The mean-spirited tone of online forums is getting more attention lately…
Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette? (David Pogue)
Instead of finding common ground, we’re finding new ways to spit on the other guy, to push them away. The Internet is making it easier to attack, not to embrace.
Beware the Online Collective (Jaron Lanier)
I remember the first time I noticed myself becoming mean when I left an anonymous comment on a blog. What is it about that situation that seems to bring out the worst in people so often?...Blogs often lead to such divisiveness that people end up caring more about clan membership than truth after a while.
The blog commentor’s gaze (Jason Kottke)
interacting via text strips out so much social context and “incidental information” that causes some people to display psychopathic behavior online and fail to develop an online moral sense.
Blogosphere 2.0: civility strikes back (profile of Mena Trott)
Trott has an interesting golden rule that she would like to see bloggers adopt. “If you aren’t going to say something directly to someone’s face, than don’t use online as an opportunity to say it,” she says. “It is this sense of bravery that people get when they are anonymous that gives the blogosphere a bad reputation.”
Pogue just published some reader responses to his lament about online etiquette. Some of the more interesting offerings…
+ “Why is everyone so angry?!! It appears there is so much suppressed anger these days. Nearly everyone is so much richer in material things, but so much poorer in a philosophical sense, i.e. living a meaningful life.”
+ “I’ve been reading Slashdot since 1996 and UseNet since 1982, and I can’t agree that there has been a decline in civility. The same low standards we see today have been more or less constant. We can and should bemoan those standards, but if there is a downward trend, I sure don’t see it.”
+ “The smaller [sites] have less jerks, and different sites attract different sorts of audiences.”
+ “Netiquette in public forums has a lot to do with the content around which the community is centered. Lifehacker’s posts set out to help folks, so in kind, our readers want to help us and each other back. Digg is a popularity contest of one-upmanship. Gawker is all about making fun of things, so its readers mock each other and it. Karma’s a boomerang.”
What do you think? Are there any solutions or is the negativity just something we’ve got to accept?
JF
on 22 Dec 06Anonymity brings out the worst in people. When you don’t have to take responsibility for something you don’t have worry about the consequences. The internet makes anonymity easy. End of story.
Charlie Park
on 22 Dec 06Yeah. It’s an anonymity thing.
Charlie Park
on 22 Dec 06And solutions? Some sort of real-name-requirement would be a good start. Realistic? Doubtful. But it would be good.
Hunter
on 22 Dec 06Very interesting post. I sometimes try to help people when there is a topic that I think I know something about.
I have learned that no good deed goes unpunished – you’d be amazed at how intensely you can be flamed just for suggesting a couple of options to fix someone’s problem.
Jason’s completely right about the cause and effect… Now, does that mean there would be a market for forums or other communities where you have to prove your identity publicly before you can join?
Warren
on 22 Dec 06Not making inflammatory comments that provoke kneejerk responses would help.
Examples: most stuff by Dave Winer; posts on this blog that state controversial, unpopular ideas as if they were obvious; hypocrisy and other stupid stuff (e.g., saying you only hire good writers in a post that has quite a few grammatical/spelling/punctuation errors); citing the Cluetrain Manifesto, ever; using buzzwords and pointless fluff language; acting as if putting half of your post in bold makes it easier to read and understand. All of these things make me want to say mean things I wouldn’t say face to face.
Henrik Lied
on 22 Dec 06I feel it myself – the bitterness. I’m a pretty active user on a Norwegian web development forum, and the community is pretty welded together. “The Brady Bunch” of the forum knows each other pretty well, and the level of knowledge is really high, at least in a national context. You’ll never find another Norwegian community where each and every participant have read the current and forthcoming HTML/CSS-specification several times.
So, what’s my point? The point is that people that are new to forums ask very generic questions. “How do I center my DIV?” and such questions. These questions have been answered a dozen times before, and if that’s not enough we as the core of the community has written a dead-long post that explains every single question a dummie needs to know about starting in the game. It’s never read, even though it’s highlighted in a big, red box, labeled “NEWBIE? READ THESE ANSWERS BEFORE POSTING!”.
So in conclusion, I believe that the reason for that “the experts” are getting a bit bitter is that people aren’t patient enough. Newbies wants tailor-made answers for their very, very generic questions. If newbies would just take the time to search around a bit, everyone would be happier.
Icelander
on 22 Dec 06The problem is that anonymity makes people behave like jerks, and there are so many jerks that a site owner can’t manage them all. It becomes a limitation of human time.
So we just have to do whenever human time has become a limitation in the past: Make tools to ease processing or automate the process entirely.
Slashdot’s karma is a good example. If you read at +4 or +5, it’s generally a pleasant conversation. People with low karma get rated lower, and don’t show up. People who aren’t jerks are visible.
However, it’s not perfect. I think a good addition would include things like parsing text for profanity or attempted use of profanity, which would lower your karma more than just using profanity, proper grammar and spelling, 1337-speak, capitalization, repeated characters and length of posts.
Factoring these things would, at the very least, make trolls work harder to ensure their diatribes are intelligible.
Beyond that, we have to look to the communities to self-police. Ignore functionality would be a good addition. In meatspace you ignore or avoid people you don’t like based on past interaction. Adding this to forums would make people be able to avoid jerks. And you could also factor in the number of people who are ignoring someone into their karma score, and you could set a base karma level in your preferences so that trolls and jerks don’t even show up.
Alex Moreno
on 22 Dec 06I think the LifeHacker comment is a good hint. If your page provides a good service and/or has friendly, polite content, chances are your reader’s comments will follow suit.
Also, some blogs’ posts are not rude nor polite, they are just neutral, but somehow attack one side of a long-standing discussion and ask the readers to defend themselves. E.g. (off the top of my head) ”... For all these reasons, I think the PS3 will be Sony’s last videogame console. What do you think?”
So, I would put the blame on the writers, too.
On that note, even though I don’t read many blogs, my favourite blog writers (you guys and 456bereastreet.com) usually have smart comments posted to them.
Keith
on 22 Dec 06This kind of thing used to really bother me and it’s certainly not new or any worse than it’s always been as far as I can tell.
I’ve learned to ignore it for the most part. Some people are just pissed off, you know? The Web is a big place and it takes all kinds and offers them up a way to speak their mind with relatively no consequence.
Some people see that as a way to unleash the worst in themselves. I think this is something we’ve got to accept if you want to keep comments. If really bothers you you can always unplug, turn off, etc. My advice to people would be to accept and ignore. For every off-topic asshole there’s a nice person or two who have something worth listening too.
Phil
on 22 Dec 06It’s the same reason there is more road rage then supermarket rage. You are anonymous in a car, and don’t have to deal with real people and their emotions.
It’s also the “type” of people. Tech forums filled with alpha geek males who have egos to protect and bruise. So there are a lot of flames where one guy wants to prove he is smarter, while simultaneously belittling someone else. But if you go read a predominately female forum, it’s a lot more civil, and you’ll get 10 pages of people just commenting on how cute someone’s baby is, with only the rare occasional random flame war about something, which ends up getting much more emotional.
Josh Seiden
on 22 Dec 06It’s hard to have empathy for another human when his or her presence is difficult to distinguish from machine UI. We look at text on the screen. Do we ask, “who’s talking”, or “is this a person or a machine?”
No—UIs GUIs don’t encourage this.
Not to pick on Henrik-I have often felt exactly what he reports-but his comment shows no empathy for the newbie. Newbies don’t know where to look. That’s one of the frequent characteristics of newbies.
What can we do as UI designers to make the human more manifest in our designs?
Tony
on 22 Dec 06Yahoo’s is tackling this very issue with their message boards linked to news stories. A few days ago, they took away the message boards for revamping.
http://news.yahoo.com/page/messageboards
When they were up, you would see the boards littered with all sorts of colorful characters, but it got old with the recurring themes like “Libs vs Cons”. The anonymity does bring out some comedic brilliance and it was a joy skimming the Yahoo boards for some laughs.
Anonymous
on 22 Dec 06New research in social psychology has shown that anonymity and deindividuation are not such horrible things after all and serve specific cognitive functions. Deinviduation allows people to act outside the norms that typically bind their behavior. It also lets people release some of the pressure and “weight” associated with maintaining their personal identities. Having to act within the boundaries of “yourself” all the time is pretty hard business. How many of you have not enjoyed the thrill of a masked ball, body painting at a football game, or any other liberating “anonymous” activity.
CJ Curtis
on 22 Dec 06I don’t mean to belittle any ideas that people might suggest for FIXING the nastiness…
(I’m trying to be nice)
But nothing’s really broken here.
I think it definitely has to do with anonymity online, but I don’t think it’s just because we have free license to be a**holes therefore we are. Online is really the only place many of us go to learn about (and confront) competing ideas. But in a virtually consequence-free environment, it’s very easy to let yourself get out of control.
Sticks and stones, I say. You don’t like what someone has to say, you have two choices….respond or ignore. But responding is more fun.
brad
on 22 Dec 06I don’t think it’s just an issue of anonymity. I participated in a few Usenet newsgroups during the late 80s to early 90s and there was a lot of rudeness and anger then, even though most people were not anonymous. I agree with Josh above who says “It’s hard to have empathy for another human when his or her presence is difficult to distinguish from machine UI.” I think that’s part of it. It’s also because nuances of face-to-face conversation don’t carry into this electronic medium very well (the reason why emoticons were invented) and also because people tend to write and read comments quickly online, dashing off their thoughts instead of taking hours or days to fine-tune what they really mean to say. And for whatever reason, comments and newsgroups seem to invite people to pontificate on subjects they don’t really know anything about (I’m guilty of that myself), with the result that they get shot down by experts.
Dr. Pete
on 22 Dec 06I agree that this about more than just anonymity. The internet allows us to find and associate with people who think exactly like us (or seem to) and that lets us hide in very narrow realities. I like to think of myself as a smart, thoughtful person, but I found I had to get off of a number of blogs (political blogs in particular), because my comments were becoming more and more vapid and poorly written, the intellectual equivalent of going “Whoo! Yeah!”.
On the other hand, I think many of us are getting that this kind of narrow association isn’t good for us. I really made a point this year, personally, to comment less on blogs but, when I did, put time and thought into it. I made the same recommitment on my own blog; not to just spit out knee-jerk reactions, but to actually think through something and try to have something unique to say about it.
Matt Grommes
on 22 Dec 06Honestly, saying “End of story” after your opinion, in the first comment on a post, brings out the worst in me. Why bother posting this in the first place if one of the other 37S’ers is going to say “End of story” in the first comment?
But in response to the post, one of the most helpful things in keeping this kind of nonsense to a minimum is strict adherence to the rules. It’s work to keep up on what’s being posted but if you remove mean or unhelpful comments and ban people, they’ll learn. People are always afraid of being labeled “censors” for stopping rude behavior but if you don’t keep the idiots in line, the people with something helpful to say will leave. Kathy Sierra had a post about this type of thing the other day on Creating Passionate Users.
James
on 22 Dec 06I think Penny Arcade has the answers:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
James
on 22 Dec 06“The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”
Charles Martin
on 22 Dec 06In a recent LifeHacker discussion, the responses got rather heated and even insulting when the subject was Ask the Readers: Politely refuse Holiday Cards?. I was personally attacked for my view of the whole situation and at least one user was banned for the comments made. There was a lot of hate over the idea that someone would prefer to not receive cards from another person.
I think people are getting more opinionated every day and it’s easier to find a subject in which you will manage to tick off many readers. Add to that the continued growth of users each day and you’re bound to find someone who will choose to be offended by anything you spout… I may have done so with my response here. :)
Patrick
on 22 Dec 06I can’t say I was ever “rude” per say but their was I time in the late 90’s when I reacted strongly on a local mail list to a person I would have never reacted that way to in person. It’s something I regret to this day. The Internet and leveraging the power of blogging can have a very positive impact on businesses and individuals. People also need to remember that their comments can archived for a very long time and searched. One thing I try to do is NOT be anonymous. This forces me to be on my best behavior by reminding me to not post anything I would regret later plus I have the added benefit of providing good linkage to my own site(s).
Jim Gaynor
on 22 Dec 06Well, I’d first like to mention the old “those who do not know history” saw. You’re welcome to dig through old Usenet archives to see exactly the sort of incivility that people are bemoaning now in the blogging world. The effect is most pronounced in the early 90s, in those few years between the popularization of the Internet and the rise of the Web (the Web and web forums effectively killing Usenet).
Anonymity breed contempt – and the aforementioned GIFW Theory expresses that well.
So does perceived distance. I well remember the shocked and frightened face I found when I walked across a computer lab to tap upon the shoulder of someone who had been flaming me in a newgroup.
And lastly, so does repetition. Conversations come and go in cycles. From mailing lists to usenet to web forums to blogs, slashdot, digg, boingbing, whatever. The person who is posting has never seen it before – but I, dino that I am, have seen it many times before. And it’s hard, sometimes, not to be the cynical old fart who just yells at the “kids” to “get off my lawn”.
Captain Anonymity
on 22 Dec 06Screw all ya’ll.
Matthew Rigdon
on 22 Dec 06I think that the more we get out there and read more from other people, we realize how stupid those people are ;) I use the Scott Adam’s definition of stupid which is “anybody who doesn’t agree with me”.
Let’s face it, most people learned to shut up and get along or change their beliefs because up until about forty or fifty years ago, someone would plant a religious symbol on your lawn and burn it, or hang you from a tree, or just beat the crap out of you for not “being part of the community”.
I grew up in Texas, even in small towns, it’s bad. Like I tell my friends here in California, people in small town Texas are really friendly to you as long as you keep moving. If you move in, they start talking behind your back, pull stupid little tricks like slashing tires, breaking windows, etc, to make you unwelcome if you don’t fit the mold.
It’s just easier to be mean and nasty on the Internet. they arrest your for throwing sticks and stones, but not for words (yet).
Dennis Eusebio
on 22 Dec 06Its funny when you compare sites that use your real name and ones that let you use aliases. For instance, Facebook doesn’t have as much of a problem with random angry comments because people are actually associated with their real names.
We’re struggling with the same issues while we build and release our first project. We have a anonymous account as a default but to gain access to certain features of the site, you have to associate your name with the account and in turn, hopefully this will help avoid angry stupid posts.
But all in all, there’s just some people who are total asses in this world and no amount of training or restrictions will hold them back.
Kevin Hale
on 22 Dec 06We don’t really talk about it because it sort of reduces the magic of it but we started prepping our comment box with the message : “Everyone needs a hug.” Here’s some more about it.
http://www.etre.com/blog/2006/04/somebody_needs_a_hug/
It serves three purposes:
1) It shows people that we’re a little different from other blogs and helps put a humanizing touch to our community. It changes the spirit and tone of the dialogs we appreciate without having to be explicit with rules.
2) Calms them down a little because there’s a pause in the flow. You have to read it, process it, erase it and hopefully think before they write.
3) Leads to people just publishing that comment whenever things seem to be getting out of hand. It’s amazing to watch in our comments how this one statement helps police the entire community.
Anyway, it works great for us.
Eddie
on 22 Dec 06Henrik Lied-
Right- like josh mentioned, I understand your pain. But it’s a couple issues- one:
Most every “please read this first!” thread always just says “search the forums before posting…”
Most newbies may not have the right keywords to search, or (more commonly) they get search results back with poor subject headers (“My X doesn’t work! -Please help!”) – it’s all a major exercise in frustration for the newbies too.
So, I think before we complain that the same basic questions are answered, we should look at how successful we let the newbies be.. how do we help them?
Donald Duck
on 22 Dec 06I never post comments anonymously. If we would all use our real names, things would be more civil.
Ben Kittrell
on 22 Dec 06One forum that I always find is very civil and friendly is Rails Forum. Giving developers Rails is kind of like putting lithium in the water supply.
Roland
on 22 Dec 06I believe it boils down to two things:
1) Lack of empathy 2) Lack of fear.
1) People are more isolated these days, making it more difficult for them to empathize with the plight of others. The internet heightens and exaggerates this isolation; it’s easier to be hurtful to others when you don’t have to see the consequences of being hurtful, i.e. the pained expression on the other person’s face, etc.
2) I may sound like a barbarian for saying this but I believe that many of the “filters” we use in face-to-face communications exist due to our knowledge that any interaction with another human being can possibly end in violence. With the internet, this no longer holds. We don’t have to deal with the possibility of being punched in the nose for being obnoxious.
In short, we would NEVER be as rude to people in face-to-face communications as we are on the internet because we would have to deal with look of emtional anguish on our victim’s face…or possibly end up eating a right cross.
Lee
on 22 Dec 06I’m not sure why everyone gets so pissy on blogs. BUT, if you want to do your friends and everyone a favor, just go complain here!
www.iLoveToComplain.com
Mark Gallagher
on 22 Dec 06It’s the law of large numbers. As you attract a big audience to your blog, the 5% of the population that are jerks – they find your blog, and unfortunatly, they tend to be frequent participants.
For some blogs, you can require registration – for example an exclusive club of owners of vintage Corvette cars.
But that won’t work for SvN because about 15% of your audience is brilliant, and many from this group post from work using a first name. You may lose them if you require registration. There is some risk to employees at tech or design companies posting to forums like this (violate code of conduct policies) using real names and email.
So you just live with the jerks.
My two cents.
Joe Grossberg
on 22 Dec 06IMHO, it’s not anonymity.
I always use my real name (and it’s my email and my URL too), and I still find myself saying things way more confrontational and obnoxious than I would face-to-face.
Over time, I’ve done it less often (and way less often since I’ve avoided political blogs), but it takes a conscious effort.
“Anonymity” is the simplest credible answer, but not the right one.
I like Roland’s first idea.
There’s something very easy about converting mean thoughts to comments on a screen, compared to vocalizing those words to another living, breathing person.
Jeroen
on 22 Dec 06I’m studying this right now and something also interesting is the big difference between men and woman. Women are far more relationally oriented than guys (me). And a result of that is often that they feel forums are hostile because of us guys being very to-the-point.
Just a thought.
Jeroen
on 22 Dec 06Just as a response to Joe above.
I always use my real name (and it’s my email and my URL too), and I still find myself saying things way more confrontational and obnoxious than I would face-to-face.
I think that anonymity is not only about identity but just as you say, when the person is face to face it’s more close to home. And the results of that comment is something we can choose to not deal with. I believe that is anonymity.
Dan Boland
on 22 Dec 06It’s definitely a complex issue with many factors. Anonymity is the obvious scapegoat, but I would argue that two other factors contribute nearly as much to the rampant negativity:
1) Passive aggression. There really is no more effective outlet for the passive aggressive person than posting snark to a blog or forum. And this factor isn’t necessarily linked to anonymity – I’m sure plenty of us have said things in an e-mail that we wouldn’t have said face-to-face.
2) Simple misunderstanding. How many times have you read something and interpreted it in an entirely different way than had you heard the same thing spoken to you? I think that happens a lot on the web. Regular readers of SvN feel this every time someone accuses the 37s of arrogance.
JF
on 22 Dec 06Online is really the only place many of us go to learn about (and confront) competing ideas. But in a virtually consequence-free environment, it’s very easy to let yourself get out of control.
I think that is such an important and insightful point.
Chris
on 22 Dec 06I always use my real name (and it’s my email and my URL too), and I still find myself saying things way more confrontational and obnoxious than I would face-to-face.
I don’t think a name dissolves anonymity. You still don’t have a voice or a face or body language. You’re still anonymous.
Jens
on 22 Dec 06The Jason Kottke post you linked to very aptly discusses some of these behaviors as related to psychopathy. I wrote about this issue a while ago, making the claim that even people who in real life are “sane” may adopt online personas that, considered by themselves, are sociopathic:
http://community.livejournal.com/blog_sociology/99118.html
(Of course anonymity and the lack of external social cues are also reasons for bad behavior online; but they’re not sufficient reasons, since most people behave fairly well.)
Alex Bunardzic
on 22 Dec 06Part of the problem is that we (most of the English-speaking online community) live in a culture that vehemently frowns upon any opinions. Having opinions is definitely something that is not desirable in our civilization.
This trend is becoming more articulate every year. I see that manifested in my kids. They always scold me for being opinionated (“Dad, please relax, no one asked you for your opinion!”;) They learn that in school and out in the street. No one likes opinionated person, and there’s even an adage that states:
“Opinions are like assholes—everyone’s got one.”
And that’s why people get easily riled when someone expresses an opinion online. Everyone all of a sudden feels entitled to teach that m**rfucker a lesson.
I personally prefer opinionated people (that’s probably the reason I like Ruby and Rails!) Same as hiding one’s emotions, hiding one’s opinions results in a vast see of mediocre, bland, boring people.
But hey, plays very nicely into the nanny state agenda. You have no opinions on how’s the government doing? Great, you’ll be much easier to manipulate!
Harry
on 22 Dec 06I think it’s two things: character and miscommunication.
1. Character is who you are when no one’s looking and you don’t get the credit. What you do publicly means nothing.
2. Read Egocentrism Over E-mail. Summary: communicators believe they’re communicating correctly 78% of the time. Receivers believe they’re interpreting correctly 90% of the time. Receivers actually interpret the message correctly 56% of the time.
Miscommunication combined with low character (or even immaturity) breeds flame war.
JF
on 22 Dec 06Character is who you are when no one’s looking and you don’t get the credit.
I like that definition. That’s a nice way to put it.
Grendly
on 22 Dec 06The power of anonymity: (short vid promise) the word stranger, or sniper, or terrorist, or internet dude they are all distancing us from the humanity on the other side of the looking glass.
Back to my Coca Cola now, you know coke the company that killed those strikers in the country oh you know the place, who cares anyway.
Grendly
on 22 Dec 06sorry link here http://www.gotuit.com/player/index.html?c=SM_People&t=4698&s=42659
Anonymous Coward
on 22 Dec 06Character is who you are when no one’s looking and you don’t get the credit.
Interesting that you post this without the reference, basically taking the credit for someone else’s theories (http://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-When-Ones-Looking/dp/0877849455). But I guess that’s just a reflection of your character?
scott
on 22 Dec 06it’s not just anonymity. and since the modicum of anonymity provided by a web forum can be (and has been) stripped with a little time and effort, it’s hardly a defense. and it’s one of those defenses only ever attributed to the source by the recipient.
there’s people who go online just to stir up shit. there’s always been people like that and always will be. either you want to get into a flame war and you engage them, or you don’t and you ignore them. this isn’t news.
the issue i’ve encountered more often, and that i’m more inclined to consider a problem, is misinterpretation of intent.
the most common example is sarcasm. but all the subtleties of body language, tone, and diction are all lost in text. and most people aren’t skilled enough writers to convey such things via prose (uh, myself included), and even those who are don’t, won’t, or can’t take the time to do so.
wired.com had an article on this a while back, but i’ll be damned if i can find it. the key point of advice given was to assume the person writing has the best intentions (instead of assuming he/she is somehow against you, which seems to be the prevalent attitude on the interwebs).
Jeroen
on 22 Dec 06Interesting that you post this without the reference, basically taking the credit for someone else’s theories (http://www.amazon.com/Who-Are-When-Ones-Looking/dp/0877849455). But I guess that’s just a reflection of your character?
It’s important to be aware of stuff like that, and i think its good you comment about it. But I have the read the same thing said in different ways, many times. So i dont think he meant to take credit, cause alot of people say it.
Sarcasm in a Can
on 22 Dec 06Maybe it’s actually because YOU ALL SUCK.
The Colonel
on 23 Dec 06Of course anonymity is a major contributor to the whole thing (look who’s talking) but if people were happy with themselves, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t go around uselessly flaming complete strangers on various blogs around the Interweb.
Truth is, people say mean things about other people because it makes them feel better about themselves.
Hell, I know that’s why I do it. Didn’t your parents ever teach you anything about bullies? Although, I’d like to think that we bully the bullies, but perhaps that’s aiming a little too high.
I guess we’ll know when the White House starts insisting that we censor our articles. I doubt that’ll ever happen.
Harry
on 23 Dec 06Okay, three things: character, miscommunication, and presumption.
I wasn’t aware of Bill Hybels’ book but you assumed that I was. What’s more, you didn’t contact me first to find out if I was aware of the book.
The statement about character is more of a truism than a theory one can claim credit for. When I was in college we were actually instructed to strive for “integrity of character,” which speaks of making sure every part of your life says the same thing about who you are. The sentiment is the same as the statement I made.
Considering you don’t know me and didn’t come to me first to find out what I know, I am assuming that you meant to insult me in a public place with your comment. If that’s true, I’d like an apology.
Ricky
on 23 Dec 06It’s just like driving a car, it has a dehumanizing effect. You can cut the other person off, not let someone in, until you look them in the face. There’s something about looking people in the face which changes the way we interact. I’m sure someone’s probably written a doctoral thesis on this by now :)
pwb
on 23 Dec 06Anonymity brings out the truth!!
Henrik Lied
on 23 Dec 06Eddie, Josh: I completely understand why you think there’s a lack of empathy. The main reason is because there is, of course. But you have to understand (and I think you do), that when you’ve gone through the same thing for four or five years, you just grow tired.
Happy holidays, all. :-)
Daniel Lynch
on 23 Dec 06Caused by double standards and lack of communication. Fixed by removing double standards and communicating.
Tom
on 23 Dec 06If the site or community is nice then you’ll see nice comments, you’ll struggle to see people on Flickr being real jackasses, of course you get some losers but I’ve never seen a really horrible thread.
Erik
on 23 Dec 06I think the level of vitriol and ad hominem attacks really does vary by site, as the reader on Pogue’s site pointed out. The audience, the writers, and the filtering system (if any) make a big difference.
Tom’s point about flickr is right on the money, in my experience. Because everyone in flickr is putting their own content up for review, everyone seems to have a vested interest in keeping the critiques helpful and friendly. There’s no karma system in flickr, but the built-in imperative for cooperation works as a filter.
I don’t bother reading the comments on C|Net, because they almost always wind up being a race to the bottom. I’m not sure why that is, but it may be because of the reading audience, which is likely mostly young males.
Slashdot is wild and wooly. It is truly a mixture of the sublime and the rediculous. What makes it work is the moderation system. Without it, I’m convinced Slashdot would not have survived this long. It gives community members a vested interest in convincing others through facts and persuasion, rather than merely ranting and raving. It even encourages humor, which is an excellent means of dousing flame wars.
I’ve noticed that there are some phrases and terms that will instantly provoke ire. Usually they do so by pushing the discussion to a binary dialogue. The options become all or nothing, yes or no, good or bad. Nuance and subtlety, complexity and shades of interpretation are thrown out the window.
This is an excellent topic, and I’ve enjoyed reading this thread. I think it’s a testament to the SvN team and the readership they’ve attracted that the discussion is of such high caliber.
Reid Young
on 23 Dec 06I run a gaming community online, and I’ve found that the only way to keep things civil is to lead by example. Whenever I feel tempted to make a biting or sarcastic remark, I try to hold off and work on something else.
When someone else says something ugly, I call them out on it. I try not to get mad at them in return, but instead simply confront them with their own words. Usually all it takes is a direct quote and “Why did you say that?”. They usually won’t respond, but other people seem to notice and think more carefully about the things that they say.
Perhaps it’s just avoiding confrontation, but I like to think that people are actually thinking more about their behavior and changing their attitudes.
Giles Bowkett
on 23 Dec 06It’s the same thing as road rage. Road rage happens because all the subconscious communication that happens between humans disappears when you’re driving. Consequently anybody who can’t see what you obviously intend to do next must be some kind of idiot. In human-to-human interaction, that would make sense, because of all the redundant subconscious communication in body language, tone of voice, etc. In communication between humans who are all inside different cars, none of that happens, and everyone becomes effectively autistic to each other, yet perfectly normal within their own cars, and this is a recipe for frustration. The Internet has the same problem, in that the absence of redundant subconscious communication creates multiple interpretations of statements whose sole correct interpretations are considered obvious the people making the statements in the first place.
It’s a very old problem, and Clay Shirky’s done a bunch of research on it, including finding a few solutions:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_user.html
GeeIwonder
on 24 Dec 06I wonder if it occurs to anyone else that frequent using jargon and terms like “blogosphere” and “netiquette” is one of the reasons the community we’re talking about gets a bad reputation, never mind the prevalence of adversarial individuals.
On the other hand, it’s a lot of fun to opine and disagree with people, especially if it’s impossible or unlikely that anyone will call you to account. And the prevalence of consensus-based references like Wikipedia (or even Google) hardly helps matters.
MT Heart
on 24 Dec 06Anonymity is a shield to hide behind when you’re angry. It allows you to vent without consequences. It’s an outlet for the days’ or weeks’ or years’ events that piss you off and you feel powerless do something about it. It’s a conduit for an attitude that lurks below the surface to inexplicably break free.
You’re upset because the towers came down and don’t think enough is being done about it. Lied to or just misinformation? From where exactly? Global warming – truth or fiction? Maybe 6B people breathe out more CO2 24/7 than SUVs – I don’t know. Gas prices going up. Why is it so friggin’ hard to open the packaging on batteries? Or CD’s? Or the stupid bag inside the box of organic cereal? Gay marriage – gimme a break. Why the hell don’t people take responsibility for their actions? Hillary instead of Dubya? Yikes! Miss Nevada – what a moron. (But the pics are kinda cool). Hypercrit! Trump, O’Donnell, O’Reilly, Letterman, left bias drive by media, right bias talk radio. Who should I believe?
There, I feel better now. Flame on!
Obvious Troll
on 24 Dec 06Warren said: Not making inflammatory comments that provoke kneejerk responses would help.
I’m sorry, but that’s an ill-considered thing to say. Effectively, you want people to censor themselves out of a fear of disagreement.
I’ve been on the internet in one form or another for a quarter of a century and if it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you can’t know what Joe Random Human is going to consider “inflammatory”.
The truth is that there has never been civility on the net as a whole. Small, relatively private areas will tend to be more polite because they also tend to be more homogeneous. As a website or news group or mailing list becomes popular and the diversity of opinion grows, so does controversy. Anonymity itself has nothing to do with it; the lack of F2F is important, but not anonymity.
But what is more insidious than simple rudeness is the fragmentation of the net into various camps. Back when usenet was sorted by technical interest that was fine. Now that the blogosphere is divided into political camps that do not interact except to attack each other – that is not fine. That is creating multiple mutually exclusive views of reality, drifting apart from each other as their respective echo chambers reinforce their preferred views and denigrate all who disagree.
This, and not any lack of civility, is the true problem of the internet – it is effectively sorting people into hostile political camps, each believing that the other is truly evil and will stop at nothing to gain power – and therefore must be stopped at any cost.
GeeIwonder
on 24 Dec 06Wow. ObviousTroll has been on the internet for one quarter of a century. Not BBS’s or Usenet or even Arpanet, mind you, but the internet. Whatever the heck that means. Thanks for illustrating my previous post with a clear and concise example. And good on you.
Obvious Troll
on 24 Dec 06Geelwonder: Whatever the heck that means. Thanks for illustrating my previous post with a clear and concise example. And good on you.
Giving you the opportunity to vent your hostility while failing to address the content of my post proves your point? And here I thought it proved mine.
By the way, you might want to look up the meaning of the phrase “one form or another” along with the original definition of the term “internet” – your failure to understand terms of art is simply an opportunity to educate yourself not mock those of us who do.
GeeIWonder
on 24 Dec 06The original use of the term ‘internet’, as I far as I can recollect referred to about 20 hosts on Arpanet. In 1981, with roughly 200 hosts, they were beginning talks to unite NSF’s CSNET with Arpanet. DNS and TCP/IP were still about two years away.
But if you’re going to use the term ‘one form or another’ then sure, being on a micro computer, a power or phone grid, or heck even a trade route could I suppose qualify.
Venice has been on the internet (in one form or another) for ~700 years!
Su
on 24 Dec 06Second/third/whatever to the “this is not news” response. This happened on Usenet and mailing lists when that’s all there was, and on BBS and chat systems before there was anything like easy-ish access to those. This idea that it’s a problem now just smells like confirmation bias. Put it next to what the numbers have looked like recently for growth of internet use and the publishing on thereof. Anyone still surprised isn’t paying much attention.
Harry
on 24 Dec 06Perhaps the point is that this is still making the news.
Su
on 24 Dec 06Really? I have the entirely opposite impression: It’s all a bit like the complaint that everybody in New York is rude. (Which they’re not, anyway, though they are often busy and intolerant of having their time wasted.)
Obvious Troll
on 24 Dec 06Su,
You’re right – but it’s the outliers that people remember. One rude person is all it takes to poison a thread; which means there are few threads that are completely civil.
Obvious Troll
on 24 Dec 06GeelWonder,
Yeah, thanks for setting the record straight. I really have been on the internet for a quarter century. I feel old.
Anonymous Coward
on 25 Dec 06Internet publishers have been spoiled.
The problem addressed in this post has nothing to do with the education system or the degradation of morals in our society or even anonymity in my opinion. The problem lies with internet publishers.
Basically publishers have been spoiled rotten.
Blogs: By enabling comments on your blog you are giving the general public admin privileges to your site. Anyone can add to the content on your site. You have taken on a very big responsibility. If you don’t moderate your comments you have basically said that anything goes. Your site can suddenly contain any content that the public can post.
Once you get pages of spam you will hopefully react and use the basic spam prevention techniques available. Then when the discussions that you had hoped for turn to trolling you’ll start blocking people.
New ways of spamming and more users being comfortable posting garbage on any site as time goes by will make irresponsible blogging with comments a very difficult thing in the near future.
Again, the problem here is not with the commenters. The problem is with publishers’ irresponsibility. You should obviously NOT NOT NOT be giving the entire public admin privileges to your website! At least not without moderation! Really, if you think about unmoderated write access to your site and that anyone can publish content there, it is obviously ridiculous. Its your site and you are responsible for its content. Even if you say that anyone in the world can add to the comments. You are the publisher.
Blogging software makes it easy to overlook this. And it is partly the fault of that software that anyone would complain about the garbage being posted on a bloger’s site. But its stupid. And anyone who is interested in maintaining a decent bucket of resources via http should damned well know that you cant be giving out admin privileges to any idiot who happens to come around! You are responsible for your website! If you want more content there than you can produce, you better take some responsibility!
god damned it! Publishers have lost there sense of responsibility! This is not a 15 year old problem because there are too many of them who dont know how to spell! The problem is that anyone who knows enough to whip out a website might think the entire internet is full of middle aged intelligent and respectful citizens… If you give public access to your website your gunna find out fast that its WRONG WRONG WRONG to think that!
Ok bloggers. Take responsibility for the content that you give to the world. You want to give the general public access to your site? Great if you do but take responsibility. YOU are the publisher and all the commenters that read the pervious comments will get the hint. Show the world that you care about what you publish! YOU ARE THE PUBLISHER AND YOU HAVE GIVEN THE WORLD ADMIN ACCESS TO YOUR WEB SITE’S CONTENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Forums (and any other app that relies on users input):
If there is a problem in a forum you can NOT blame the users. Same as in blogs. You are responsible. So forget about your whining that the posters are bums and illiterate.
Forums should have a drop dead simple way for any admin OR user to say “hey check the search. This has been discussed before.” And offer an input field suggesting some search terms to get the new forum user to their answer. This is so simple to implement! I dont understand why nobody writting forum software hasn’t put it in a system yet. This is a no brainer! There should be a simple way to tell a user that their question has been answered on this site already! This is NOT a problem with users! This is a problem with the way we are making software!
Anyway forget about all of what Ive said. Just remember this:
When you put something online, YOU are responsible for the content it produces. YOU! When your comments turn to shit, dont blame a 15 year old! When your forum is full of misinformation, Its YOUR fault until you turn it around. When you make a site like dig you better be prepared to provide the “super admin” knowledge you have about users and how to guide them or it’s all gunna turn into an irresponsible pile of steaming internet SHIT.
The internet is becoming what we all hoped it would. EVERYBODY is involved. So figure out how to manage it!
Give the world a site and they can take it or leave it. Give the world an app and you’ve got the world (its a messy place unless you are careful).
Goddamned it! Be responsible publishers!!!!!!!!
Darrel
on 26 Dec 06This question could be worded so many ways.
I’m not sure people are any more/less rude online than they are offline. It’s just that online, it’s all archived and everyone’s voice is given an equal weight.
That and online, there’s a LOT of conversations going on. Often, what is read as ‘being rude’ is really just a person being blunt/succint or even just a bit sarcastic/tounge-in-cheek.
Doug Karr
on 29 Dec 06I agree! I started to see the same thing a while ago and it motivated me to tag these folks with a title… the S.N.O.B.
Don’t be a S.N.O.B.
This discussion is closed.