thoughts on "ignore", anonymity and reputational systems

It is a commonly held believe that anonymous posting is a prime contributor to online trolling and bullying. Being able to hide behind a fictitious username and avatar icon offers a false sense of protection that some posters use to express themselves in ways that they wouldn't if their identities were known and they could be held accountable for their words and actions.

It is also a common belief that anonymity is a necessary safety precaution for Internet usage. I believe nothing could be further from the truth... Facebook knows who you are, and every site that uses facebook's API (application programming interface) has access to much of that information.

These days we are constantly being bombarded with information regarding our government's misuse of our personal "meta" data. The truth is many - if not most - of us have willingly given that information up when we joined the social media revolution. (How many of you have noticed that the ads on other websites are targeted to your passion of the theater - Pippin / Kinky Boots much?)

Here on this board, Dear Rob…, is one of the most popular threads currently running. Clearly we have a "troll" "trolling" "bullying" problem. It has been discussed and agreed that soon we'll see the reinstatement of a past feature, "Ignore".

I am an Information Architect by profession - I design the interface for high-end websites. (My portfolio includes Citibank and hp to name just two.) I can't predict the future, but I can say that current Internet science believes that there is a reason why the "Ignore" feature wasn't used and eventually went alway. They don't provide the user with the optimum experience and hence they don't work.

I briefly wrote about reputational systems in the, Dear Rob..., thread. It didn't get any traction and even one user put it down without truly understanding what they are. (I blame my own laziness for not explaining it more clearly.) I also attached a link from an article regarding The Huffington's Post move to remove all anonymity from their comments feature.

If BroadwayWorld truly wishes to make a serious effort to remove the negativity that plagues this site, they would work with their developers to research such reputational systems and even consider removing the anonymous nature of our membership.

1. Anonymity: Who cares what we post. We're discussing theater, not terrorism. Why shouldn't we include our names and even a photo. It might even be fun, as those of us who are local - and our visitors - might recognize each other and begin conversations and actual live social interactions and not the "facebook" kind.

2. Reputational Systems: (a better explanation)... This is not as the poster who condemned such technology believed. There is no "scorecard" in the traditional sense. It is not gamification or even a contest. It is a tracking system that accounts for many aspects of social media. Using an algorithm system, it considers each user and each user's reaction to each and every posts.

How this is accomplished is quite complex and perhaps out of budget for a site like BroadwayWorld, but to clear up the misconceptions, I will try and offer a simplified explanation...

Each user is given what in the industry is considered, "karma" points. Everyone gets them. As you become more and more a trusted source, your karma increases. If on the other hand your activities are suspect, they decrease. Attached to every post is a flagging system where a user can "like" "dislike" "report" etc. a post that they find positive or offensive. That flag is valued based on the user who does the flagging and how many flags a post receives. Again, a very complex algorithm. If there are multiple flags reporting a post as abusive, the karma points reflect that. Know that the karma points don't just go against the poster, but also for those who point out the abuse. Again, also weighted by the history of the poster and those users reporting the post.

All of this is transparent to the user, but creates a far more effective queue for the few moderators to check the offending post and deem whether or not it should be removed. Again, the ultimate action of the moderator also effects the karma system.

This is how most of today's larger "social" websites work. It is the only practical way that such sites can work. (Can you imagine how many moderators it would take to check every facebook post?)

Per The Huffington Post, who employs such a system, it was still not enough. They are going to be pioneers and deem that posting on their site requires removing your anonymity. This is the direction the web is going. Get ready for it. It is coming.

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 10:45 AM

i would never want to go to a party where everyone agrees with everything i said, and nodded like a lemming at every thought. which is what some of the more arrogant and insecure here want.

sounds like church. or the politburo

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 11:06 AM

There have always been plenty of us who disagree vociferously here.

That is a separate issue from people who troll and try to claim they are being isolated because their opinions are different. It's not true. It's the trolling.

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Another thought on the economics of forums... I don't know BroadwayWorld's business model, so I have no special insight, but I do know that BroadwayWorld uses facebook's API and as such the data gathered here is of great value.

(Whether or not BW charges for that data and how its exchanged, is outside of what I know, and is truly none of my business.)

As I wrote above, why do many of us here think that the ads we're being served are theater related? (Not just here, but across the web including your email's inbox.) It is not a coincidence. Your posts here on BroadwayWorld deem you a consumer of theater - and other related products - and that combined with a whole lot of other data is why you get the ads you get. (This is also an over simplification, but like reputational systems, a very important part of today's social media.)

This is today's marketing technologies. It is now just a fact of life.

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 11:24 AM

FindingNamo... I also wholeheartedly agree with your post. The problem is that some people here use the term "troll" and "trolling" loosely and as such stop some genuine posters from expressing their opinion.

Personally, on more than one occasion, I found myself stifled by being called a troll. Yes, it is my own fault for allowing that poster's comments to effect me, but it hurt and my natural tendency was to avoid the sting.

Calling people / posts a troll / trolling can be just as "mean spirited" - if not more so - than the posts they disagree with.

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 11:32 AM

yeah, but back then vee crushed zem like leetle vorms under the boots uff our glorious reich!!

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I am really all for people wanting to make a fresh start for whatever reason, including personal behavioral rehab and reputation rebooting. My dream filter would add a sig file that for the first 100 posts the new identity makes that would say: "this poster had a previous identity on Broadwayworld"

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 11:45 AM

"yeah, but back then vee crushed zem like leetle vorms under the boots uff our glorious reich!!"

Some of them have evolved and the insecticide is no longer effective.

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i was going to make a similar comment, Taz. Do you know how many people have multiple identies on FB? I was talking to someone on a different discussion board who claims to have more than 50. She comments on her own posts, she uses some to be nasty, others to bully. Heck to get someone banned from the very group we were talking on she claims to have reported a poster from ALL of her accounts.

You can put whatever systems you want in place. People that want to stir up trouble are going to figure out how to do it. At least with this ignore button, I get to choose.

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I think anonymity is important here since there are many posters who are, to one degree or another, in the industry. They might not feel free to post here if they were not anonymous, particularly given the nature of the business and the public/press scrutiny it attracts.

Sondheim.com used a karma/smite program for many years. It was eventually eliminated because it caused more problems than it solved.

Some of the problems included posters who would pop up constantly in every thread to say they were giving you karma, because it had become the custom for you to then offer them karma back. It was worse than people who find self worth by collecting friends on facebook that they don't even really know.

Another problem was people became too aware of their karma number. So much so that they would notice when it went down one. Then some would stomp around demanding to know who smote them and why.

It really turned into grade school stuff and never prevented any trolling because trolls don't really care if people like them. Trolls would probably even feel good about having low karma scores.

It caused all kinds of hard feelings. And I'd go so far as to say that the site is now pretty much a shadow of what it was partly because of the karma system.

I agree with Dramamama. With an ignore system, I don't have to play into any annoying validation games. I can just choose who I do and don't want to deal with.

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 11:59 AM

You lost me at:

I can't predict the future, but I can say that current Internet science believes that there is a reason why the "Ignore" feature wasn't used and eventually went alway. They don't provide the user with the optimum experience and hence they don't work.

I used it and it work brilliantly for me.

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""Calling people / posts a troll / trolling can be just as "mean spirited" - if not more so - than the posts they disagree with.""

so true, its a way to try and make those you dont like isolated and tarred

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A recovered memory from the Ignore Button days:

If you're like me and you frequently read the boards without logging in until you come upon a thread you'd like to add your voice to, you can see every single stupid post from every single troll you had hoped to never read again.

For instance, if a troll tells somebody that the troll ALSO doesn't use capital letters and people don't like her for THAT and not the fact that she's a horrible troll who trolls trollingly, then you might find yourself engaged with the very person you had hoped to never see evidence of again.

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Updated On: 8/23/13 at 12:45 PM