It' the anonymity, Jim.
When ******** can hide behind a cloak of invisibility, they lose their fear of reprisal and tell the other *********** what ******* ******** they are.
So we end up with **** ******* polluting the Interwebs.
Jimbo asks online folk to play nice, be civil
The co-founder of Wikipedia is once again calling on internet surfers to adopt good manners online. Jimmy Wales co-wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal yesterday in which he griped about "carelessly rude to the intentionally abusive" behaviour on social networking sites, blogs and forums. And - for Jimmy and his …
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Wednesday 30th December 2009 14:44 GMT Owen Carter
Thinking of a new blog
I'm hatching plans for a new online diary (ok, it's a blog, but will have none of that trackback/pinging nonsense blogwonks use to make themselves feel popular).
It will have a comments section, quite an open one. But there will be a couple of auto spam/idiot bots moderating it, plus myself, and I have decided I will publish IP addresses (in fact, I'm thinking of not having any form of nicks etc.., just IP addresses.) Anyone who cannot handle that can just STFU. :-) I won't be blogging anonymously, you wont be commenting anonymously.
Need I link to a famous penny arcade cartoon here?
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Saturday 2nd January 2010 09:41 GMT heyrick
IP addresses?
Sounds like my blog. No bots, just a bit of script asking for a number to be typed backwards. I don't bother listing IP addresses because that will only affect people with static IP. My ADSL box 's IP address changes. Seems to be about every three days. Right now it is 90.32.36.xxx (replace xxx with a number, you'll be close enough but still many miles out). In a few days...?
Anyway, I agree with you. Few people have a *need* to post anonymously. Stand by what you say, or STFU.
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Wednesday 30th December 2009 14:44 GMT Jon 29
OMG I think I have a solution!
All personal computers are heretoforthwith to be supplied with a cartoon boxing-glove-on-a-spring that can be activated remotely via the interwibble by anyone against whom a slight is made.
OK, so maybe that's a bit harsh. How about the remote InstaCrash hard drive feature that - you guessed it - enables the jilted web user to wreak his revenge on online meanies by zapping their disk!!!!!!!111 C'mon. wouldn't that be great?
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Thursday 31st December 2009 09:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Actually...
I've been attempting to devise a new keyboard (USB compatible, of course) that is not all that dissimilar to a dogs electric shock collar... And it's completely controlled by remote commands. So, you're on your favorite online game and someone says something that pisses you off, and assuming they have my keyboard, you run a little application that issues the remote keyboard instructions to give its user a mild corrective shock.
I'm actually working on two variations: Standard and Enhanced. The Standard model will issue a mild 20KV correction each and every time... The enhanced has a built in "annoyance monitor", which will start small, at less than 1000 volts and incrementally increase with each violation.
I also have a complementary mouse on the drawing board, which is targeted towards the chronic profile stalkers. It works in conjunction with a little API provided to the host site, and the user decides who gets zapped and who doesn't.
Alternative uses could include a module that monitors website content, i.e. porn and other socially frowned upon content, and issues corrections, based on the amount of skin and the lewdness.
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Wednesday 30th December 2009 14:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Targets of online hostility should also consider coming forward to..."
... what, publicly revel in their humiliation before the entire world? Yeah, that'll really make them feel better. Trolls consider it a massive and immediate win if they can push someone into public bawwwwing of this sort, it will be just another scalp on their belt - they'll love this idea.
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Wednesday 30th December 2009 16:20 GMT thejynxed
Funny...
That these words are coming from someone who had a very public, and disagreeable split with a girlfriend on the internet.
We won't even get into how uncivil the upper echelon of Wikipedia can be, especially when you try to edit their pet pages (pages I might add, that generally contain misleading or outright false information).
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Thursday 31st December 2009 08:49 GMT Oninoshiko
even jimbo knows...
"People need to know how to differentiate between information that is published on legitimate sites that follow defined standards and also possibly a professional code of ethics, and information published in places like gossip sites whose only goal is to post the most outrageous headlines and stories in order to increase traffic."
soo.. we should stop useing wikipedia then?
done, and done!
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Thursday 31st December 2009 09:48 GMT Somey
I'm shocked!
The sheer, unbridled arrogance, hypocrisy, narcissism, and utter lack of self-awareness being displayed by Mr. Wales and Ms. Weckerle here are... well, totally predictable and par for the course, actually!
The thing is, on Wikipedia, accusing someone else of failing to be civil is, itself, considered a "civility violation." Wikipedia doesn't have a civil or civilized community, what they have is <i>enforced</i> civility, and the people enforcing it are usually 15-year-olds who are given ban-buttons and precious little else with which to do it. Meanwhile, the current motto on Ms. Weckerle's <a href="http://andreaweckerle.com/">personal blog</a> is "Attack life, wait for nothing." Yeah, that sounds really civil to me, too.
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Thursday 31st December 2009 09:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
'a "national support network" for adults who suffer hostility online'
Who would that be then?
I believe there are 2 ways you can end up facing hostility online:
1) you were actively provoking people, looking for hostility. In which case you can suck it up because you got what was coming to you.
2) you did nothing wrong and were unfairly attacked, in which case you can just ignore it. Nobody is going to jump on the bandwagon to insult you without proof you did something wrong - so the few bad apples insulting you are just that, bad apples. And remember, they'll have no ammunition against you that you don't give them by posting it on the internet to begin with.
Any adult who feels they are "suffering" online, knows where the button to close their browser is. It's that simple.
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Thursday 31st December 2009 10:01 GMT Gregory Kohs
My experience with online venom
Back in 2006, the co-founder of a popular website publicly announced that my approach to the site (one he had helped shape) was “deeply unethical and inappropriate”, and he deleted an article that I had authored. Even though it wasn’t written for payment, and the subject company wasn’t even aware of the article, the co-founder mistakenly assumed it was paid content and thusly labeled it “corporate spam”. Then he indefinitely blocked my user account on the popular website, so that it could not edit any more. Some hours later, the co-founder returned to the popular website to further blast my article, calling it a “travesty of NPOV [neutral point of view]” and “corporate fluff”.
It took him about two years to finally work up the courage to publicly apologize to me for how poorly he handled the situation, but he continued on being a prick to many others besides me.
The website? Wikipedia. The prickly co-founder? Jimmy Wales.
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Thursday 31st December 2009 21:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Takes one to know one, or You're carefully only telling half the story there aren't you?
You carefully omitted to tell us why he might have supposed that your article was "written for payment" in the first place, which leaves us with no context in which to evaluate the reasonableness or otherwise of either of your positions, and so is a clever way of making his action seem arbitrary and putting yourself in the role of the unfairly-maligned victim, but five seconds googling reveals stuff like:
>"Wikipedia has no policy on paid editing, but when entrepreneur Gregory Kohs announced he would create articles for hire, he was banned, and the policy left ..."
So frankly I have little sympathy if you then went and wrote an article not-for-hire and nobody believed you. Wales is a prick but that doesn't logically prove that you *aren't* a spammer / astro-turfer / cheap opportunist of some description.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
