Occam's Aftershave
Posts: 5287 Joined: Feb. 2006
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Quote (Cubist @ April 13 2016,14:55) | Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ April 12 2016,17:59) | Quote (Cubist @ April 12 2016,17:25) | In the field of economics, Gresham's Law says that "bad money drives out good money". It's pretty clear that an analogous phenomenon applies to online forums; I don't think anybody has given it a formal name, but it could be expressed as "the presence of assholes tends to eliminate intellectual discourse."
Looks to me like TSZ is becoming a data-point in support of this proposition. |
The ferment that chew-toys bring, though, needs to be included in the analysis. Perhaps fora lightly salted with, ahem, those sorts of people work best? |
Mmmm… maybe. I suspect that the key is active moderation, with moderators who are willing and able to ban a troll's obnoxious ass when merited by said troll's behavior. I'm pretty sure an old USENET hand like yerself, Wes, can recall any number of unmoderated newsgroups whose decline into substance-free irrelevance are datapoints in support of the "assholes kill discourse" thesis?
TSZ's moderation is very, very light. To a first approximation, TSZ doesn't ban anybody; the one-and-only banned-at-TSZ person is JoeG, and even he didn't get hit with the banhammer until after he posted a blatantly pornographic image. It will be interesting to see how long TSZ can maintain its current level of discourse. |
Does Mung ever do anything during his waking hours besides troll TSZ? He must make 50% of the posts there at least.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
- Joke "Sharon" Gallien, world's dumbest YEC.
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