Posted by doxogenic boy on March 3, 2014, at 16:31:23
In reply to Re: Trolls and Freedom of Speech, posted by SLS on March 3, 2014, at 7:21:53
> I think it would be a big mistake to judge and identify anyone as being a "troll" for the purpose of website moderation. It is sort of like identifying someone with borderline personality disorder (or any other mental illness) and banning them from the website once they display problematic behaviors consistent with the description of that disorder. What if a deputy or moderator misdiagnoses someone? I think it is safer for the community to concern itself less with what a person is versus what a person does.
I value your objections, and I will try to further explain my point of view.
A deputy or a moderator can misdiagnose uncivility too, so I don't think it will be more arbitrary with a no-troll-policy. A troll is a troll because of what he/she does - no one can be a troll if he just thinks of trolling. The reason why I think it can be of importance to know if a poster is a troll is that he can be dangerous for other posters' mental health because of his sadistic and psychopathic personality. It is a big difference between a poster who is temporarily angry because he lost his job, and a troll that purposefully tries for a long time to mentally break down or destroy other users in a support group. And they may have met the troll before in other forums.
Canadian researchers have made the study "Trolls just want to have fun", which is published in the academic journal "Personal and Individual Differences":
----------------------
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324
Quote:
AbstractIn two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism.
KeywordsSadism;
Dark Tetrad;
Dark Triad;
Trolling;
Cyber-trolls;
Antisocial Internet behavior;
Personality
End quote.
----------------------
So trolling is much more dangerous for others' mental health than most people are aware of.> How does a troll become a troll? Were they formally educated by the public school system to be a troll? Are there college classes for trolling that include lab work to practice troll behaviors? Can one be officially certified to be a troll? Are there blood tests we could use to differentiate a troll from a mentally ill person who does troll things?
There exist measuring instruments for this (it isn't a joke), such as the "Global Assessment of Internet Trolling"
I will quote from a news article about the above-mentioned study:--------------------------
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/science-confirms-online-trolls-are-horrible-people-also-sadists/Excerpt from the article above:
"Though it sounds awesome in an "evil magician" sort of way, the Dark Tetrad is actually a set of four "noxious" personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Professors Eric Buckels, Paul Trapnell, and Delroy Paulhus hypothesized that online trolls would rank highly in Dark Tetrad traits, and they set out to test the idea with surveys administered both to Canadian students and to random users of Amazon's Mechanical Turk program (the latter group receiving fifty cents per person for their trouble).Respondents answered survey questions drawn from the Short Sadistic Impulse scale, the Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies scale, the Short Dark Triad scale, and the newly developed Global Assessment of Internet Trolling. Some of the statements that researchers asked the group to respond to included:
I have been compared to famous people (narcissism)
It's not wise to tell your secrets (Machiavellianism)
Payback needs to be quick and nasty (psychopathy)
Hurting people is exciting (sadism)
In video games, I like the realistic blood sports (vicarious sadism)"
End quote.
--------------------------
As you see in the quotation above, it is possible to assess trolling scientifically, but I think most people understand when they see a troll. But everyone can be fooled, therefore I propose this no-troll-policy.
> If a troll does troll things, then they will very likely be in conflict with the civility regulations for communication of Psycho-Babble. It really is a matter of if, when, and how the moderator decides to take action once they become aware of the violative posting behaviors. You can use the "Notify administration" function at the bottom of the posting page to convey your concerns. Ultimately, it is the role of the moderator to judge civility and not the deputies. It really doesn't matter that the deputies should try to make policy by defining what a troll is. It might be the deliberated decision of the moderator to allow uncivil behavior in a given circumstance.
The moderator can allow deputies to block trolls, if he wants to.
> Can you list a few objectionable things a troll will do that would NOT be a violation of this website's posting regulations?A troll can sometimes behave nicely, as a part of the troll strategy, such as posting apologies, and shortly thereafter going back to harass other users, and this way hurt them even more, because they have been fooled to defend the troll, and then are attacked again. I don't mean that one should block anyone because of a apology, but as a part of the larger picture, it shows that it is a person with evil intentions.
I think it should be allowed to warn other users by telling them that it is a troll. For a suicidal person this could be very helpful, to avoid being trolled.
> Maybe a troll can learn not to be a troll? If so, blocking him from posting for a year will not optimize his chances of accomplishing this.
A person with psychopathic personality traits is biologically unable to learn empathy.
- doxogenic
Earlier TRD/anxiety
300 mg tianeptine, 6 X 50 mg successfully since Oct 2009
20 mcg liothyronine
40 mg escitalopram
100 mg trimipramine
50 mg agomelatine
600 mg quetiapine
poster:doxogenic boy
thread:1061607
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20131217/msgs/1061751.html