missed it) really addresses what Teresa brings up: that the real jerks will get kicked off place A, and go to place B, repeating as needed.

Refusing to associate with people who do that (or don't argue against it), is a good start. But how do you best make it clear online whether you're ignoring someone, as opposed to being unaware they exist, or too busy right now to read or comment on their stuff?

Tim O'Reilly has been thinking this through since he talked to that reporter.

fidelio @ 9... "Would I do this if I was at a gathering in the blog-owners' home?"

That's one good way of putting it. I also wouldn't post about something I wasn't willing to talk about at that Tibetan restaurant last week when I met abi, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, David Goldfarb and others. (Of course, I felt comfortable enough to talk about advertising for videos called 'Girls Gone Mild' and I wish I could have heard all of abi's goofy response to that.)

Teresa,

I really liked the linked thread about moderation, and I especially found Randolph Fitz' comments interesting.

Persistence is a big deal. A new participant can come in with a pseudonym, and will be judged, over time, by the quality of his ideas and comments. This requires an investment in that pseudonym, which acts as a kind of brake on bad behavior and shoddy arguments. "I don't want to make that lame argument here, these guys will see how lame it is and think less of me."

These moderation techniques don't block subtle paid shills, or subtle attackers engaged to destroy a community after infiltrating it for weeks or months. But it stops the common bad behavior, in much the same way that the local police in a small town may not be up to keeping the Mafia out, but can keep regular people from routinely getting into shootouts and fistfights.

This is important. If there are a thousand, or a hundred thousand, well-run communities like this, then disrupting many of them with subtle coordinated attackers looks too expensive to be worth it. The existence of many well-run blog comment threads makes them all harder to attack.

I've watched this go well and badly in other fora. The eventual meltdown of the cypherpunks list was probably the saddest one I watched, but there have been others. And quite a few other blogs (Gene Expression, Marginal Revolution, Dar Kush) have pretty active comment threads without being taken over by hyenas, but I can't think of one that's as wide-ranging and interesting as Making Light.

Well said, one of the many reasons I delurk here and at Scalzi's and comment. The conservation stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Looks like Locke fell off the cluetrain.

A.J. @ 5

People here know each other. I've never met TNH or PNH, but I know a few of the other commenters here personally.

Not only do we know each other, but we're all embedded in a web of mutual friends and acquaintances. FREX, I've only just gotten active here in the last month or so, but I've been within one other person of Patrick and Teresa for more than 10 years (probably longer, I'm not sure how long my friends have known them). Oddly, I only discovered that after I started posting on ML.

Those shared acquaintances are embedded further in a larger community that has fairly strong norms and expectations, because it consists of some very bright, very individualistic, very tough-minded people who've had to learn to get along with each other or not be in a community. So the members of the community are self-selected, and those who don't accept the norms select themselves out. When Darwin works, he really does the job.

Backseat moderating? I think I've called two, possibly three, of the moderators on this blog on civility issues. Teresa still doesn't have any of my vowels under her desk.

Why not? Because none of the moderators on this blog have the kind of intellectual insecurity issues that cause them to over-moderate. They can accept disagreement, and even admit when they're wrong.

It sets a good example for the rest of us, which also contributes to the quality of dialogue here. Scalzi has the same trick, I find.

What makes it frightening is their betrayal of the social contract. They’re all implicitly saying that they’re willing to have Kathy Sierra continue to be terrorized and hurt, and that they won’t lift a finger to stop it. If I’d just been the victim of frightening and abusive behavior, and I were getting that message from the people around me, I’d be afraid to go out too.

It took me a while to realize why, every time I read about Sierra, I remember Kitty Genovese.

Serge @ 13

Bugs Bunny and cross-dressing.

Damn, Bugs has finally been outed!

Serge @23
You didn't want to hear the rest of that. Please trust me on this matter.

#18:

Reasoned discourse is supported by functioning online communities which are effectively policed, in the same way that stores with glass windows and doors are supported by functioning physical communities that are effectively policed.

Such communities exist, and reasoned discourse continues at various levels of formality. The existence of Crossfire doesn't destroy C-Span's morning call-in/discussion shows, and the existence of blogs filled with nasty personal attacks and general meanness doesn't prevent the existence of good blogs and comment threads.

We probably can't make everyone be nice, and an attempt to use the law to try would probably end up being hijacked and used to suppress unpopular ideas and opinions. But individuals and small groups can and do build working communities. That's worthwhile even if we can't make everyplace on the net such a working community.

abi @ 23... You sure? Drat.

Teresa, please make the certificate! I can think of at least one moderator at Absolute Write who would proudly hang it above her computer. Heck, if it helps motivate you, I'll dontate money to the SFWA emergency fund for it.

I always try to use a common sense approach to moderating at AW - thinking about the audience, weighing the responses on a thread (we welcome the long time posters who help the newbies understand the culture)and when in doubt, I ask more seasoned moderators for input. Watching how it works here has been a valuable education.

Moderation is very much *not* rocket science. It's a human skill, not an engineering skill, and takes very different approaches and attitudes to make work well.

Thank you!

I already started to worry where all the common sense had vanished to since that more than stupid proposal.

How is it that all of a sudden simple housekeeping tasks on your blog cause cries of censorship and we need a Justification!*zomg* and a Code of Conduct and stupid little badges when we want to kill off trolls.

I mean, come on! No one blinks when you kill off roaches and other nasty bugs that invade your home, so why the hubbub about quashing internet trolls?

In other words: a wonderful post!

Bruce Cohen @ 30... What? You never saw the "Barber of Seville" cartoon that ends with Elmer Fudd in drag then getting proposed by Bugs?

Re cross-dressing rabbits: http://www.drinkatwork.com/2007/01/comic-for-wednesday-january-24-2007.html

Some blogs are like room parties. It might get a little rowdy, depending on the host's tolerance and the subjects under discussion, but I have a basic sense of general good will. If I disagree with someone we might wrangle but it's not going to come to threats (or worse).

Some blogs- okay, I am about to get a little hand-wavey and vague here. Some blogs feel very much like when I used to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. There was an impersonal feel to the noise and fun. And there was always a not-insignifigant number of folks who were there to do and say things they'd never dream of doing where anyone they knew back home would see them.

There's an advertising slogan "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." That kind of nudge-nudge wink-wink, go ahead, nobody's looking thing that happens when people compartmentalize their actions based on accountablity can lead to some pretty unpleasant interactions.

And some blogs have comment threads that remind me of sketchy bars full of scary people. I keep quiet, I don't draw attention to myself, and I leave. It's not about the topics under discussion or where the blog falls on the political spectrum as far as I can tell. I don't trust the commenters to be civil and I don't trust the blog owner/s to do anything about it.

Active moderation and a community commitment to communication go a long way.

I was speculating over on rasff after someone noted (not for the first time) that a chronic anklebiter there was said to be quite pleasant in real life. It seems to me that this is a case where Dr. Jekyll is simply an enabler for Mr. Hyde. Perhaps X is afraid of confrontation, but in the safety of the computer desk in the den, X feels free to become insulting and abusive of anybody who doesn't toe the party line. As far as I'm concerned, the virtual community is a location in real life, and behavior there is real.

Furthermore, Dr. Jekyll wasn't an innocent victim. He was a guilty bastard, looking for an alias to mask his own vile impulses and let him give way to them.

As to why ML has wso many comments and yet the comments are mostly worth reading, I can only offer my own experience here as an explanation. The posts and the comments here are often so literate, complex and well-thought-out that I've felt a bit shamed to put my two cents down, unless I felt that I really had something unique to add the the discussion.

On other blogs, I feel less self-conscious about plopping down a mindless "Me too!" type of comment. But, here, I feel like I'm dragging down the discourse unless I've got something important to add. And I feel like there must be many lurkers who feel the same way, perhaps even to the extent of not posting at all.

jamiehall@ #41: me too!

All this just makes me even happier that my blog seems to fly under most people's radar.

#15 Madeline F--I think the room party analogy may be better than the cafeteria--there's a sense of the choice to offer hospitality on the part of our hosts that I don't think is there in a public facility. They choose to have this space open to us, and the obligations of hospitality run both ways--the guests have their own duties in that relationship.

#16 txanne--I know plenty of Southern women who wouldn't claim the designation of "lady" that still can't bring themselves not to be "nice"--however much they may resent the perceived obligation. We're all in recovery, really.

#39 bbrugger--That's good.

fidelio@44: in a thread here a year or so ago someone compared the comment threads here - I guess especially the open threads - to a gathering on the front porch. It's still someone's space, even if Teresa and Patrick aren't always heavily involved in the discussion; people passing might come to get involved without needing an invite; but in the end, you respect what the owners want or you get thrown out. This is how I try to manage my behaviour here - which is only to say, this is the analogy that works for me.

I'm quite convinced, though, that literate and urbane as the posters here all are, what makes ML so attractive is the attitude to moderation. I do think Teresa should write that book. Even on other smart and literate blogs, comment threads like these don't just happen by themselves.

All of which is just a long-winded way of saying: me too!

Fidelio, 44: We're all in recovery, really.

That is a true statement, and worthy of all people to be received.

FWIW, here's the Blue Moon blog. It requires registration, and they still find it necessary to delete comments. I don't read the comments there, so I don't know how negative they got. (The ratio of intelligent remarks to "me too" doesn't make it worth my while, frankly. You people have spoiled me.)

And hey, that Lost Fandoms post really *is* great - it dates from before my time here, so I hadn't seen it before. How come it garnered only 16 comments? Has the ML community grown that much?

Yes.

Madeleine Robins @ 29

It took me a while to realize why, every time I read about Sierra, I remember Kitty Genovese.

Ouch! I hadn't made that comparison, but it is way too apt for comfort.

One other thing I've noticed here that's not common anywhere in society today, especially on the web. When people inadvertently give offense, they apologize, and they do so sincerely.

I mod at a message-board with 800 members, which is smallish as message boards go, but bigger than we ever really expected. I think one of the things that's really worked is to have a consensus on what we'll tolerate and what we won't. It helps that all my co-mods are awesome, but writing down: "the following are NOT OKAY," has been one of our best moves.

@anyone with experience at modding:

One of the things I haven't figured out how to deal with is the person who is well intentioned but so stupid that every comment they make throws a veil of confusion and idiocy over the thread. Are there ways to encourage them to lurk more?

Bruce 49: I do that everywhere, and I suspect so do other members of the fluorosphere. OTOH, when I do it elsewhere, people think it's strange.

A.J., I had a casual acquaintance with TNH and a few other regulars here from lurking on the GEnie SFRT years back, when my then wife had an account. Not coincidentally, the SFRT had a very similar moderation policy and attitude. Other than that, I knew only 2 people who post here from other contexts, and both of those were online too.

Rebecca Ore has made some good observations on what makes online communities work or fail, especially in resilience to anonymous attackers, but I don't know if any of them are anywhere they can be linked to.

I must admit, the notion of what happens at Making Light as a host/guest relationship was reinforced by this remark by Teresa, which should up on her post about the sort of people, new to this blog, who begin a post with "You people". If Teresa sees herself as a hostess, them my role is clearly that of guest. (The thread includes a disemvowelling, for those who have not yet seen one.)

Teresa, I just ran "scribblers' compacts" through Google, just to see what turned up.

Top two hits: Patrick (in Time magazine) and the post on 19th century fandom. The rest are references thereto, it appears.

Serge @ 37

Yes, I've seen it. I've also seen the Valkyrie bit. It's just, well, there's a difference between public performance and being outed as a transvestite. I mean look at Robin Williams: he can do The Bird Cage and no one thinks he's really gay*, or Mork and Mindy, and no one thinks he's really an alien**.

So I've been assuming for a long time that Bugs had that sort of fig leaf to hide behind. It's just a bit of a shock when the truth finally comes out.

* Although they inevitably compare him to Nathan Lane. How there can be two such people in one universe strains credulity. Imagine if Zero Mostel were still alive. The bonds of reality would be seriously strained.

** I do wonder sometimes ...

What I noticed was that in every iteration of the Sierra story, more and more of the references to misogyny were replaced by references to "incivility." O'Reilly's latest "code of conduct" seems entirely gender neutral, and threats to individuals are given the same weight as copyright violations.

Apparently, noticing misogyny makes you "sexist" just like noticing racism makes you "racist." And all of it is as bad as downloading music without permission.

I don't think this is a matter of cluelessness. I think it is a matter of agenda.

So many people fail to understand the deep meaning of A. J. Liebling's epigram, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." It's my blog on my server; people get to comment at my suffrance. I get to silence whomever I choose.

If it is such a terrible thing to delete comments, why is comment spam deleted so freely? The line between comment spam and regular commenting is not a bright one, no matter how obviously spam-like the obvious spam may be.

Do O'Reilly and Wales make a distinction between those who post anonymously, and those who use a nom de plume for various reasons? After all, a google search by a poster's enemies might get him/her in trouble at the office if his/her real name were used. Or one's true identity might warp how people address him/her in these parts. For example, if I were really Hugh Jackman, how would TexAnne address me?

What they all said, plus -- I think the willingness to post IP addresses of gross offenders, and the demonstrated ability of the inhabitants to track back from IP addresses, discourages certain sorts of uncivil behaviour. It removes the security of anonymity. And as this does not happen until after someone has repeatedly engaged in offensive behaviour, it's clear to outsiders that it's not just a question of picking on people.

A lot of this is about self-perpetuating cultures. As Teresa and Scalzi have said, trolls breed. If they're tolerated, they attract more trolls. ML as a culture has a low tolerance for ongoing rude behaviour, and many people will act to discourage it, in ways that don't reward trollish behaviour with the type of attention trolls are usually seeking.

Lost Fandoms seems like it could benefit from something like the Dead Media Project site-- when you come across evidence of another Lost Fandom, document it on the site.

Numbered thoughts:

1. The Amateur Journalism movement might be a Lost Fandom, as well as an ancestor of science fiction fandom.

2. Factsheet Five, which attempted to review and catalogue fanzines, traced expansions of the zine-publishing tradition into many subcultures.

3. Efforts to reconstruct, from backup tapes scattered across the world, early pre-Web traffic on Usenet newsgroups and ARPANET mailing lists have made ancestral communities visible to many of us who joined the Net later.

4. Somewhere in the closets of history, there must be many examples of round-robin correspondence. But I don't know anything about them.

Kip W @ #40

I've always liked Penny Arcade's take on the subject. (NSFW language, as usual with them.)

Serge, 58: If I knew you to be Hugh Jackman, I would still address you as "Serge." It's only polite.

I'm a living, typing example of the difference between anonymity and pseudonymity. You all know who I am, even if you don't know my last name. I'm just being cautious because of my tenuous job situation.

TexAnne @ 62... Of course. If I knew for a fact that you really are Claudia Black, I wouldn't blow your cover. (Huh... Poor choice of words?) If someone wants to use a pseudonym, then they have reasons for that which one should respect. I do wonder though who "Faren's computer" really is.

Clifton @ 52:

I think Bruce Cohen StM @ 27 said better what I was aiming at. ML functions in part as a watering hole for a larger community. (I get in by bribing the doorman. :) That larger community, and the way we are enmeshed in it to various degrees, makes it that much harder to violate the norms our hosts have fostered.

On a tangent: I rather like the idea of Making Light as a neighborhood bar. Low roof, wood paneling, lots of plants, steady babble of conversation and laughter. You can tell who the regulars are, but they seem friendly enough.

The only peculiar thing is that -- perhaps it's the comment headers -- I'm imagining everyone wearing name-tags.

I've met Serge, and if he's Hugh Jackman, he has one hell of an accent coach.

Actually, abi, you met someone who told you he was 'Serge'. How do you know I am not Hugh Jackman who hired that General-Zod lookalike to protect his Secret Identity. And how do I know that you are abi?

Serge @66
What is this? You think you met me? How can that be? I live in Scotland, and you live in New Mexico.

This bit drove me right up the wall:

Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said.

Censorship is freedom! War is peace! etc.

Hi. I lurk here occasionally. Love the blog. Love reading the comments thread. I always learn something.

So...bloggers can tell who's leaving comments? Really? Even on blogs that don't require you to enter your email address? (Trying to recall every comment I've ever left. Statistically unlikely that I would want to claim all of them.)

abi @ 66... Or so you say anyway. What is Truth?

(I 'fess up, I really am the guy with the funny accent that you met last week in Berkeley. I'll assume you are the person I met.)

Truth is a bouquet of pretty flowers that smell bad.

Oh, wait, that's logic.

Hi Teresa,

Thanks for saying this. I'm all for letting people have their say and tolerating disagreement, but I do not understand why many otherwise perfectly reasonable people allow trolls to come in and disrupt newsgroups and blogs with their weird, hateful posts. It's heartening to hear you and Scalzi advocating the reasonable smackdown approach.

Also, I was too shy to tell you in person, lol, but I very much enjoyed your contributions to Minicon a couple weeks back. Thanks so much for coming.

Now we know to get Serge a 30 piece silver set for his birthday.

Bruce Cohen @ 73... No need to. Just keeping ML the place it is, that's plenty of birthday gift to me.

Excellent Post. Thank you for saying this. You already know my policy on moderation. I have no problem shutting down jerks, even when they allude that I'm censoring and oppressing them. Good times.

Elizabeth @69: Blogging software often, though not always, records the IP address from which a post came. That can be spoofed by someone who knows what they're doing, but the lower levels of troll don't bother, and often don't know how. Blog admins can see that IP address. From the IP address it's possible to trace at least the ISP the person uses, and often their geographical location. It may be possible to trace much more information than that, as ML has occasionally demonstrated when collectively sufficiently annoyed.

Any sensible person knows there is a line you don't cross. Exactly where that line is drawn is, of course, a matter of debate and I'm happy to accept our hosts' judgement on that. This is a very civilised and civilising place to be.

Two things. The behaviour Kathy Sierra has been subjected to is... well, start with outrageous and work your way south. It is abuse. The clown with the noose needs some serious attitude adjustment before he decides that posting on the net just doesn't get him to come in his khakis any more and he's got to try the real thing. With rights come responsibilities, always. And sexism is wrong, always.

How come we're still having to say that?

Then we have a Code of Conduct (capital 'C's) Apart from being accompanied by the deafening sound of stable doors slamming in the wind, perhaps they can explain how their - US - law applies to me in the UK, let alone however many millions of bloggers there are in the PRC (of course, they have their very own government code of conduct, and does anyone think that's a good idea?)

To Teresa and Patrick, my continuing thanks for making the world a better place than it would be without ML.

TNH: What I can do is refuse to respect bloggers and other site administrators who let it flourish on their own sites, or who provide cover for the anonymous vandals who post it.

Even more disturbing are sites where the administrators who would take the heads off anonymous trolls for saying something let it pass when one of their regulars or one of their moderators says it. I witnessed a situation where a moderator said that women receiving sexually harrassing messages weren't actually being hurt by that because they weren't being physically harmed. The statement passed without comment by the site administrators, despite heated debate about issues of that sort when brought up by other members. A variation on IOIFYAR, I suppose.

The Rumor Mill was--and still is, I think--peer-moderated, which is a concept difficult to get across to newbies. If members judge you to be incivil and disrespectful, they tag your post with negative points. Enough of those, and your post disappears unless someone wants to log in and click on it to see what you said. Ill-mannered newbies would object and demand to know what the moderator was going to do about this censorship. Explaining that the moderators had already taken action brought many interesting responses.

Scalzi notes:

Well, this is the thing. When you have a well-run site, the trolls and freaks become less interested because they don't see the spoor of other of their kind.

Much like the fixing broken windows view on urban decay and crime. Somebody sees a broken window, they break more. Somebody sees graffiti on the train, they break out their own spray can. Somebody sees nasty, worthless comments, they pile on with their own.

Just like repairing those broken panes of glass, effective moderation catches problem comments before they get out of hand.

You know what's funny? Another example of good moderation I can think of is Fandom_Wank. The regulars instruct the n00bs in how to behave and what can and cannot be talked about, the anonymice generally behave, and the mods rarely bring out the banhammer (except for the fun of it). For a community devoted to pointing and laughing at the stupidity of others, it's remarkably civilized. The few times a troll does get in, they are either argued or cat macro'ed to death.

Fandom_Wank: The best behaved sht-flngng cnts you'll ever find.

Julia Jones @76: Thank you for the thourough, patient lesson.

I was going to post links to Tim O'Reilly's responses to all this, which I think are worth reviewing by anyone thinking about piling on, but I see that adamsj already did in #22.

#77 Martyn:

There's probably no way to stop creeps posting nasty things on the internet, and the ability to stop it would inevitably be misused. (What would the Bush administration do with that power?) But decent people who participate on the net have the ability to clearly label that kind of stuff as unacceptable.

It's especially important to do that when the unacceptable behavior is from someone on your own side, or attacking people you dislike, and that doesn't seem to have happened here (though I haven't followed this case very closely, so maybe I'm missing something).

I think there's a real tendency on the net, inherited from the hippie/anarchist/libertarian roots from which much of net culture springs, to think that we should not call people on a lot unacceptable behavior. This springs from the same root as the idea that deleting trolls' posts is censorship, or that condemning female circumcision or slavery is culturally insensitive.

albatross @ 83

I think there's a real tendency on the net, inherited from the hippie/anarchist/libertarian roots from which much of net culture springs, to think that we should not call people on a lot unacceptable behavior.

The real hippie/anarchist/libertarian tradition is not get a police force to do what the community can do for itself. At least once upon a time, hippies and such dealt with our own when necessary, and many of us, at least, didn't shirk from the duty. I think that tradition became watered down by people who came in later, with a set of attitudes that came from outside the counterculture.

That's why there are many examples of communities that formed in the 70s and 80s that had that notion of dealing with rather than tolerating antisocial activities. Consider how a lot of the frequenters of mailing lists on the ARPANET were appalled at the lack of civility and general cluelessness of some of the usenet groups.

I guess what I'm saying is that these two opposing views of how to make a community are not new, that there have been reasonable people around all along. Maybe not many, certainly not enough, but some.

This is a subject that must concern all of us, it seems, if there is any part of our lives spent online.

I post frequently about the history of slavery, the institution, and the various components of the slave trade, particularly focused on that of the African - Atlantic slave trade. I also write about the vast interstate slave trade that grew with Thomas Jefferson's protectionism in tandem with the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory -- the Civil War and slavery -- all these related subjects.

When I post such a subject the LJ gets hit with vile racist comments, accusations of being a racist who hates white people, and much worse. Which is strange since my Ljay doesn't generate that much traffic. But these subjects always brings these comments. Always anonymous. They go automatically to my screening e-mail account, and I delete them.

On Deep Genre, though, good manners and mutual courtesy are all the atmosphere. That is partly due to the quality of the posters, and because so many of them would perhaps rather slit their wrists than offend Kit Kerr, they love her work so much. But all of us who can post topics have moderation and banning capacity, just in case.

Constance

albatross @ 83: But decent people who participate on the net have the ability to clearly label that kind of stuff as unacceptable. [...] It's especially important to do that when the unacceptable behavior is from someone on your own side, or attacking people you dislike, [...]

Yes. As much as it hurts to tell people you like, "You're out of line," you've got to do it. Healthy communities foster that health by making it safe to dissent.

Communites with no mechanisms to indicate "You can say something we don't like to hear, and we may disagree, but you will not be punished for it"--and actually follow through on that--quickly become communities of group-think where people either twist their thoughts to make what Person A did justifiable, or disagree but are too intimidated to speak up. Every idea is a brilliant idea, because no one disagrees. And everybody shifts more and more out of touch with what's acceptable in absolute terms, because all they're hearing is what's acceptable in their group.

We've seen the extremes of where that kind of thing leads.

Being a good citizen means speaking up when your country and its leaders do bad things. It's an act of love to do that, and to do the same for communities you care about that are going off the deep end. One you're likely to get kicked in the teeth for, but c'est la vie.*

*Speaking--sort of--of interventions, thank you, ethan, for forcibly removing me from the TMNT movie line. I had associated it with Buffy and...well, I got a little confused for a while.

Problem here, as I see it, is that the Sierra affair went beyond invective to threats. I don't see how this could ever be considered even remotely acceptable. This is beyond "complain to the site owner" and into "call the cops" territory.

Near as I can tell, there are three types of people who throw around threats like this:

1. The clueless. Their own lives are so nonviolent that they simply cannot imagine violence in connection with themselves. A threat is just another kind of joke.
2. The sociopaths. They know darn well the effect that these kinds of threats produce, and do it on purpose. They're not violent; they just like to scare people.
3. The psychos. They really mean it.

How to tell them apart? You can't, really. Add in the fact that a lot of people freak at the thought of violence and you get a very strong reaction.

Now, now, Aconite (#86), there's no need to make up things that didn't happen. That was entirely my confusion.

Speaking of my confusion, I can say from personal experience that it's possible here for mistakes to happen, things to be amplified, ruckuses to happen, and then for everyone to be like, whoops, and move on. And I'm sure glad of it. Hooray, here!

ethan @ 88: Now, now, Aconite (#86), there's no need to make up things that didn't happen. That was entirely my confusion.

Oh, now, no need to blush like that. Such modesty! All, "Aw, shucks, ma'am, 'tweren't nuthin'." Saving me from that movie was a mitzvah, I tell you, a mitzvah.

This reminds me of the closing of Billmon's blog, Whiskey Bar, a few years ago. He had comment boards, and would set up free comment threads when he went away (to an economics conference) or was too busy to post.

The free threads attracted hundreds of commenters. The quality of comment was not vulgar or abusive by Fark standards, but it confirmed the negative stereotype of "wacko liberals." The commenters were further to the left than Billmon himself seemed (which, given Billmon's view of the Bush administration and the war, is saying something), and not always relevant.

Billmon compared the threads to a house-party at which hundreds of uninvited guests show up and trash the house. He shut down the blog for some time. He has posted again on important events, but without comment boards. Other liberal blogs debated whether this was arrogant. Ideally he would have moderated his own boards, but he has a professional day job.

Gee, I wish those two wunderkind would speak to the gentleman who decided I was his "friend" and who went through the trouble of tracking down my telephone number, my address, and the fact that I have a wife and daughter. Should I mention the weapons that were taken from his home (not that he can't get more)? How about the fact that he ought to see doctors and take medication, except they are part of the "big conspiracy"? Changed my phone number, changed my e-mail, deleted a blog of nearly 9,000 postings, all because of one person. Good thing I didn't "moderate" his comments! That would have been evil of me! Heh.

Teresa,

You know I think highly of your abilities as a moderator, and think you ought to write that book--in fact, sign me up for a copy--but aren't you giving in to the libertarian flavor of despair here?

Extremely well said. You could condense the whole post down to this one insightful paragraph:

Anonymous nastiness is easy to write, and will always find an appreciative audience. I don’t care. It’s not a manifestation of the free and open discourse of the internet; it’s a thing that destroys that discourse. To be specific, it’s the same old trashmouthed bullying we all know from junior high and high school. Putting it on the net doesn’t cause it to develop any novel complexities or interesting emergent behaviors. It’s just the same old sh*t.

I don't and probably never will understand why people are so insistent on defending anonymous, cowardly, bottom-feeding garbage. And often not just defending it, but elevating it to the status of the most cherished thing on the internet.

I wonder if Norman Rockwell tried painting the "Four Freedoms" today, he'd have to add another one with some guy hunched over a computer keyboard spewing profanity.

adamsj, #91: Can you expand on that? Because maybe it's just that I flew back from London today and my soul hasn't caught up yet, but I don't get what you're suggesting.

By the way, if any post in this thread is going to be inscribed on the sky in letters of fire, it should be number 56.

I swear, Cory Doctorow was right when he said I ought to write a book about moderation. I keep thinking it isn’t rocket science, and that anyone who’s hung out on the net for a while should know the basics... Then something like this comes along, and I realize it’s not as self-evident as I thought.

Cory Doctorow is right. (Feels almost redundant when I say it like that.) A book like that would be a Service to Humankind. So I second (tenth... thousandth... whatever we're at) the idea. Please do!

PNH 95, praising James 56: How did I miss that the first time around? Thanks to both of you.

Which reminds me. Two blogs have lost my eyeballs permanently: Daily Kos, where Kos said that Ms. Sierra was just a hysterical woman, and TalkLeft, where Big Tent Democrat said that people who were horrified at Kos' casual misogyny needed to shut up because the blogger code of conduct was a stupid idea.

So I've switched my bookmarks to Shakesville and Firedoglake with a Twisty chaser.

A book, and start doing Moderation Consulting for big firms that run messageboards.

The thing that struck me about this is that the people who were involved in setting up the site that caused all the trouble have spent the interim time simultaneously arguing that a) this stuff is SOP, happens all the time, and she's overreacting and should suck it up, and b) she has terribly injured them by linking their names and reputations to what happened and should be ashamed of herself, because they didn't deserve to be publicly associated with this sort of thing, and c) she's trying to ride to glory on the coattails of their enormous fame.

Honestly, it's like someone finally told their moms about all the other peoples' lunch money they've been supplementing their income with.

TexAnne, I think I've got a pretty good idea what kind of pole holds up that Big Tent.

In "Big Tent Democrat"'s defense, he seems to have his head screwed on straight about the central role played by plain-old-woman-hating.

True enough, but I have a hard time resisting a straight line.

Patrick: Ah. That was posted after I swore off the site. I find it less objectionable than Kos' pathetic little response, but I'm still not going back there. I don't think either Kos or Half-a-Tent Democrat really understand why people were angered by their attitudes.

First off, Patrick, let me echo your praise of number 56. It's a thought I should've had, and maybe even approached, but never quite articulated.

Next, let me note that I'm mildy disappointed in both Teresa and John Scalzi for talking only about and linking only to the NYT article and apparently not following the link in that article to where Tim's actual proposals could be found. I won't say the article gets it wrong, but it doesn't do full justice to the proposals, especially after he listened to critics and changed his mind a bit.

Anyway, what my wife said to me was that Tim O'Reilly's proposal was guidance to the people for whom moderation is rocket science. Not everyone has that clue--in fact, Tim's naivete (a good thing, I think, in context) in making the proposal surprised me a bit--and so having someone say these things explicitly is worthwhile. I think she's right, so far as she goes.

I go further, and say his other intention was to move toward setting norms about discourse. I don't think norms are simply emergent behavior. They sometimes occur because of the concerted labor of millions of people. The idea that rape should be addressed openly and taken seriously didn't come from spontaneous generation. People made it happen, consciously, deliberately, effortfully.

If you go through Tim's three postings, you'll see that his ideas (and his wording) clarified over the days.

If you then go through the comments on those postings, you'll see some of the most typical and childish idiocy imaginable, mostly boiling down to "Wah!" "Fuck you!" and "Make me!" (There's also some pretty intelligent disagreement with what Tim has to say, much of which he engages.) What disturbs me the most (after the misogeny), though, is the can't-do-ism--the libertarian despair.

There's a real sense in many of the comments there that nothing can be done. Not that it shouldn't be done--that sound is the internet infants crying and the virtual rapists drooling--but it can't be done. This is just how free and unfettered communication works. It's no different from any attempt to moderate the mechanisms of the market. You can't legislate morality. All that jazz.

Sure, you could take this back to at least the stoics--Marcus Aurelius said, "You may break your heart, but men will not change"--but in modern times, it's Heinlein and Hayek that push it.

So when Teresa says, "Uh-huh. And I’m busy constructing a bamboo-and-wicker water gate that will hereafter govern the flow of the Mississippi River," I get that same vibe. Maybe I'm wrong.

The point is, things can be done.

Lawrence Lessig doesn't trump Marcus Aurelius--that takes Michael Swanwick--but he doesn't have to. Men may not change themselves, but they can change the world they live in. When we change the world, we may not change ourselves, but we do change the constraints and conditions under which we interact.

In my book, that's just as good as changing ourselves--better, in fact, because it's doable.

For instance, there are mechanisms--like in this thread--for reducing the ability of assholes to disrupt and spew. There are also norms which can be set. God knows, that won't end bad behavior, but it can mitigate it. It ain't perfect, but it's better than nothing.