Summary:
In the article “Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities” the authors discuss the topic os behavior on online communities where discussion between users is a fundamental or very large part of the site, specifically how behavior that can be categorized as antisocial or disruptive is handled and processed by the community. They also discuss what happens to the poster that posted the disruptive post. The authors look at the sites CNN.com, Breitbart.com, and IGN.com, all of which have forums and comment sections for all of the content the display on their sites. The study of users that went on to be permanently banned found that the users who were banned were given warnings or had their posts deleted by a moderator before they were banned but in the process they tended to post worse and worse posts and the community they were apart of became less and less tolerant of the banned users rants. This was a large finding of the study, that as time passed and the abusers were told to stop or removed they would continue to come back and get worse and worse creating a bigger and bigger problem until they were eventually banned. Their were some cases of users being banned for a set amount of time and then allowed to return but these cases were not studied in depth but this brings up a question of how effective the timed punishment ban was at deterring the bad behavior.
Reflection:
I found this article as a good verification of the behavior and trends that I have experienced myself on online communities. I have seen first hand that the users who abuse a community message system and then are told to stop or get reactions out of the community that are angry or disgusted just encourages the original abuser to not only continue the behavior but even get worse. If a regular user has an incident where they went too far and are told to stop its usually a very quick apology and then things go back to normal but not for the trolls. They continue the behavior and only get worse because thats the reactions they thrive on and are seeking from the community. The issue of trying to get ride of these trolls is a tricky one because you have to give each user a fair chance at the beginning of that users account life. It wouldn’t be fair to just ban someone right out because of one thing, but that second/third chance is also what feeds the really bad posts and situations. I would also be very interested in a study of the cases where a timed ban actually helped the troll stop doing the bad behavior. Finding the best way of dealing with the abusers of the system to either lock them out or correct the behavior.
Questions:
- Is a permanent ban or a timed ban more effective in dealing with abusers?
- What would be the best way to discern the true trolls from a user that just got out of control for a time?
- What draws trolls to come post on the sites that they do? Just for fun?
- Could an effective bot be created to accurately moderate forums?
