On 9/17/12 3:25 PM, glen wrote:
This also applies to "trolls" and bullying on the internet. The method
"Do not feed the trolls" seems (to me) to fail most of the time. And I
tend to believe it fails mostly because the definition of "troll" is
ambiguous and vague. People abuse the term all the time. Most of the
so-called trolls I've met are actually authentic contributors who simply
don't know how to get along with the people/fora they contribute to.
Those who perpetrate and tolerate the false positives have, to me, a
weaker moral foundation than the troll. To boot, in the case of an
actual troll, it's universally the yahoos who insist on yelling about
the troll who are more at fault for the degradation in quality content
than the troll.
Bullying is similar. Those who bully are one bogey, but they're a well
known one. Everyone's experienced bullying at some point, I think. But
the people who _refuse_ to speak out against the bully are, again, on a
weaker moral foundation than the bully. Hell, many bullies may not even
know they're bullies and all they need to hear is "back off" from
someone in the their clique.
Law and order: The idea that there is good behavior and bad behavior
and there is someone in charge that can fairly discriminate and will
make it right. The bully child will be sent to the principal's office
but the bullied child does not settle things herself. The domestic
abuse victim calls the police, etc.
The person-in-charge may be an elected individual, or an official
enforcing agreed-upon rules, or an employer, other times it is a person
with special moral standing, like a cult leader or priest, or a
community organizer that enforces (or invents) the cliques' rules.
In this way, tolerance can be mapped to organizational rules. If the
abuse is described by shared rules there's a mechanism to stop the
abuse. If it is not described by shared rules, the (silent) bullied
individuals need to work to make their organization serve their needs
better -- or be better at being invisible -- or change their philosophy.
Marcus
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