Lemmie wrote:
EAllusion, I appreciate your sharing this information.
The disruption you are describing, where posters begin to preemptively label a poster as a troll, and are moderated for it, is a common scenario described in the literature. It is typically described as "mocking the troll," where "they may undertake behaviour that appears to be trolling [back], but that actually aims to enhance or increase affect, or group cohesion." This strategy is not usually found to be very effective, for reasons similar to what you listed above.
It typically arises in the context of what the literature refers to as a cycle within a disruptor's "covert superstrategy." It involves a disruptor engaging repeatedly in behavior covert enough to avoid moderation, but disruptive enough to frustrate other participants who view the lack of moderation as favoritism. Eventually this culminates in a critical mass of frustrated posters who, having lost faith in moderation's ability to protect their community, begin to openly point out the issue. At this point in the cycle, the troll is still inserting himself into conversations but is careful to repeatedly point out that his intentions are good and that he is being victimized, leaving moderation with no choice but to conclude, on the basis of the open behavior, that posters other than the troll are in need of moderation.
It is extremely difficult to assess, post by post, when a disruptor is using a "covert superstrategy," in a nutshell the literature seems to conclude that the analysis of long-term patterns is vitally necessary but too time-consuming for typical moderation boards. Some algorithms are being currently tested, but their originators point out that if even a pattern can be identified, a good enough troll can figure out how to change his pattern.
(quotes from "An overview of trolling strategies,"
published in Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict )
I think you have to take into account the context of moderation's purpose on this forum. The reason I mention this is general moderation strategies in forums are too heavy-handed for the aims of the forum. The idea is to let people freely exchange ideas even when those ideas are inflammatory to the sensibilities of each other. This is in the context of the forum being started by people philosophically committed to robust tolerance of free speech who were trying to encourage discussion of a topic where people with opposing viewpoints tend to be suspicious of the motives of each other and tend to view each other's reasoning as scandalously wrong. The idea of specific forums with different content moderation is the grand-compromise for allowing people to decide some conversational guardrails for themselves.
To me, it is quite notable that I've seen thoughts expressed by MG, both in private reports and in public, viewed as deliberate attempts to provoke reaction in others even in instances where he is saying things I've seen him say quite sincerely as far back as 2003. On some level, it's just what he thinks. Prior to his foray into uncharacteristically mean-spirited trolling, that's more or less how he posted for years. To the extent that he understands his reasoning is frustrating to others, he might be passive-aggressively trolling, but that's traditionally within the bounds of acceptable behavior in the forum. People have handled it fine for a long time. Recently, he seems to have gotten under the skin of a few posters here and now his argumentation being frustrating ends up being an invitation to strike out. This is unfortunate, as you hint at, because if all he was doing is trolling, that's exactly what he'd want.
When it comes to passive aggressiveness generally, my inclination is we need to moderate it in a way that is analogous to regulation of speech in criminal law. If someone passive-aggressively provokes you to throw the first punch, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't have thrown the first punch. The right to be wrong, especially in this forum, is too important for us to be deciding who is obnoxiously wrong in a way that is intended as disruption. We've had people passive aggressively troll the board here for years who did so far more blatantly than anything MG has done. Several of them are still routine contributors. We trust participants to be mature enough to follow the rules and ignore them if it's something they can't stand. Trolling, in of itself, isn't against the rules. That's because one person's trolling is another person's insightful comment. We all get to be wrong in the eyes of another at the cost of having to tolerate terrible reasoning and the occasional
Poe.
I should note there's a whole behind the scenes moderation story that I'm privy to that makes this conversation a little tricky. Our policy has been to keep the exact content of private reports private unless otherwise requested by the reporter. MG was moderated, quite significantly in some cases, but I know that wasn't to the satisfaction of some posters. I would have no problem going down report by report and explaining why some were addressed as requested and some weren't, but the sense that he is "getting away with it" hasn't been correct at least since there's been a focus on him. It is the case that calls for certain things he has said to be moderated weren't, but I think there are good reasons for that. I specifically highlighted one example I dismissed in the moderator forum because it was so ridiculous I was flabbergasted. Frustration over not responding to some of those reports looks to me like frustration over not censoring someone disliked by the people doing the reporting. I view my job as to protect unpopular speech in those instances.
Finally, I think I should reiterate that I personally think it's perfectly fine to discuss MG as trolling if someone wants to do so. I didn't moderate the label, nor to my knowledge has Shades or Res Ipsa. I only addressed it when it was used in the context of a personal attack. As an analogy, you are perfectly free to imply or outright state that another poster is lying. You can call them a liar. However, if you just randomly show up in threads and write posts like, "Another lying post from the liar. Liar." I think I would be compelled to move that to telestial because context suggests it is a personal attack in the form of dismissive insult rather than dialogue. Some of these are going to be tough calls, but I think what we're trying to look at here in terms of context is reasonably clear.