RoR: Forum

Post 0

Thursday, April 3 - 10:00am

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This is really an open letter to Joe Rowlands.

Joe, I appreciate the idea of an open Objectivist forum where everyone is invited to come and participate in free-wheeling discussions. However, the utility of this site has dropped to just about zero for me lately. This is due to every thread having been taken over by a number of people whom I would classify as nothing more than trolls. They may post long-winded diatribes or conduct the verbal equivalent of drive-by shootings, but whatever the format, their contribution to any discussion consist almost completely of spewing forth whatever is necessary to provoke an angry reaction in others and has nothing to do with self-enlightenment or a sharing of wisdom with others. The psychology of such people is twisted and I do not find it amusing or entertaining to be confronted by this behavior on a continuing basis. As a consequence, I now find myself taking a quick look at the list of unread messages, seeing who is participating in the discussion and then simply marking everything as read without review.

I work as a member of a developers group at one of the open software sites, and in order to maintain a high quality in the participants, the head of that group requires that we each substantiate our credentials in an objectively verifiable way before being allowed to join. This seems like a good idea to me and it works to keep out people who might otherwise sabotage the entire venture. I think it may be time to institute something similar on this forum. One characteristic I see that seems to pertain to everyone I would classify as a troll is that they are unwilling to submit a picture and detailed biography of themselves. I suggest that you consider a new requirement that all existing and future participants be required to provide a complete extended profile including a recent accurate picture of themselves. This profile should include enough information so that the person's identity can be verified. This might include a link to a related blog or website, a pointer to some other content that they have created, another forum in which they have participated, or possibly a recommendation from another well known individual. If a person is having trouble providing a means of verification, possibly they could make a request to you that they be allowed to participate on a provisional basis to see what form their contribution to the forum will take. Later, if it is discovered that any of the profile information or photograph has been falsified, this should result in an immediate ban from the forum.

Anyone who has something positive to contribute to these discussions should stand behind and take full responsibility for their words. It is only a troll who wishes to remain anonymous and avoid this obligation. Let's put the trolls back under the bridge where they belong.

Regards,
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Jeff

Post 1

Thursday, April 3 - 1:22pm

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I've been too busy with real life to even follow the site here. If anyone feels there are trolls, feel free to send me and email or even a RoRMail, which I've tried to check. So Jeff, can you be more specific in private? I'm not one of those that believes the value of an open forum is an open license to abuse the site and its participants. But as I'm enormously time constrained right now, a little help would go a long way.

Post 2

Thursday, April 3 - 2:58pm

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A useful capability, if it's technically feasible, would be a block-sender option. Back in the days of ATL I used to use this feature of Hotmail to keep out unwelcome posters and subject-line filters to keep out threads that had overstayed their welcome. Interestingly, I never had trouble following a thread after blocking the noisemakers' contributions.

Post 3

Thursday, April 3 - 3:18pm

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Peter's idea of being able to block certain members by name is also a good one. I suggested this quite a few years ago but it was not received with much enthusiasm.

Regards,
--
Jeff

Post 4

Thursday, April 3 - 4:14pm

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Yes, a "blocked user" option would be a nice feature.

Another site I visit added this feature some years ago in response to trolls and it met with considerable enthusiasm.

Post 5

Thursday, April 3 - 4:33pm

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There are some functions that could be added, but this stuff isn't a personal priority for me. I recommend letting me know about trolls so I can deal with the big ones, and try to ignore those people you don't appreciate.

Post 6

Thursday, April 3 - 9:35pm

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Limiting him to Dissent seems appropriate to me, though moderation makes engagement slow and impractical, especially if you are short on time, Joe. Intermittently slow passing of posts will amount to banning. Bill D. and others, (myself sometimes included) find value in engaging these types, which value may be erased by moderation. Limiting to Dissent would seem to achieve Jeff�s concerns. �Block user� is achieved by staying clear of dissent.

Post 7

Thursday, April 3 - 11:07pm

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I recommend the Dissent Forum as the best alternative.

I would have said something a few weeks back. I do not read much of Claude Shannon because the discussions themselves -- as opposed to his opinions -- are less interesting. However, Robert Kolker (Baal Chatzoff on "Objectivist Living") was someone whom I noticed. On the one hand, Bob has been insightful in his questioning of Objectivist principles and conclusions. I appreciated the opportunity to see things through the eyes of different and intelligent person. That is the reason why I was disappointed when his posts became abusive, offensive an uninspiring.

At the same time, while I clicked the Objectivist box in my Profile, everyone here knows how I evaluate the government monopoly in protection. So, I hestitated to complain. You know: remaining silent when they took everyone else away... We went through a lot of this in the Solo days. And RoR had another Purge shortly thereafter. We lost some good posters.

I agree with C. Jeffrey that validation is important.

Post 8

Friday, April 4 - 4:01am

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I work as a member of a developers group at one of the open software sites, and in order to maintain a high quality in the participants, the head of that group requires that we each substantiate our credentials in an objectively verifiable way before being allowed to join.

I'm not liking this idea very much, and Jon provided much of the reason why. It's a lot of work to moderate someone, and demanding "credentials" before someone can participate, even if it means a short essay or bio means even more work. The last thing I think RoR should do is intimidate people with requests like this, or issue more work for administration.

Sometimes we get young students who just want to ask questions. Other times we attract the attention of those who have learned insight into a particular issue. I enjoy the idea of these people having little to no trouble participating.

I don't like the idea of making Objectivism "difficult." I don't see it as difficult, and never have.

In all honesty, I am surprised by the lack of disruption trolls and would be trolls make here. They really are far and few between in my view. I don't think we're overrun with Claudes, not by a long shot.

The Dissent Forum was the perfect solution for problem posters.

Post 9

Friday, April 4 - 4:14am

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Yes, I will support the Dissent option before asking that Joe add new features to RoR.

Post 10

Friday, April 4 - 4:59am

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Add another vote for "banishment" to the Dissent forum -- but without any moderation (a la Letendre).

I like to mix it up with these "types." They usually don't grow from it, but I do. And that's coming from the Director of Outreach!

;-)

Ed

Post 11

Friday, April 4 - 7:54am

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(a la Letendre)

Lol, is that an entree?

Post 12

Friday, April 4 - 8:47am

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Ed said: "I like to mix it up with these "types." They usually don't grow from it, but I do. And that's coming from the Director of Outreach!"

That is why I did not say anything earlier. For that matter, it bears directly on the continuing engagement that I have with John Armaos. It is pretty easy to see that anarcho-capitalism is not in the Objectivist mainstream.

On the other hand, we have had some discussions here -- also among nominal Objectivists -- hashing out tougher questions on epistemology and psychology not touched on in earlier work. For instance, Michael Dickey asserted that your ideas literally "shape" your brain. That's pretty radical... and not found in Rand (or Peikoff or Kelley or Machan or ... So, while I certainly do not consider Michael Dickey a troll by any stretch of the imagination, my concern is for defining such people in the first place.

I agree with TSI that Claude and Kolker are not truly troublesome and are just two guys with some arguments. And no one has to pay attention to them. We do for reasons of our own, as Ed said. I think we can handle that.

I also point out that I purposely put my own non-Objectivist assertions about "Police Forces and Courts of Law" in the Dissent Forum.... where they belong.

Post 13

Saturday, April 5 - 11:50am

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"(a la Letendre)"

Lol, is that an entree?

Yes, I believe it's poached troll a la Letendre.

- Bill

Post 14

Saturday, April 5 - 12:29pm

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This topic is just a subset of the general problem that we face on the web - and elsewhere. There is a LOT more information out there than we can possibly keep track of. As a venue like RoR becomes popular, then it attracts people of lessor ability, naturally, down to the troll level, and then the credibility drops accordingly as the site becomes progressively less valuable.

A similar situation takes place at many supper or breakfast groups, in which the attendence rises as people become more learned in participating until the noise level literally becomes so high that everyone is shouting just to carry on a conversation. Typically the situation oscillates around a mean, with people attending until such a climax of non-functionality is reached, and then the next meeting will be 1/4 the size of the previous, the problem will not exist, and the process will start a new cycle.

I would suggest a personal ranking system, in which each person individually ranks a posting as they read it (as in 1 to 10) - if they choose - and the ranking of the poster for that individual is stored such that the next time they see a posting by someone they have read before, they also see their rank for that person, alongside the mean ranking by all the readers. This and similar useful information could be displayed as a scorecard next to each preview post, and the option could be provided for all posts below a particular rank - either personal or collective - to be ignored, with only the post previews above that rank displayed.

Then the individual user would never see posts by those who he or she personally considered trolls or of little value as contributors, while when such a person did in fact post something so outstanding that the general community gave it a high mean ranking, it would pop back into the preview, if that individual reader had chosen a trigger threshhold for that. This would in turn encourage even the trolls to either drop out or to really make an effort to upgrade their postings in order to get seen, much less read. At any point, the reader should of course have the option to read an entire thread, for purposes of clarity.

Such a system would, I think, effectively model much of the normal decision process we use, for example, in choosing a book to buy - do I know the author? Have I read his stuff before and is it generally worth the effort? What if it's a best seller, even if I don't know the author or haven't found his previous stuff interesting?

Since I don't know anything about the structure of this site, I will only comment that I could certainly build such a system in JavaScript, although it would be a major effort, as I'm basically a script kiddie, even though I do maintain a huge corporate website. I would imagine that this site is database driven, in which case the various variables are accessible and only the logic for accepting ranking, filing it by user and poster, calculating collective means, creating the scorecards on the fly, and then selecting the posts accordingly, would have to be done, none of which is that hard to do, although it would still be a substantial task - but perhaps worth it.

Keeping the trolls under the bridge