forum enhancement suggestions

Posted by Foolness
Sep 13, 2012 at 08:35 AM

Troll protocols exacerbate trolling. (Anytime a protocol can be used as a weapon by anyone, even good users have succumbed to it as a way to shut down the opposing party using the least ethical evidence possible and of course if the opposing party provides counter evidence, then who fired first wins setting aside an advantage by one party over the other.)

Wikipedia have also succumbed to trolling before. See history of competing wikis such as Citizendium.

This doesn’t mean the idea of a protocol is bad but if we’re talking about some of the basic things that have been discovered throughout online communities’ popularity is that weapon capable protocols are extremely unproductive. Especially label protocols.

Especially troll protocols as troll can mean very broad things (but any broad label/positive or negative/ has lead to worse communities long term) For an outlining community who should be familiar about outliners, this is a huge stepback from the basic solutions provided by argument maps which partly solved the issue precisely because of outlining rather than broad labelling.

Once again, if you want a protocol, it’s common enough in most forums but just don’t make it a troll protocol and try to be as reductive as possible. The less broad it is, the less future long term headache it will open up.