(Not being snide - wherever you look, politicians seem to unfailingly be raping and making a mockery of the democratic system. I may be slightly more cynical than usual as we discussed Berlusconi at lunch today, though).
Does anyone have good real-world examples of the the kind of communities we would like to see online? I'd like to hope that degeneration into idiocracy as communities grow is not some kind of natural law.
Well, I'll give a fairly decent example.
I occasionally played tabletop wargames in the past locally and we have a statewide forum dedicated to it.
I've seen disagreements before on the forum, but have never seen anything that would constitute trolling or abusive behaviour. I think this stems from the fact that everyone pretty much knows everyone outside of the forums and so idiotic behaviour can have real-world consequences (eg, not being able to set up games with others)
There is little to no anonymity on those forums and so everyone is quite civil. I suspect that if you make people responsible for their actions that they end up being quite responsible on the forums.
That's not to say there hasn't been the occasional piece of drama, it's just normally localised and doesn't make its way to the forums for everyone to read.
So there's no way to infer from their presence whether they're a representative sample. I mean, people troll and spew racial slurs on -home improvement sites-. I don't think that means Whirlpool and Bob Villa themselves attract the dregs.
So early on it wasn't a problem, my guess is that trolls probably didn't really appear until AOL.
The real Internet is not HN, it's not Facebook or Livejournal. It's 4chan and the comments on Youtube. That's what we built, that's the glorious future, the pinnacle of high tech, the global collective consciousness. How proud should we be?
What's really depressing to me is going to visit the San Francisco Chronicle website, CNN or wherever, and seeing the comment space overrun by arrogant idiots who think they're superior to 4chan, or would if they knew about it. I would far rather be trapped in a lift with a bunch of /b/tards than the over-earnest moralists (of all political stripes) that attach themselves like limpets to the mainstream news and political sites.
The real internet isn't HN, but it's also not 4chan or Youtube. The real internet is the internet -- the whole internet. Tautological but true. As long as there's always some readily-accessible part of the internet without troll problems, then I'd say we're doing okay.
The real progress, though, would be figuring out how those civilized parts of the internet can stay civilized. Some forums have a small population. Some forums have a strong sense of community and ban-happy moderators. Some forums have downvoting, although that doesn't seem to stop persistent trolls. If you've got a better way, discussing it would be fun.
You can't compare that to YouTube comments at all. 4chan's about lulz, not pure unadulterated stupidity. They're not the same at all.
And anyway - not all "trolling" is created equal, IMO. Smart, organised, (dare I say) funny trolling beats random hate and idiocy anyday. I haven't noticed 4chan moving with any particular malicious intent; they just try to amuse themselves, and the causes are as often defensible (Scientology, Sarah Palin mails) as not.
We're always going to have trolls. If 4chan sets the standard for trolling I think we've done pretty well actually. At least they're intelligent.
That said, the caliber of trolling may have been slightly higher. :)
Found... don't know if it counts as a troll, tough: Google for "The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover"
I'm old enough to remember that there were trolls on Usenet before AOL built its gateway to Usenet.
I'm pretty sure that verifying the earliest use of "troll" in the sense of this thread and comparing that with the date of AOL's gateway opening would confirm this.
For me version one would have been usenet, FidoNet and BBS chat circa late 80s or early 90s. I knew then what Trent has finally figured out. Sounds like he really is "living next" to us.