I’ve rethought this. check this out, all the way to the end:
This is why I never write any kind of important or heated email with the recipient’s name already filled in. I can leave it there in my drafts folder as long as I want. I can go back and revise, rewrite or just delete it entirely. And I can’t “accidentally” hit send before I’m ready.
trollies, from my perspective, are looking for angry responses so that they can justify their own anger. It’s a vicious circle that I prefer not to engage in. But when it is necessary (online or in real life), I find that I’m more successful when I try to break that cycle instead of perpetuate it.
But mostly, I edit because wordiness often gets in the way of understanding. So once I get everything out of my system, I can figure out how to distill paragraphs into sentences. I can take out the hyperbole or other baggage so that the message isn’t diluted by the messenger.
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I feel this! Especially when things get overly academic.
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True dat.
Also, overthinking can be as bad as underthinking.
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There seems to be a few factors involved in how likely a trolley is to succeed, more than just outnumbering regulars:
- how strong the community is,
- how determined the trolley(s) are
- the willingness of people to switch rooms/forums instead of leaving the site
- how easily and quickly discouraged first newer accounts, than semi-regulars leave (these often make up more of the posts than the regulars)
- how easy it is to overload the conversation
- how quickly the trolley can come back when banned
I’ve seen forums die in days from one dedicated trolley, and I’ve seen SA inexplicably hang on for over a decade.
I was going to reply immediately, but in spirit of it:
“Brevity is the soul of wit” --Some Guy
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Can’t really say when someone else is over or under, but in hindsight usually one could see when it was ones own self
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Mmmm, first posts are the good stuff. They get all the views, they get all the likes, they set the discussion and they set the tone. Gotta gets me some first posts.
What I mean is, of course getting in early is good for trolling. Getting in early in the discussion is good for everything and everyone. Got a question about something you didn’t understand in the article? Get in early, you will get more responses. Got some stunning insight that you’re burning to share? Get in early and make it pithy, more people will read it. Got a bee under your bonnet that you need to get out? Get in early or you’ll get one or two takers at best. If you’re arguing with a view to convincing the audience rather than your opponent, your best bet is to get in early and put them on the defensive.
For me this is a not-so-critical but intrinsic flaw in using likes to gamify a message board. You get like-addicts who seem to hang out looking for any new thread with a low or zero reply count so they can jump in with something pithy and droll that will get lots of likes. I bet if you and I named three bbs users we can think of who do this, we’d get at least two names in common. Not that those people are a big problem, the ones I’m thinking of do it in a way that’s fun without imposing. But my personal high score is when I got in at post number 9 with “I’m starting to think this guy [Trump] probably shouldn’t be president,” whereas if I take a while to think about what I’d like to contribute, then put some time and effort into the post, it’s going to come in late and get low-to-average likes. This is either because I’m an insufferable bore once I get going or because likes are broken, so obviously likes are broken. They make me want to do drive-by posts instead of settling in for a conversation.
Is anyone still reading? Please like my post. I’m so lonely…
Since you mention actual research data, @codinghorror, there is a chart I’d love to see that you could maybe produce. The X axis is the posting’s ordinal position in the thread, the Y axis is the average number of likes. It should look roughly , where I guess m and c will be functions of thread size, views, and lifespan so maybe just the fixed-lifespan
bbs posts should be used. I’d be fascinated to see that hypothesis confirmed or not, and to see how pronounced is the effect. And if you can flatten out the line (divide by view count?) maybe you can derive a user scoring system that de-emphasises “get in early”.
I bet there are all kinds of cool charts you could make with data like yours. Just some nice lovely charts. Hint hint-itty hint hint…
So I think it’s not just about trolls but yeah, I do agree that if you found some way to control early posts you could do a lot for the quality of discourse, excuse the pun. I don’t think I’d overload the concept of a “regular”, but maybe you could develop some sort of “trusted poster” badge based on reading metrics or whatever. Then threads are restricted to trusted posters for the first ten posts or the first six hours, whichever comes first. Adjust recipe to taste. I think something like that could be worth tinkering with.
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