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Local newspaper’s new online community has led to the worst behavior
Anonymous users hiding behind pseudonyms online frequently engage in hateful, bigoted, and mean spirited behavior. Abuse by a minority of the users of the Leaf Chronicle Story Chat has already caused several people to shy away from participation in the public discourse at the Leaf Chronicle’s web site, including myself. It’s just not worth the hassle of participating. Even Yahoo! decided that story chat type forums were a bad idea without significant controls being in place to prevent abuse.
A meaningful step towards combating incivility at the Leaf Chronicle, would be to require users posts to display their real names and zip codes, as is done when the user sends in a letter to the editor. The ability of the community to apply peer pressure can be one of the best weapons for preventing forum abuse. Users should also be required to provide contact numbers viewable only by the staff of the Leaf Chronicle, which can then be used to contact and warn users who frequently cross the line of acceptable behavior. It also is a tool which can help prevent people from establishing multiple accounts to engage in abusive behavior.
It’s been found in scientific studies that anonymity online frequently leads to abusive behavior which the person would have never considered taking part in when offline. It even has it’s own specific psychological term, the online disinhibition effect:
I seldom find reason to agree with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia, but on the subject of online anonymity, I happen to find myself in strong agreement with the statement he made below:
Free flowing discussions on issues of public importance can still take place even with the Leaf Chronicle being proactive in prohibiting personal attacks. It’s the duty of the site’s operators to ensure that people are not ganged up on, or attacked due to their beliefs, or positions on issues. As someone who runs several online communities, I can tell you that to be successful they require active moderation by a trained, neutral, and professional staff, and this is something the Leaf Chronicle should seriously consider putting into place. Once people in the community see that the Leaf Chronicle’s staff won’t tolerate continued abusive activities, the level of abuse will drop, and civil discourse will increase.
About Bill Larson
Bill Larson is is politically and socially active in the community. Bill is a member of the Friends of Dunbar Cave. You can reach him via telephone at 931-249-0043 or via the email address below. SectionsOpinionTopicsAbuse, Anonymity, Harrassment, Story chat, The Leaf Chronicle, Trolls3 Responses to “Local newspaper’s new online community has led to the worst behavior”CommentsYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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April 10th, 2007 at 5:48 am
For a good example of what is being discussed here check out Muslims on alert after hate crime:
Defaced Quran found on steps at Islamic Center and the Story chat comments for the article….
April 10th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Bill this is one of your best articles. I hope the Leaf Chronicle hears this. I hope you consider sending them a copy.
Great insight!