The firstdiary in this "flash series" introduced the author. I've been posting online for decades, and enjoyed almost all of it, and have an intense (some would say obsessive) interest in meta and moderation policies, both in general and here on DK. In this diary I'm going to try to identify some terms and explain some principles concerning discussion forum participation which I've gleaned over the years. The next one will provide a more direct proposal of how to handle posting and HR guidelines on DK.
If you've ever been called a troll, and wondered why, you want to read this. If you've ever wanted to reach through the intertoobs and rip someone's throat out, you want to read this. If you honestly think I'm a troll, you'll want to read this. If it pisses you off when Kos and Meteor Blades dis the President, if you ever wondered why Obamabots are tolerated here to begin with, if you've ever found yourself caught in the middle of a pie fight...
There are four quotes I'm going to use to stake out the ground here. I'll list them up front in text and then discuss each in more detail after a blockquote.
"I can be totally fair and unemotional when it comes to banning bigots, stalkers and trolls."
"Its intent is to rid the place of conversative shills and (actual) trolls, NOT people who hold unpopular opinions."
"What speech is allowable? It depends on who you are talking to."
"Any and all insults are HRable. Although users are never required to uprate any comment, it is considered a violation of site policy to uprate a comment with an insult in it. "
"Spotting trolls is easy. The problem is that imagining them is even easier."
Language is hard. If it were easy, it would be math. There's been a raging discussion on DK4 since before DK4 on site moderation policies and activities. In some ways, this is obviously due to the purposeful limitation of Admin moderation, but that isn't really all there is to it. There are clear reasons to believe that the additional features and functionality (and potential change in focus) of DK4 have allowed what was once a single large "in-group" to become factionalized, and that is in a way the whole point of DK4 - to allow multiple communities to share a space, rather than mandate one solitary community. But that doesn't entirely explain things, either. The real trouble with pie-fights on DK started during the last Presidential primary, when it was noted even in the mainstream media that there was shall we say "contention" between the Hillary supporters and the Obama supporters on the site. This reflected, obviously, the country as a whole, but we are concerned here with here. I doubt they were coined here, but the labels/insults "PUMA" (Party Unity My Ass, if you're joining us very late) and "Obamabot" became quite common.
As the previous diary in this flash series explained, these problems aren't at all a product of contemporaneous issues. They aren't even, we should realize, limited to online discussion forums. But they do become distilled and concentrated when the only interactions most of us ever have with each other is text on a screen. DK is unique, of course, in that we have DK, the mojo approach to troll-stomping. I've been fascinated by it since the moment I noticed it and started (informally) studying it's effects, which was several years before I even registered. It isn't rare to see "like/banish" features in blog comment systems today, of course, but back then it was extremely rare. And as far as I know, none of those other systems are anything near as sophisticated as what they (now we) have been trying to develop here.
But we need to avoid lapsing into a "Daily Kos Exceptionalism" attitude which drives us to be moralistic or interventionalist. The problems aren't unique to DK, the trolls (both real and imagined) aren't unique to DK, the urge to suppress and the urge to elevate unpopular opinions aren't unique to DK. I firmly believe that being able to self-moderate without being unable to tolerate even insulting dissent is something that is more important than pie-fights. It goes directly to governing the nation and saving the world.
So our perspective has to be larger than DK, even though our context is just DK. Tradition is good, the palimpsest of rules and nomenclature are important, and I'm not trying to simply impose my private terminology on everybody. But I want to present some vocabulary that might be slightly controversial, because some of it will no doubt conflict with what very storied and venerated Kossacks use as the dictionary in their heads. I'm going to break down "trolling" in a way that I hope makes clear both the validity but also the limitation of the conventional understanding on this site.
Troll - repeated posting in violation of forum guidelines; can refer either to a person being incessantly and purposefully provocative or to a posting (on DK typically a diary) that appears to be controversial and excessively insulting. There are subtypes; see below.
Trolling - repeating the same point multiple times without making any attempt to accommodate or account for contrary information that has been presented. Note that trolling does not require a troll, but a troll is always trolling. (Or, as has been well exemplified recently, using a cover of innocuous posts to regain enough social standing to resume trolling.)
Accidental troll - a person or post which is the victim of a logical schism and holds the unpopular opinion. The person or post in reply which is also a victim of a logical schism but holds the popular opinion is by definition not a troll, no matter how crass, insulting, juvenile, barbaric, bullying, or creepy they are.
Hard core troll - the prototypical troll; a person who has to be dishonest to gain or maintain access to the forum, who may or may not being purposefully disruptive but consistently is. Hard core trolls are generally extremely rare, but are more common on DK because it represents such a crowning achievement of the "liberal blogosphere". Some hard core trolls are 'casual', meaning it is essentially idle entertainment. These would be the occasional freepers and random adolescents or teabaggers. Some hard core trolls are 'professional', meaning it is targeted and subject driven, whether the troll is being renumerated or not. GOP operatives would fall into this category, as would most "anti-" trolls who might repetitively try to disrupt discussion of specific topics. (The most clear "tell", btw, between a casual and a professional is how naive they are about the specific topic of their trolling. Casual trolls can actually be very helpful and instructive if they are engaged correctly, no matter how ill their intent. Professional trolls are always very damaging, no matter how confident the targets are that they are getting the better of them.) The epitome of the hard core troll, however, is the Person With Problems. This is the psychological troll; the one who most deftly and most viciously (but often almost invisibly) uses emotional manipulation to create turmoil just for its own sake. They may appear to be focused on one subject, and they may also be professional trolls, but there is nothing casual about their trolling. They will use the same rhetorical techniques in any group; some may drag their pet topic along with them into other discussions, some may adapt like a chameleon, but their goal isn't disruption of the conversation for its own sake, but instead to garner attention to themselves.
Now I need to lay out some "definitions" I have concerning moderation, in the same vein as the above (re: DK context). Bear in mind that it makes a substantial amount of difference in a moderation system whether contributions that "qualify for moderation" never appear in the forum, appear but can be deleted, or appear but can be hidden (which actually I think is unique to DK, and is a strong part of why the system works) but I don't address that in the definitions themselves.
Moderation - Any effort or method for controlling the contributors and/or the contributions to a discussion forum.
Unmoderated - Social moderation only to control contributions, and no ability to control contributors.
Basic (or User) Moderation - A system which provides only for moderation of contributors but not contributions.
Classic Moderation - The funneling of all contributions through a single authority responsible for rejecting without appeal those that do not conform to the moderation guidelines for any reason. Note that classic moderation does not address contributors; control of who can participate is a separate concern, which may or may not be related through the moderation guidelines and/or the moderation mechanism.
Social Moderation - The use of rhetorical (meaning 'words', as in rhetoric, not as in the common phrase "rhetorical question" meaning stylistic) responses to deal with trolling, without any authoritative mechanism. Note that social moderation cannot address contributions, which requires classic moderation. Social moderation also may or may not be enforced with the threat of control of participation, such as an ability to ban a contributor. When social moderation cannot be backed up with the ability to revoke membership or registration (or a damn good method of detecting multiple accounts) it is "no moderation".
Algorithmic Moderation - The use of any automated method to determine contributors or contributions. Autoban, on DK, is algorithmic moderation. Autoban is limited to controlling contributors. It has no affect on contributions, and it is unrelated to mojo. It is worth noting here that it is the number of hidden comments (strictly speaking, I think the ratio of hidden comments) an account has which triggers autoban, not the number (or ratio) of HRs.
Self-moderation - Any system which enables a substantial number of the contributors to act as the authority for moderation. This could be simply a formalized group decision-making practice or method, or it could be, as here on DK, assignment of moderation duties to certain contributors who qualify.
Community Moderation - (This is the tricky one, as I'm quite sure most people have a very different idea of what it means and will resent my inherent claim to know better, particularly as the Admins can provide an authoritative definition [within the context of DK] which obviously supersedes my own.) Community Moderation is a hybrid system involving self-moderation, algorithmic moderation, and user moderation. Unfortunately, community moderation also involves pie fights, bullying, and HOS. This is both caused by and causes confusion of community moderation with social moderation on the part of most if not all participants.
It was my understanding that what "community moderation" was supposed to mean was that each group Admin can effectively fill the role that Meteor Blades once did for the entire site, that of Top Moderator. Note that without a top moderator, there isn't really any authority to make self-moderation work. Unfortunately, due to the constitution of the site, this causes conflicts between moderation of contributions and moderation of contributors. Should a Kossack who is well behaved, popular, and productive on the site as a whole be treated as a troll because of disruptive contributions in a particular subject area, or worse, a personality conflict? Is it even possible to have different groups applying different moderation policies in different diaries? How does republishing affect that?
Having gone on too long already, and said only a fraction of what is needed, let's go back to the quotes.
I can be totally fair and unemotional when it comes to banning bigots, stalkers and trolls.
This was from Chaoslillith (an apropos username, given her role in these diaries) in her "Hire me, Kos"
diary. It made me laugh when I read it because it is very sincere, but not very true, and on top of that fosters a bit of confusion about moderation in general. Specifically, the idea that what DK moderation is lacking is the ability to swiftly ban offenders. Simply grouping 'bigots, stalkers and trolls' together like that (along with the descriptions of trolling I gave earlier) should illustrate how difficult it is to be "fair and unemotional" about moderation without running the risk of reducing it to a simple mandate for political correctness. Given how well TUs have been doing implementing community moderation, giving even more people the power of user moderation is a recipe for disaster.
Its intent is to rid the place of conversative shills and (actual) trolls, NOT people who hold unpopular opinions.
That was Kossack USArmyParatrooper in a
reply to a comment I made pointing out that DK moderation always has been "Survivor: Daily Kos" where we get to vote people off the island. The ironic part is that I have spent several hours over the last couple of weeks defending UAP from accusations that he is a homophobic troll. It would be arrogant and pompous of me to say that my intervention prevented him from being rid from us, but it is possible. I'm not sure if he has broken himself of the habit of jumping in to LGBT diaries with politically incorrect bullshit, but there's more than one person who probably thinks I'm a troll just for having tried to defend him. Ninety percent of the trolls on DK, at least, are accidental trolls, Kossacks with difficulties making their point and trying too hard to do it anyway. A substantially greater number of the accusations that someone is a "conservative shill" are bogus if not unfounded; I would guess 99.993% of the time.
What speech is allowable? It depends on who you are talking to.
A
comment by missliberties in Chaoslillith's diary, which highlighted for me a substantial part of the problem of DK4 moderation. It isn't supposed to be that way. But it is that way now. As we'll see from the next quote, allowing moderation to be controlled by the most feint-hearted observer just cranks the dial from the already-too-high "political correctness" setting straight to flat-out "bullying". It will only lead to a very civil and very uninteresting bit of jibber jabber.
Any and all insults are HRable. Although users are never required to uprate any comment, it is considered a violation of site policy to uprate a comment with an insult in it.
This is, of course, the
Sword of Damocles comment from Meteor Blades that set up the current guidelines of DK moderation. There's a lot of other stuff in the FAQ and in other places trying to explain and educate about trolls and the responsibility of the TU to be mature, calm, and at least slightly well-informed in their judgements. And none of it means squat, thanks to this inopportune rhetoric from our former Top Moderator. Even the entire second sentence of the quote, where a profoundly important instruction for anyone offering donuts is found, gets ignored, thanks to that first badly formed sentence. If I say something that upsets you, that means you get to hide it. That's what it means right there; all bets are off, have at it, and let God sort 'em out. Which leads me to my favorite quote.
Spotting trolls is easy. The problem is that imagining them is even easier.
That's me. That's my point. Spotting trolls isn't the skill; refusing to imagine them and still being able to see them is the hard part.
I've got an extremely finely honed sense of it; I spotted Aidos in three comments. I saved briefer from the torches and pitchforks, at least a little. I knew Timmaeus wasn't a troll but was going to be real trouble years before he formed a little gang with willibro and cville townie, and I know I'm not alone in finding all three of their posting styles (well, their one posting style, as they don't have much variance) frustratingly abusive, abrasive, and consistently counter-productive. I will still readily defend banned user geraldlaslo as well as USArmyParatrooper from accusations of being a troll. And I know just as many people share my opinion of slinkerwink as hate me for my opinion of slinkerwink. And last but not least, of course, I am a contrarian by nature and a sophist by design. The only thing that prevents me from being the most successful troll ever on DK is that my posts are meaningfully provocative, instead of purposefully provocative. I'm not here to stir up trouble. I'm just self-aware enough to know its going to happen.
So if there is anyone who still has the patience to wade through yet more of this, I'll see you in the next and last diary in this series, when we finally put some mean on these bones.
The Proposal
