Ed posted a link to an interesting-looking blog yesterday. My eye was also caught by this post on it, which seemed to me to make some sensible points, with CSW as an example of the dangers of under-moderation. I am not sure though what the author means by "Disemvowelling".

Dealing with Trolls...

Our first two trolls have shown up in the comments here on typepad. Pity. I don't have time to moderate the comments to this thing properly. But I will try. Here is some food for thought:

Teresa Nielsen Hayden: Some things I know about moderating conversations in virtual space:

• There can be no ongoing discourse without some degree of moderation, if only to kill off the hardcore trolls. It takes rather more moderation than that to create a complex, nuanced, civil discourse. If you want that to happen, you have to give of yourself. Providing the space but not tending the conversation is like expecting that your front yard will automatically turn itself into a garden.
• You own the space. You host the conversation. You don’t own the community. Respect their needs. For instance, if you’re going away for a while, don’t shut down your comment area. Give them an open thread to play with, so they’ll still be there when you get back.
• Message persistence rewards people who write good comments.
• Over-specific rules are an invitation to people who get off on gaming the system.
• Civil speech and impassioned speech are not opposed and mutually exclusive sets. Being interesting trumps any amount of conventional politeness.
• Things to cherish: Your regulars. A sense of community. Real expertise. Genuine engagement with the subject under discussion. Outstanding performances. Helping others. Cooperation in maintenance of a good conversation. Taking the time to teach newbies the ropes. All these things should be rewarded with your attention and praise. And if you get a particularly good comment, consider adding it to the original post.
• Grant more lenience to participants who are only part-time jerks, as long as they’re valuable the rest of the time.
• If you judge that a post is offensive, upsetting, or just plain unpleasant, it’s important to get rid of it, or at least make it hard to read. Do it as quickly as possible. There’s no more useless advice than to tell people to just ignore such things. We can’t. We automatically read what falls under our eyes.
• Another important rule: You can let one jeering, unpleasant jerk hang around for a while, but the minute you get two or more of them egging each other on, they both have to go, and all their recent messages with them. There are others like them prowling the net, looking for just that kind of situation. More of them will turn up, and they’ll encourage each other to behave more and more outrageously. Kill them quickly and have no regrets.
• You can’t automate intelligence. In theory, systems like Slashdot’s ought to work better than they do. Maintaining a conversation is a task for human beings.
• Disemvowelling works. Consider it.
• If someone you’ve disemvowelled comes back and behaves, forgive and forget their earlier gaffes. You’re acting in the service of civility, not abstract justice.

There is a big difference between a blog with a single treat of discussion and a forum with multiple threads. Moderation, editorial policy, censorship whatever you call it means viewpoints are excluded. That is necessary in a single thread but there is no practical reason for it in a forum.

But there is an underlying politics of free speech under these things. Despite all the rhetoric the west actually never believed in free speech and people have been trained into believing that censorship is necessary, without actually asking why. This is further compounded on CSW by the military types who come from a heavily censored Victorian culture.

If you consider that forums will arrange themselves to follow the cultures, eventually CSW will evolve into at least two groups the civilians and the military, because these are societies that do not share common values. The Military forum will be paternalistic, heavily moderated with weekly posts to remind people not to talk politics or religion (except for expressing their loyalty to right wing Protestantism) and be nice to each other.

In many ways the internet has opened the cage door, but thee are a lot of people who cant walk out – they are still pacing around in their cage.

Nic

On the other hand, Nic, etiquette - however artificial and at times hypocritical its rules may be - does serve a purpose on the internet, as it does in real life and, having been a bad boy in my time, I have become convinced that enforcing it is the only way to avoid strangling discussions. The rules of military etiquette may be different to the rules of civilan etiquette, but I dare say that points can be made strongly even within that framework.

Etiquette covers a lot of things and conversation-hogging in an inappropriate place (see Bergy in GMT Support) is as rude in its own way as it would be in real life; and put-downs and being offensive in real life would rapidly leave the speaker without an audience, and I don't think that the internet is much different. I wonder how many people who have entered the political discussions on CSW have decided to stay? A small minority, I suspect.

The internet is not real life - neither does one dress nicely for a telephone call.

The imposition of etiquite is just censorship and I dont see any reason why communications freely entered into between adults requires censorship by
a third party. If you dont want to hear something then don't listen.

The problem is that most forum software ignores communication patterns. It is early days and people have just implemented the first thing they could think of - meeting rooms and notice boards - without understanding the underlying complexity of the communications involved. A good example is the ignore feature on CSW and how it is actually the wrong way round.

But my other point is that there are cultures where control is part of the culture. Where the whole idea of free speech is wrong. A classic example is religious groups who want to ban films they have never seen because the mere existance is an anathema. The military is one of these cultures.

In that case it is not a practical issue of maintaining a coherent dialog - destroying the communication is the objective.

Nic

Disemvoweling?

How about:

F yu cn rd ths nw, thn yu r prbbly f Pnc r Smtc dscnt.

for

"If you can read this now, then you are probably of Punic or Semitic descent."

It's surprising just how little of the content of written conversation is conveyed by the vowels, and how much by the consonants. No wonder Hannibal and Co. were so successful for so long; look at all of the time that they saved by dropping the AEIOU representations in their written reports.

Or, it could be something more cute and Net related...

But one does speak politely and to the point in a telephone conversation. Failure to do so will probably result in the other party hanging up. At least it will if the other party is me.

But what if you refuse to hang up.

Nic

You mean no matter what we do, we cannot get you to hang up, Nic? B)

Nick, I think the quidelines are excellent, and I use pretty much that to moderate my CSW SimCan folder, which is mainly a blog. I seem to have seen you doing about that in your blogs, and I think it works well for you also.

Sorry to see you forced into the company of us censoring, free speech hating, militarists, though. :D

pax, smn

Nick's a Thatcherite - they have the level right next to militarists in Hell.

Nic

I imagine that being a seat at a table where the game is one designed by David Fox with your opponent being either Richard Berg or Bill Ramsay.

Well, I don't have as much trouble with Richard as do most. Ramsay I only know from his on line comments (which are, in their own way, no worse than much of what anyone else, yours truly included, offers up in the same vein).

I understand that David Fox has at least one design to his credit, that being a game on Austerlitz. From what little Nick has said about it, it appears that I might enjoy the design. (However, I am skeptical of any Austerlitz game; just how do they accomplish that hidden attack in a game where everything's out in the open?) So, it might not bother me as much as it would others.

I was thinking more along the lines of '30 Year War'

If anarchy doesn't work in the real world, why would someone expect it to work on the Internet? Those who romanticize a lack of rules should hang out on Usenet for a month. Nothing like a 125-message flame war between two idiots to remind one why etiquette exists.

I favor loose moderation. But the fact that even the meekest individual becomes a raving psychotic behind the keyboard's anonymity is reason enough to have moderation.

Michael

I'm a Tilly man myself, so it might interest me. But, I've never seen it anywhere so there's little chance of me making the evaluation.

Sounds like a concept borrowed from right wing Protestants.

dave

Ouch, that one must have hurt, folks...

:P

pax, smn

>I was thinking more along the lines of '30 Year War'

I liked Thirty Years War, but it's the only CDG I've got, besides Age Of Napoleon.