Comment on Consciousness

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:51:01 GMT

I find the process of (1) identifying trolls, (2) trying to convince them to stop posting and (3) kicking them off if they don't listen to be a very unpleasant experience. It introduces all sorts of negativity and it makes me uncomfortable, mainly because the norms and boundaries are subjective and I empathize (but don't sympathize) with the trolls.

I think it would be best if the process was entirely objective and automated -- people could know the rules from the About page and altercations with trolls wouldn't be required.

The main rule would be that people cannot comment if their karma is below some negative value K.

If we wanted to give a "time-out" (-->stop posting (for a long while)) instead of a ban, then this could be automated by an algorithm whereby anyone with negative karma gets one karma point per day until they're back to 0.

Given this second scheme, I think that even a K as high as K=-1 would be fine, because then a person with K=-1 only needs to wait one day until they can comment again.

Discuss