Some (few) humans are just bad. They either are intentionally destructive, or can’t into a healthy discussion, which includes ignoring bad actors. The key feature that HN community has managed to retain somehow, as far as I see, is its ability to avoid being provoked too much. Old school mailing lists I was subscribed to sometimes had people who were apparently mentally ill, and still no ban was required to deal with their messages. You see it, you move on.
Screwed communities are screwed not by few bad actors (which live everywhere), but by the attention that users gift to them for free. By normal people you live or work with. Forum literacy is the key, and it’s not built into everyone by default.
Imagine a forum for doctors to discuss new treatments and everyone can join in, soon it'd be r/AskDoc and of almost no value to actual doctors
It wouldn’t, if every doctor there knows that they have to react with “Sorry, this forum is not for this kind of advice. But you can try these reputable sites: … to ask this question”. And similarly to attempts of other users to answer right there. Or, if not sure, to just stay silent.
Iow, community gets ruined when it effectively stops being a community and turns into a no-one-concerned bazaar.
we used to have a phrase to remind each other not to give attention to the bad actors: “don’t feed the trolls” (doesn’t capture 100% of attention sinks, but it’s catchy, and a certain percentage of people understood that the phrase could apply more broadly). it occurred to me that i haven’t heard this phrase in several years now.
That is very strange. I also have not heard it for a long time. Though it seems like trolling used to be a niche activity in which someone would say or do something specifically just to attempt to harm anyone who came across it.
But it feels like half of the news cycle has that kind of attack now, a large part of the politicians make those kinds of intentionally bad faith arguments, they've become accustomed to telling stories with the specific intention of getting people angry, I guess it gets votes. It seems like trolling was just too effective politically, you and your friends can laugh at your little sticker at the gas pump while imagining all those libs that are gonna be seething when they see what amounts to your intentionally crafted commentary, made to enrage not engage, that you place in a public service so that you have a high chance of at least making someone angry.
I think we all know who might've done the most towards normalizing such juvenile behavior. I hope we can win our civility back.
Once given a name (a sort of attention) they became a subculture. It would happen without the term anyway, but I feel it played a role. Instead of knowing/explaining how to deal with it, innocent citizens began to just call each other trolls for various reasons, and the original “don’t feed” part was lost.
Partly what’s called netiquette, partly consequences of it. It’s literally literacy, something you get by reading a lot (lurking) before gaining confidence in discussions/communities.
Screwed communities are screwed not by few bad actors (which live everywhere), but by the attention that users gift to them for free. By normal people you live or work with. Forum literacy is the key, and it’s not built into everyone by default.
Imagine a forum for doctors to discuss new treatments and everyone can join in, soon it'd be r/AskDoc and of almost no value to actual doctors
It wouldn’t, if every doctor there knows that they have to react with “Sorry, this forum is not for this kind of advice. But you can try these reputable sites: … to ask this question”. And similarly to attempts of other users to answer right there. Or, if not sure, to just stay silent.
Iow, community gets ruined when it effectively stops being a community and turns into a no-one-concerned bazaar.