Troll Caps, Scribblers, Disemvowellers - Whadday do with blog comments?
As I'm finalizing the mind map jpgs from our SXSW Panel, Us/Them: A blog conversation survival guide, I keep on coming across lots of ideas about what to do with blog comments that people feel are disruptive/not helpful/etc.
Today Gail Williams of the Well points out 37 Signals solution, Introducing the Troll cap . From the thread on 37 signals there was a link to a couple of other examples of visual censure (not censoring!) in blog comments. I've got a couple of screen shots. 
This comes on the heels of Clay Shirky's moderation wiki (which I'm struggling with because there seems to be no way to have a conversation about the effort, but that's another story!). Lots of people are thinking about this, which I think is a terrific sign. What troubles me is that most of the solutions put forth really are band aids, not solutions.
Tags: usthem, sxswpanelprep, onlinefacilitation
posted by Nancy White at 6:55 PM
2 Comments:
I did like the troll cap when they first announced it. It seems like pleasant enough way to tell someone that they are being rude.
In technical forums, I'd simply delete anything that was all caps or contained hate speach anyway. The troll cap is an easy way to say "do not feed" without adding the extra conversational noise.
Disemvowelling might make more sense for a site that discusses politics or some such, where you can get some really profane posts.
Scribbling seems to draw too much attention to the troll post.
Hi Nancy --
Gail posting anon here since I am in a hurry and can't take a minute to get my password -- wanted to say quickly that my concern is that "earning" a gold troll hat might be as cool a game as "earning" a gold star in other settings.
Generally I think attention is what disruptors want! A hat seems to give it to them. However, it would be interesting to see how this played out in practice over time.
- www.well.com/~gail/
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