Malwebolence

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fluffmonster
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Malwebolence

Post by fluffmonster »

This seemed quite interesting given our recent clashes over bullies and trolling. I offer it without comment or implication.

NYT Sunday Magazine Preview: Malwebolence
By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
Inside the world of online trolls, who use the Internet to harass, humiliate and torment strangers.
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Vendrin
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Post by Vendrin »

My favorite quote in the article from the author.
All vigorous debates shade into trolling at the perimeter; it is next to impossible to excise the trolling without snuffing out the debate.
-Vendrin
<fluff> vendrin is like a drug
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Nalo Jade
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Post by Nalo Jade »

Good article, that Poole fella, I think I may know him...
"The reasonable man adapts to fit the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to suit him. Therefore all progress is achieved by the unreasonable." - unknown

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Swift
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Post by Swift »

I actually like this part of the article:
Ultimately, as Fortuny suggests, trolling will stop only when its audience stops taking trolls seriously. “People know to be deeply skeptical of what they read on the front of a supermarket tabloid,” says Dan Gillmor, who directs the Center for Citizen Media. “It should be even more so with anonymous comments. They shouldn’t start off with a credibility rating of, say, 0. It should be more like negative-30.”
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White Warlock
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Post by White Warlock »

trolling will stop only when its audience stops taking trolls seriously
There is no evidence to support this notion. In fact, since trolling began from nothing, it could very well continue with nothing. Trolls do not continue merely because they are 'occasionally' taken seriously. They continue because they get a kick out of it. A greater kick, possibly, when their intended target(s) respond in defense or hostility, but a reaction is not a prerequisite, it is a result of.
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Swift
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Post by Swift »

White Warlock wrote:In fact, since trolling began from nothing, it could very well continue with nothing.
Trolling has been going on for hundreds of years, long before the internet came around and gave a more anonymous outlet for it, it was simply a different form. All trolling starts with something, even if it is just the knowledge that making a thread about <x> will anger people. Look at every example give in the article, every single one was preceded by an event that trolls latched onto. I honestly cannot understand how you can believe what you said.
White Warlock wrote:A greater kick, possibly, when their intended target(s) respond in defense or hostility, but a reaction is not a prerequisite, it is a result of.
I completely disagree. Trolling is incredibly futile when no one acknowledges the posts. As someone in the article said, they do it for the lulz. If lulz aren't had, they end up moving on to find it elsewhere. Whether taken seriously or not, trolls aim to get a certain reaction from whatever they do. It is just like any competitive sport. Don't show your opponent you are hurting, otherwise they will take advantage of that. Don't show a troll your outrage, or your sadness, or your disappointment. Don't show them anything, because when you do, you add more fuel.

The reaction is what makes trolls keep doing it. "That guy got so pissed last time, i bet he'll get even more pissed this time".

FWIW, trolling can occur from both sides as well. The righteous crusader that jumps into every thread denouncing particular types of actions is just as much of a troll, waiting on the sidelines for someone to cross a pre-defined boundary so they can jump in and tell them how wrong they are, for example, those annoying ex-smokers who seem to take great pleasure in telling everyone they see how bad for your health it is.

All that aside, the 'trolling' that goes on in ALFA is so harmless it would be funny if it were not currently treated like the greatest threat the community has ever faced.
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Post by Nyarlathotep »

Funny I just read that article myself. Much of what was described really wasn't run of the mill forum trolling, which while annoying is ultimately harmless, a good deal of it stretched off into true harrassment with a very real intent to cause some sort of emotional or psychological injury...a sort of synthetic violence fueled by narcissism.
Last edited by Nyarlathotep on Fri Aug 01, 2008 3:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Nalo Jade
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Post by Nalo Jade »

Please give us some examples of how trolls or trolling will help the community?
"The reasonable man adapts to fit the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to suit him. Therefore all progress is achieved by the unreasonable." - unknown

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Post by Swift »

Nalo Jade wrote:Please give us some examples of how trolls or trolling will help the community?
See, this is a prime example and rather timely.

No where in this thread has anyone suggested that trolling is beneficial. The linked article quite efficiently points out the depths some are willing to take trolling, to the point of having tremendously negative effects on peoples lives.

So, all evidence presented in this thread pretty clearly states that, at best, trolls are out for a laugh and, at their very extreme worst will happily inflict real, personal pain on others.

So in return, i will ask, Nalo, why did you ask a question to which you already know the answer? Or are you just trolling for a response that you can pick apart to prove what we already know (that trolling essentially adds nothing).

Edit: FWIW, there is 2 forms of trolling i see happen in ALFA. 1 is consistent, personal attacks and/or derailing threads to be about a different topic of personal interest to the troll (eg everyone that derailed any thread that mentioned indio to be about Hignars imprisonment). The other is picture spam, utterly harmless in most cases, mainly due to lolcats being the spam of choice for most people.

The first kind has always been an offence (at least persistent personal attacks) regardless of how lax enforcement may have been, the second is (once again, in most instances) harmless fun that, at best, is used to much more directly state the users thoughts in a humorous manner and, at worst, is intended to derail an already devolving thread to stop people being so god damned serious over a video game and just chill the fuck out. The latter hardly needs to be stamped out, moderators just need to learn how to use forum functionality to split the posts off and move them to Off Topic if it turns into actual spam (as opposed to *gasp* 2 images in 2 pages, which is hardly spam)
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Nalo Jade
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Post by Nalo Jade »

The reason I posted the question was indeed to raise the awareness that it does nothing beneficial for the community. Your right most already know that but,

There were some sentiments/opinions that it is harmless. That is not a factual statement, it may not harm most, but it is not completely harmless.

If we are "pro" freedom of speach, I simply wanted to know what if any the benefits are for that platform, I assumed one might say...

"it keeps the community from being "sterile", but I don't know everything so I was curious if there was something else besides levity, since levity can still be accomplished without causing others grief...maybe there is something else it can do that I am not understanding?

I agree we are narrowing down the topic of discussion, we are not actually talking about the extreme cases of personal attacks. We all know that is bad and should be dealt with.

So we are talking about the perceived innocuous "jokes" right?

<the following pic is posted to illustrate a point not to be directed at anyone>

Image

There are a number of different reactions that can occur from this picture...

It may be viewed as funny. The Moderators have no way of knowing subjectively if it will...

As you have said we need to clearly define the boundries.

Since a moderator cannot know if it will be viewed as funny, they would have to remove it since it is a personal attack. <not in this case>

Why the resistance?

Lets lay out the fears you have of moderation, I guess I don't really understand what negative outcome you <plural> think will happen from the current moderation policy.
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Post by Swift »

You simply cannot evaluate a picture without context. What you posted has no context to the particular thread, or even particular posts preceding it.

Without context, its just a picture.
Lets lay out the fears you have of moderation, I guess I don't really understand what negative outcome you <plural> think will happen from the current moderation policy.
Ive already laid them out in the now locked moderation thread. I will say, once again, that i am not against moderation, i am against the series of policies that continue to carry the same flaws as previous attempts.
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Post by fluffmonster »

I didn't mean for this thread to necessarily be about moderation, but I can say what my fears are about moderation.

I understand the desire to suppress bullying and harrassment and flames. While I admittedly sometimes enjoy firing off a good flame, moderating these things doesn't overly concern me.

What does concern me is that moderation be taken farther than that to a point where anything that makes anyone uncomfortable at all becomes off limits and all it takes is for someone to complain "I don't like that post" to provoke an intervention. That's where I'm seeing things headed. A drive for 'maturity' that goes so far as to suppress distinctly adult interaction to the point we are expected to behave as a classroom of children.

So far, I haven't seen any moderation advocates say that the moderation push shouldn't or won't go that far. I haven't seen any of the pro-mod folks say that sometimes people just have to cope with that which makes them uncomfortable (nuance not being employed by either side in the debate). I've seen nothing to suggest that there's any concern at all that the pendulum swing all the way to the other side. Mollycoddlers instead of trolls...that would be far, far more sickening.
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Nalo Jade
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Post by Nalo Jade »

What's an example of something that has been moderated that shouldn't have? (I trust you, I don't need a link or verbatim quote)

What's an example of "too far"?

Is it okay if a member posts and gets no response to their post for the lolcats to feed off of the unanswered post?

Is it okay for a response to a post to include a picture that makes fun of the post ... like if someone was to post something that was common sense and the response they got was ...

"Good job Captain Obvious!"

My feeling is when you go through the hoops of joining an exclusive membership community there is an implied statement when we say ...

"Welcome to A Land Far Away" that they are being welcomed to "join" the community, this for me means they can reasonably expect to feel "included".

It would be like being hired on as a baseball player only to be ridiculed by the team, it does not help the team, since it will probably affect the new players "attititude".
"The reasonable man adapts to fit the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to suit him. Therefore all progress is achieved by the unreasonable." - unknown

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Post by fluffmonster »

It was trivially easy to induce moderation of the mild rebuke of "childish" just by whining about it. The mods are watching everything like hawks presumably and have snipped anything that could even possibly be interpreted as not friendly. Its hardly a outside the bounds of reason to wonder where the momentum is headed though, and of course there are no examples of something that hasn't happened.

People are welcome to *try* alfa, but its not for everybody and we shouldn't pretend it should or could be. People can and will alienate themselves by being distasteful in one way or another, and some will feel likewise about us whether we're an orgy of carebears or not. Just like I don't care for your argumentative tone, but so what if I don't? It means nothing.
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Post by White Warlock »

Swift wrote:Trolling has been going on for hundreds of years, long before the internet came around and gave a more anonymous outlet for it, it was simply a different form.
Umm, no Swift. It has been around for as long as you have been alive, yes, but not for more than 25 years. The first instances of trolling presented themselves with Usenet. Such behaviors were birthed with consequence-free online communities and accompanying anonymity.
Trolling is incredibly futile when no one acknowledges the posts.
Really? So you do realize when you say 'no one,' you must also include other trolls? For example, in this thread here: http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=40212 fluffmonster latched onto a comment i made in another thread and proceeded to troll using a standard of belittling humor. From there, others participated, and then they went at each other.

I never once stepped into that thread to respond to the inappropriateness of quoting a comment i made and then belittling it with an entirely new thread, even though i probably should have said something when even a moderator participated in the arsehattery.

So, you see Swift... it doesn't require the initial target of the comments to provide motivation. It just needs everyone to bandy up and pat each other on the back. A sort of oneupsmanship occurs, as what happened with the spam on spam presented by a few of our resident trollers.

All that aside, the 'trolling' that goes on in ALFA is so harmless it would be funny if it were not currently treated like the greatest threat the community has ever faced.
If the trolling in alfa were "so harmless," as you contend, then ALFA wouldn't have so many ex-members that 'still' participate in NWN1 and NWN2, but not in ALFA. We wouldn't have so many ex-moderators, ex-admins, ex-builders, ex-dms, and ex-players of ALFA who are still standing and participating members, but who hold no love of the behaviors presented in the forums and in chat.

Not everyone receives the same treatment, or mistreatment, in this community. Some receive more, others receive less, abuse. But can you honestly claim, "no harm, no foul?"
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