<story><title>Trouble at the Koolaid Point</title><url>http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoeAltmaier</author><text>Great attitude. But I wonder if &amp;#x27;refuting trolls&amp;#x27; is the same as feeding them. What else is there to try?</text></item><item><author>smoyer</author><text>I agree completely and yet ... I feel a bit responsible too.&lt;p&gt;In my mind, Kathy has credibility because she built it the old fashioned way - being worthy of trust.  Being a Java developer, I watched JavaRanch grow and I especially loved watching her presentations (the BoS talks are amazing).&lt;p&gt;And yet I under-appreciated what these attacks were doing to her as well as how severe they&amp;#x27;d become.  No having celebrity of my own, perhaps I &lt;i&gt;can&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; understand it fully but what I could have done is at least speak against the growing hatred.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m going to start refuting trolls (when I can) and I&amp;#x27;m going to try to be that person who&amp;#x27;s dependable under fire - Kathy, I&amp;#x27;ve got your back ... and I&amp;#x27;m sorry for my quiet complicity with your past attackers.&lt;p&gt;“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”&lt;p&gt;― Edmund Burke</text></item><item><author>jmduke</author><text>This is an excellent, brave thing to write and I originally had a long comment highlighting a bunch of particularly poignant paragraphs that I deleted because really you should just read the entire thing.  Neither I nor the vast majority of the people I know have ever been subject to online harassment and it makes me thankful that there are incredible people like Kathy out there.  Lord knows I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have the courage for something like this.&lt;p&gt;In interest of actually fostering a discussion: I think there&amp;#x27;s a lot of merit in bringing back moderation, as suggested in the article, as sort of an internet cultural norm.  Maybe it&amp;#x27;s confirmation bias:  the highest-quality communities I&amp;#x27;ve ever spent time in, MetaFilter and Something Awful [^1], both use incredibly stringent moderation -- but I feel HN has had a huge uptick in overall quality since the comments and content moderation has stepped up over the past months.&lt;p&gt;I think that Twitter and Reddit have sort of made their bones on the idea that as long as you aren&amp;#x27;t doing anything that threatens the company in any way then you&amp;#x27;re given carte blanche.  Twitter&amp;#x27;s ineffectiveness with dealing with harassment et al requests is notorious; and Reddit, as much as I love it at times, is a cesspool by default. [^2]&lt;p&gt;At what point does the value proposition flip the other way?&lt;p&gt;[^1]: I know, I peaked in like 2004.&lt;p&gt;[^2]: I know this is not a popular opinion, but is growing increasingly painful to visit a site that willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted towards domestic abuse and snuff .</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>The key thing is to break down the vague word &amp;quot;trolling&amp;quot; into specific bad actions. Threats. Verbal abuse. Inciting harm. Doxxing. It&amp;#x27;s fairly easy to get people to agree that these are bad and use the existing antispam machinery to get rid of them. You don&amp;#x27;t refute death threats, you delete them, ban the user, and if they&amp;#x27;re persistent enough report them to the police.&lt;p&gt;The older sense of troll (posting controversial opinions and false statements in hope of getting furious disagreement) &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; respond to &amp;quot;feeding&amp;quot;, but is not so directly harmful.&lt;p&gt;Then you have to make a judgement call as to whether some opinions which aren&amp;#x27;t specifically violent or threatening should be banned anyway (e.g. &amp;quot;women do not belong in IT&amp;quot;). Allowing those opinions drives people (e.g. women) away, often quietly and without fuss, but creates a subtly oppressive environment. This is not easy to do and will itself attract controversy and trolling.</text></comment>
<story><title>Trouble at the Koolaid Point</title><url>http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoeAltmaier</author><text>Great attitude. But I wonder if &amp;#x27;refuting trolls&amp;#x27; is the same as feeding them. What else is there to try?</text></item><item><author>smoyer</author><text>I agree completely and yet ... I feel a bit responsible too.&lt;p&gt;In my mind, Kathy has credibility because she built it the old fashioned way - being worthy of trust.  Being a Java developer, I watched JavaRanch grow and I especially loved watching her presentations (the BoS talks are amazing).&lt;p&gt;And yet I under-appreciated what these attacks were doing to her as well as how severe they&amp;#x27;d become.  No having celebrity of my own, perhaps I &lt;i&gt;can&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; understand it fully but what I could have done is at least speak against the growing hatred.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m going to start refuting trolls (when I can) and I&amp;#x27;m going to try to be that person who&amp;#x27;s dependable under fire - Kathy, I&amp;#x27;ve got your back ... and I&amp;#x27;m sorry for my quiet complicity with your past attackers.&lt;p&gt;“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”&lt;p&gt;― Edmund Burke</text></item><item><author>jmduke</author><text>This is an excellent, brave thing to write and I originally had a long comment highlighting a bunch of particularly poignant paragraphs that I deleted because really you should just read the entire thing.  Neither I nor the vast majority of the people I know have ever been subject to online harassment and it makes me thankful that there are incredible people like Kathy out there.  Lord knows I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have the courage for something like this.&lt;p&gt;In interest of actually fostering a discussion: I think there&amp;#x27;s a lot of merit in bringing back moderation, as suggested in the article, as sort of an internet cultural norm.  Maybe it&amp;#x27;s confirmation bias:  the highest-quality communities I&amp;#x27;ve ever spent time in, MetaFilter and Something Awful [^1], both use incredibly stringent moderation -- but I feel HN has had a huge uptick in overall quality since the comments and content moderation has stepped up over the past months.&lt;p&gt;I think that Twitter and Reddit have sort of made their bones on the idea that as long as you aren&amp;#x27;t doing anything that threatens the company in any way then you&amp;#x27;re given carte blanche.  Twitter&amp;#x27;s ineffectiveness with dealing with harassment et al requests is notorious; and Reddit, as much as I love it at times, is a cesspool by default. [^2]&lt;p&gt;At what point does the value proposition flip the other way?&lt;p&gt;[^1]: I know, I peaked in like 2004.&lt;p&gt;[^2]: I know this is not a popular opinion, but is growing increasingly painful to visit a site that willingly allows to exist subreddits devoted towards domestic abuse and snuff .</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steve-benjamins</author><text>In any bullying, there are three players: the bully, the bullied and the witnesses.&lt;p&gt;People who are bullied will often internalize that they are worthless (and that&amp;#x27;s why they are bullied). That can be one of the hardest parts of being bullied.&lt;p&gt;This happens especially if people who witness the bullying stay silent. Than the bullied will feel even more alone (and will feel awful about how bad they feel).&lt;p&gt;But if witnesses stand up and say- &amp;quot;hey, bully: you&amp;#x27;re being an asshole&amp;quot;, then that is a service to the bullied. The bullied will at least not feel so alone.&lt;p&gt;Hope that makes sense.</text></comment>