This Thought Brought to You By My Hammer

[leahbobet]

(It makes things look like nails. *g*)

Okay, idle hypothetical I'm throwing out here:

What do you think would happen if SFWA empowered a newsgroups moderator to enforce a code of conduct for the org's online spaces?

Because y'know, it's really just a standard-issue troll infestation they have going there. Just a long-standing and entrenched one.

Comments

[slithytove.livejournal.com]

Any unmoderated on-line group will eventually deteriorate into Usenet-type flame wars, interspersed with trolling. These will eventually drive off all the sane people, who will be followed by the flamers and trolls, who are only there because they have an audience. A sparsely-populated burned-out group remains. See: Usenet. Or Wikipedia, which is still struggling with this issue, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

Probably the same is true of any group, anywhere. Even though 95% of people want to be civil, and expect civility from others, there will always be 5% who don't. Bars need bouncers, on-line groups need moderators.

Just because we're all smart, educated, and adult makes no difference. We still have that five percent who get a dopamine surge to their reptile brain from sticking their finger in someone else's eye. Remember that person you ejected from your flist a while ago? Exceptionally bright, interesting, accomplished -- and just can't keep from picking fights.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've seen this happen. I'm currently moderating a victim of that dynamic back to life. The first month was...hairy, let's call it.

I wonder, with SFWA, if anyone would have the authority and/or the balls to find a moderator for the groups and stand behind them utterly: empower them to clean the town up. And how much of the ongoing idiot scandal it might solve if that person could grit their teeth and stick it out that hairy first month or two.