Image:Troll.jpg
"Do Not Feed The Troll" warning reminds users not to encourage trolling.
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Open publishing forums often encounter the problem of aggressive and disruptive behaviour of users. The most common of these problems are flaming, trolling and hate-speech.
Flaming is the act of posting a comment or article in an open publishing forum that is intended to be hostile and insulting. The person who participates in flaming is termed a flamer. Each hostile comment or article is described as a flame (Wikipedia, 2005a). Flamebaiting is the act of posting a comment or article in an open publishing forum that is likely to start flaming or a flamewar; a series of flaming messages. Flamebaiting is not directly hostile or insulting; rather it is a passive-aggressive method in order to start flaming. The person who participates in flamebaiting is referred to as a baiter (Wikipedia, 2005b).
Trolling is the act of posting a comment or article in an open publishing forum that is intended to provoke and disrupt the discussion of users by producing a large volume of frivolous responses (Bond, 1999). The content of such a post may consist of a foolish contradiction of common knowledge, a deliberately offensive insult to the readers or a broad request for trivial follow-up postings (Bond, 1999). The person who participates in trolling is termed a troll.
Hate-speech is the act of publishing comments and articles that contain racist, sexist, homophobic, libellous content or the use of language that encourages hate or violence. Open publishing sites such as Indymedia frequently encounter such hate-filled posts. Open publishing seeks to provide equal access for everyone to have a space for the sharing of dialogue and information (Langlois, 2004, p.67). However, as open publishing networks have expanded globally organisations, such as Indymedia, have found that articles and comments promoting inequality, homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination, as well as disrespect for the principles behind open publishing itself, have become a significant problem (Langlois, 2004, p.67).
There are several reasons that are claimed to cause aggressive and disruptive behaviour within open publishing environments. The primary cause is the absence of verbal and physical cues (Collins, 1992). Other causes include the time lag in communication, the permanence of the comments, the anonymity and the lack of non-verbal feedback (Collins, 1992).
Communicating on the Internet through a computer, a machine, allows people to feel less human within cyberspace and flaming is a result as the flamer treats the other person as an insensitive being, a machine (Holland, 1996). Flaming is also often caused as people have strong feelings about the subject matter being discussed (Wikipedia, 2005a). Often academic and technical flame wars erupt that raise informative points. A famous flame war was between Andrew Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds regarding the microkernel operating system design (Wikipedia, 2005a).
Trolling occurs for slightly different reasons to flaming and hate-speech. Trolling is considered to be immature and stems from the troll’s need for attention (Wikipedia, 2005c). There is a trolling culture where trolls intentionally set out to disrupt open publishing sites such as web forums, wikis, blogs and sites such as Slashdot and Indymedia (Wikipedia, 2005c).
An example of flaming is publishing a contentious comment such as “Microsoft Windows is the best operating system and if anyone disagrees they are an idiot�?.
An example of trolling is publishing a comment that deliberately reveals the ending of a recently popular movie or book.
An example of hate-speech is the publishing of a comment or article that incites hatred or discriminates or vilifies a group of people.
Open Publishing
Open Publishing - Indymedia
Open Publishing - Slashdot
Virtual Communities - Netiquette
Flame Warriors - an example of flaming culture
Indymedia - a site that experiences aggressive and disruptive behaviour
Slashdot - a site that experiences aggressive and disruptive behaviour
Troll Kingdom - an example of trolling culture
Bond, R. (1999) “Links, Frames, Meta-Tags and Trolls,�? International Review of Law, Computers and Technology, vol.13, no.3, pp. 317-323.
Collins, M. (1992) “Flaming: The Relationship Between Social Context Cues and Uninhibited Verbal Behavior in Computer-Mediated Communication,�? retrieved October 22, 2005, from http://www.emoderators.com/papers/flames.html
Holland, N. (1996) “The Internet Regression,�? retrieved October 22, 2005, from http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/holland.html
Langlois, A. (2004) “The Praxis of Open Publishing: Uniting Philosophy with Policy and Practice,�? Journal for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, vol.2, no.1, pp. 63-73.
Wikipedia (2005a) “Flaming,�? retrieved October 22, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming
Wikipedia (2005b) “Flamebait,�? retrieved October 22, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamebait
Wikipedia (2005c) “Internet Troll,�? retrieved October 22, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
Michelle Manners 16:01, 22 Oct 2005 (EST)
