A Call For Senility On The Web

The NY Times front-pages an article about civility, and its occasional absence, on the Web. Dan Drezner wins the best title award with "It's just the 19th nervous breakdown about the blogosphere" and has the same reaction I do - where is the rest of the story?

The Times goes on about some tech bloggers but never mentions the many political bloggers and the ways they regulate comments (Registration required at many top Left sites; no comments at all at many top Right sites); never mentions the meltdown (and resurrection!) at the WaPo last year; and never mentions the policy at the Times blogs, where comments are held in a moderated queue until deemed fit for publication.

Instead, we are offered such disconnected-from-reality insights as this:

...many Internet veterans believe that blogs are part of a larger public sphere, and that deleting a visitor’s comment amounts to an assault on their right to free speech.

Speech is already a lot less than free, at least among the political blogs.

And to be clear, I do not by any means except myself from that.  This blog has been having a troll problem lately, so changes may be forthcoming - activating the Typepad registration option for commenters is a likely next step.

MORE:  A bold mechanism to reduce one's invective footprint - civility offsets.

Comments

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Or, create a prospectus and seek investors:

'A draft proposal circulating in the so-called blogosphere would allow family-friendly blogs to sell “civility offsets” to vitriolic bloggers who prefer to pay for “nastiness indulgences” rather than to tame their bitter tirades.

'Advocates say that unlike a proposed “blogger code of conduct,” the new civility offsets will not slash the number of blatant death threats or reduce comparisons between President George Bush and the common chimpanzee, but they may reduce the momentary twinges of guilt experienced by some vicious, vindictive and vitriolic bloggers.'

[Gary Maxwell]

As someone who has always used my real name and real e-mail addy, I would certainly welcome the change to a registration environment. It might also help to limit registration to certain defined times. The automated and the quickly enraged, will likely be long gone by the time they get to registered once a week. If less troll snark is the result, lets have some order and ban the total anonymous nature of posting.

[clarice]

Thank you, TM!! The give and take here and the consistent brilliant contributions of the regulars is what gives me confidence to write about complicated issues. If the JOM horde has tossed something around for a while I feel sure there is nothing I've overlooked when a stick my chin out. Lately, not so much.

[Appalled Moderate]

Yeah, I'd register. Someone to the left of TM has to post in this comment section.

It's hard to have a good argument with someone when you get 10 oddball posts on disconnected topics flung in your face.

I will note (as I just did in the last thread) that some of the resolute enforcers of though orthodxy who hit this comment section can be as bad as the trolls.

[SunnyDay]

Thank you TM. It's not foolproof, but it makes this blog less convenient as a target for those who only want to disrupt.

Senility, haha. Not your usual subtle self. :D

[Daniel DiRito]

Where is my Easter Bonnet?

While some may see the blogosphere and the behavior of its participants as a new phenomenon, it isn't difficult to find an appropriate predecessor model. That model is found on the streets of any metropolitan area and it is called traffic and the prevalence of road rudeness...or in its extreme...road rage.

Granted, personal attacks and snark on the internet are not likely to lead to fatalities, but if computers had wheels, it certainly would.

Read more on the relationship between blog civility and Easter Bonnets...here:

www.thoughttheater.com

[SunnyDay]

It's hard to have a good argument with someone when you get 10 oddball posts on disconnected topics flung in your face.

Amen - hard to read, too.

[clarice]

Anonymity brings out the worst in many people. OTOH we have received some very thoughtful commentary by people who for whatever reason do not wish to reveal their real identity. It is enough, I think, theat TM (if he accepts a registration process) knows the actual email addy of each poster .

[Syl]

Anybody can sign up to Typekey. I don't understand why it would make any difference at all. Certain trolls here probably already have Typekey accounts.

I, myself, have a couple of them.

[Syl]

Unless tom means something else. Then I take it back.

[SunnyDay]

Daniel, I had a psych doctoral candidate who wanted to use my members to study interpersonal relationship in online communities for his thesis. I had to decline, but it would have been a fascinating study.

[Jane]

I think typekey is one of the registration thingys that I can never successfully get thru - it's that senility thang. So can I get a tutor, in advance, in case it is necessary?

Thanks.

[glenda waggoner]

Rah ! Rah ! We all enjoy debate. Civilized, that
is. ehh-maybe, a little troll here and there-but
an identifiable one. It's more fun to know the name
of the person you are setting straight with truth,
not propaganda! Satire, yes.-Derangement,no.I come
here to learn, from the best, if I want bias, I
can type in the "H" word, or the "D.K" one.

[SunnyDay]

Registration gives the admin a link to the real identity of each poster. although there are some "email on the fly" websites, that require no info, those sites can be added to the blacklist.

Technically, if the site owner asks someone to leave, and they continue to come back, major ISP's consider it harrassment, and will take action against their account holder. I've had to do this, on occasion.

It's reserved for the worst offenders, and usually a threat from the troll's ISP is enough to stop the harrassment. If their ISP gets multiple complaints from several sites, they will cancel the account, and the troll/stalker.harrasser has to find another ISP.

I had one dude all the way down to Juno dial up - but he was really vile.

[Lady Sara]

Gary: Registration at selected hours or only once a week is a very bad idea and turns people off. Registration that requires email verification is the best way, if delay is what you are looking for. I'm not sure Typepad allows this, but some registration systems that require email verification, require a 24 hour wait for the registration to be validated and that helps too. Even Little Green Footballs has switched to a system that no longer requires them to keep registration closed except for a rare day now and then. As I understand it, they weren't using MySQL until the last month or so, which seems strange to me, but then when they first set up their blog, perhaps the technology wasn't available.

A registration that requires email verification is best and some blog software allows the blog owner to set preferences as to whether the user can "self activate" or whether it will require "manual activation" once the registration is completed by the user.

[SunnyDay]

Jane, if you can accept cookies, you can register with typepad. We'll help you.

[Jane]

Thanks SunnyDay, it's not easy being an idiot.

[PeterUK]

Appalled Moderate,

The post you referred to was done in haste and I should have handled it with more tact. Point taken. Posting an individuals email address, who was not involved in the discussion here, with the intent of harassing them, was a larger infraction in my opinion. I was the only person who directly addressed this infraction. Informing posters they can be banned, and providing them the means of a workaround, is a service in my mind to keeping this board open to all viewpoints. It's also created a topic for civil discussion.

Posted by: sferris | April 09, 2007 at 03:10 PM

Faster Please.

[Lady Sara]

I participate on a blog that uses registration with email verification and allows self activation. You get an email with a link and have to click it to activate and indicate that your email is valid. Rather than revert to manual activation, which puts a heavy load on the blog owner if it is a busy blog, the owner where I participate, periodically sends out a group email to all registered users to update the list and make sure emails are still valid. Sometimes regular users get caught in the delete of users whose emails bounce back as invalid. If that happens, they will be told they need to register to comment and can contact the blog owner to update their email on file or reregister. The blog owner of this blog says it makes more work for him, but is still less work than having to validate manually. It is a blog with about the same level of traffic as JOM, but has a larger pool of actual commenters than I see here.

[hit and run]

Jane:
it's not easy being an idiot.

It comes more easily to some of us than others.

I am not surprised that being an idiot is very hard for you to pull off. In fact, I would say it would be impossible.

[Jane]

My goodness H&R, you started drinking early today. Well, we are all probably better off as a result!

[Lew Clark]

I agree with h&r on how hard it would be for Jane to be an idiot. Then for some of us, it's an innate talent. But don't try this at home, we are professionals with years of experience.

[clarice]

How nice to see our civil natures shining again--

[Syl]

Sara

periodically sends out a group email to all registered users to update the list and make sure emails are still valid.

Good idea, but if JOM institutes something like that I'm gone.

I have no problem signing up with a valid email address. For that occasion I will actually catch up on my email beforehand so I can spot the confirmation/activation mail when it comes in.

You can blame it on spam or you can call it burnout. But I only pick up my email once a month or so. I'm sick and tired of it and the spam. And if I have to start watching my email IN CASE JOM sends me an email so I can prove something FORGET IT.

[hit and run]

My goodness H&R, you started drinking early today.

Just coffee.....just coffee

[SunnyDay]

Jane an idiot? hah! I live to read jane's posts. :D Along with several others of you.

That's an interesting Times article. I have always been kind of at odds with the internet concept of free speech. Again, compare blogs and websites such as message boards with real life.

One person (or group) goes to the trouble of creating the site, and inviting others to participate. I see those sites as private property, subject to the wishes of the owner.

It's like a clubhouse that's open to the public. People who have something in common can congregate there to enjoy whatever is their common interest. Anyone who creates turmooil and disrupts the activities of the base group is risking being asked to leave. How much disagreement is considered disruption is ultimately the decisio of the site owner.

I have to say, the success of my site leads me to believe that the regulars, who make the site whatever it is, prefer to have to site kept on topic. That is why they congregate there.

When a site is small, less frequented and therefore lower profile, it's not much of a target. These smaller site often tout their free speech code, and criticize sites that are moderated. However, once those sites grow (IF they grow) they reach a point where moderation becomes necessary, or the site will eventually fail. See my previous post, haha.

I started with 100 people in a yahoo group, and in the end, created what many internet marketers would give their right arm for - a successful internet community. I didn't expect it - I still just stare at it in astonishment.

But, I have to say, it was created because a group of us (the original 100) could no longer tolerate the "free speech" of a site we all frequented regularly.

Websites are not street corners, they are privately owned bit of cyber real estate, paid for in sweat and $$ by the person who created each one. If individuals cannot show respect - if they insist on disrupting, being rude - or in some cases, as referenced in the NYT article, posting threats and libel/slander - they should be stopped by any means necessary.

The blogs will be better for it, not worse.

[clarice]

Syl, what if we were alerted that the message to check in was sent?

[hit and run]

Syl
Good idea, but if JOM institutes something like that I'm gone.

Well - reading tea leaves - and that is all I've got - Tom doesn't want any added burden of administration on the site any more than any of us wants an added burden of registering etc.

Every once in a while I feel like saying, "I think Tom should ban those who engage endlessly with trolls" (Or maybe ban is too strong. Sent to time out?)

I think the threat of a ban/time out would do more to dissuade the regulars than any real ban would to the trolls.

That is, if "ignoring the trolls" is ultimately the best option........

[hit and run]

Good idea, but if JOM institutes something like that I'm gone.

Oh, and I also meant to say, "if Syl goes, I walk too!"

[JJ]

lol...first I see the word "senility" and then look left at the diva village ad! I feel old, oh so old...

[MikeS]

Freedom of speech is a good thing. Tolerance is a good thing. Varied opinions are a good thing.

What we’ve been witnessing for the past week or two has nothing to do with those good things. What we’ve seen is a kind of ‘denial of service attack’, where bandwidth is being absorbed by ‘Tokyo Rose’ style propaganda (without the music between slurs) and pastes of mindless baseless article devoid of fact by someone’s favorite journalists.

The trolls fail to realize that it is not their ideology that is offensive, it is their rude behavior.

[sylvia]

I don't understand how email registration would work. Real trolls can come up with fake email addys and IP's all day long. What's the benefit of that?

[sylvia]

Appalled Mod, I agree we need a term for that. I think throwing in the word 'Nazi' always gives a term some pizzazz. How about "blogzi" - blog nazi?

[Lady Sara]

Syl: I understand your problem. I check my email regularly, but I have two different spam blockers at work and sometimes a verification email ends up in one or the other. I usually empty the spam folders once a week or so and I've gotten in the habit of scrolling through the senders quickly just to be sure I'm not deleting something important. My daughter uses hotmail and she used to end up in the spam folder regularly until I listed her on my allowed list.

The group emails are optional as the email verification is usually enough. If someone changes emails and doesn't take the time to update their registration info, I suppose no one would know unless that person became a problem, in which case, the invalid email would become known and the owner could take action and put the commenter on hold.

Typepad switched to manual verification of all Trackbacks and it was a nightmare to keep up with and since they didn't tell blog owners that Trackbacks were no longer automatic, it was an even bigger nightmare. I found out about the change when someone emailed me and asked why their trackback never showed up. When I looked, I found dozens sitting there waiting for me to say approve or delete. I'll bet Tom has pages full right now.

[Great Banana]

What tends to drive me nuts about the trolls is the way they all try to write in a clever fashion. I have seen this from trolls on many conservative web-sites. the lefty trolls tend to use a kind of sophmoric writing style, attempting free-verse or something like it, and using puns and asides they find clever (and which I'm sure they picked up at various lefty sites where it is seen as a sign of cleverness). They try to speak in a kind of snide academic hipster free-verse lingo that only they and their cohorts understand (cleo is one of the worst offenders at this, but they all - Pete, Sferris, and others - use this technique). It's unclear to me if they do this on purpose to frustrate us, or if it is an indication of the muddledness of their minds.

The problem then ends up being that it is impossible to have a direct conversation with the troll b/c their writing is so convoluted and they never write in simple assertive phrases (and are very reluctant to ever clearly state what their actual viewpoint is).

so, when you attempt to engage a troll in good faith, in an attempt to have an actual policy discussion, you get frustrated very quickly b/c it is impossible to make heads or tails of their inside (their head or group) jokes and non-sequiturs. (of course, they claim we are just too stupid and ignorent to understand their highly intelligent prose).

Thus, they continually change the actual argument and goalposts, never address the issue first raised, then deny they said what they said and refuse to give you an answer to even the most honest/germane questions regarding their views.

How they then claim to be here to honestly engage is beyond me. How can someone come on, call names of everyone and everthing at this site, complain about every policy the present administration is persuing, but then refuse to offer an alternative and still claim to be here in good faith debate? It is mind boggling.

How can you claim to be trying to persuade other people when you purposefully write in a style meant to confuse?

I think anyone who cannot write in simple, clear, concise English sentances should be banned simply as not worth anyone's time to read (whether they are a troll or not). If we force the trolls to write coherently and actually engage in converstation rather in this weird orwellian hipster-lingo they have developed, it might force them to actually think about what they are saying.

[Lady Sara]

Sylvia: Registration with email verification requires you to fill out your registration form and then wait for a verification email to arrive in your inbox. That email will have a link to click that sends a message back to the blog that lets the blog owner know that the verification email was received at the email address used for registration, thereby verifying that it is a valid address and that you are the owner of that address. If you get a verification email from a blog that you know nothing about, you can click a different link and make sure your valid email isn't being hijacked by someone else.

[sferris]

Go ahead an activate the Typepad registration option. Based on persoanl experience the trolls are the least offensive posters on the this message-board.

[sylvia]

"thereby verifying that it is a valid address "

Yes, but as I understand it, a person with access to a large server, such as a university server or a company server, can make up all the fake email addys the want to, to go with that server. And with an IP scrambler, those can all be different too right?

[sylvia]

"with the troll b/c their writing is so convoluted and they never write in simple assertive phrases "

See! That's why I think it's canned. I agree it's all the same writing style and it doesn't make hardly any sense, and I see the same thing from blog to blog. It's like Chinese Fortune cookie writing style. I telling ya'll, this is probaly not a small operation. I have a hunch.

[Great Banana]

And, I'll admit, I am one of the worst offenders at getting sucked in to arguments with trolls. Unfortunatley, for the most part, I actually do want to have a dialogue with people of good will from opposing political ideologies.

Unfortunately, I get frustrated when I find that good will is lacking from the trolls and they appear to be here only to throw a wrench in discussion and call names.

[sferris]

When you activate the Typepad registration I will post a workaround to it for anyone who wants to participate in an open and civil discussion here.

[RT]

This is what happened when the Command Post activated the Typepad registration option.

[PeterUK]

MikeS,
"What we’ve seen is a kind of ‘denial of service attack’, where bandwidth is being absorbed by ‘Tokyo Rose’ style propaganda (without the music between slurs) and pastes of mindless baseless article devoid of fact by someone’s favorite journalists."

As is now spamming up the Goldwater thread.

[clarice]

Well, since the number of trolls is so small and his (their) ISPs are known, is it possible to somplain to them for redress? If so, perhaps we ought to try that before going to registration.

[Great Banana]

When you activate the Typepad registration I will post a workaround to it for anyone who wants to participate in an open and civil discussion here.

I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean that you will come back even though you are not wanted and basically trespass? And make it possible for others to do so?

If so, I will point out that I have been banned from many lefty sites DU, KOS, and others. I have never gone back once banned. And, I was far, far less annoying then you and your ilk here have been. For instance, I was banned at DU for asking why they loved Fidel Castro so much and asking them to explain why they though cubans risked their lives to escape the island if Cuba is such a great place to live. that, almost word for word, got me banned at the great and free speech mecca of Democratic Underground.

I was also banned at a conservative site for disagreeing with a moderator about illegal immigration. I respected that banning too - even though I could easily go back and post on that site as well.

I respected that they did not want any discussion that went against their ideology, and did not attempt to go back, even though I could easily have figured a way out to do so.

But, I suppose that is the differnece between right and left. The right respects property rights and expects people to have self-discipline and responsibility.

the left, not so much.

[MikeS]

...now spamming up the Goldwater thread

Yes, that is it exactly!

Many people ask me "Why would anyone write a computer virus?" I've never figured it out.

[Lady Sara]

Glenn Reynolds weighs in on this topic:

Sounds like I'm ahead of the curve already! Though that sounds more like a commenter code of conduct, really. I certainly don't believe that deleting nasty comments is an assault on free speech. Commenters can always get their own blog -- why should they have a "right" to have their comments appear on other people's blogs. The downside, though, is that once you start deleting comments people will tend to hold you more responsible for any comments that you don't delete. I certainly think that this prediction will be borne out: "What I foresee is endless argument about the meaning of the terms in the rules and how the rules apply. These discussions will be tedious and full of self-serving assertions."

[sylvia]

Actually sferris is not the worst troll I've seen. I've seen much worse on other sites, ones who threatened sexual and physical intimidation and the blog owner did nothing because he was too much of a damn chicken. And yes it was anonymous but it is still kind of scary. So Sferris could be worse I suppose. He just needs to stop the spamming.

[Specter]

I too get frustrated with the trolls, and probably fall into AM's fhool category - at least at times. For that I apologize. I have no problem with any type of registration. TM - are you thinking of only allowing registration from non-web-mail ISPs? That is one way to verify and control posters. If they use web-mail then you end up with multile email addys for the same person. Any way to enforce that or work with it?

[SlimGuy]

I would suggest required registration for posters only, not all those who read here in the background.

Real Names of posters are not necessary, just pick a screen name.

I post on over 30 blogs that require this and don't use the same screen name on them all to avoid search engine profiling.

Registration of post also eliminates a problem that sometimes occurs here of posting as someone else not you.

Also many places I post require that the 1st post after registration be moderated so that if a banned troll comes back via deceptive means their style make be picked up on before it gets into the mix.