They didn't just choose those criteria out of thin air. They compiled data and ran a logistic regression that was able to predict whether or a not a given user would be banned from a web community based on the content of their posts. And it turned out that negative words, profanity, spelling and grammar were all predictive features in determining that result.

Here's how science works: If you don't like the conclusions, you can question the methodology. You can conduct the experiment yourself to see if you can reproduce the results. You can run your own studies and see if you come up with different conclusions. But you don't get to say "Hmm, the data don't conform to my preconceived notions about how the world should work, so I reject their implications."

Everyone doesn't agree with the idea that every thought from every person should be heard at all times. Some people are just jerks. "Trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations. There are places where that kind of thing is accepted (4chan) and places where it is not (hn). Tools that help communities to encourage their preferred forms of communication are good things, and will be increasingly important in the future.

Having a minority opinion is often perceived as "provocative" by people who feel threatened by that opinion, no matter how well articulated. These days the feeling of being "threatened" is at an all time high. (I say this having participated in discussions online for 30 years.)

The assumption that "trolls" are trying to "incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations" is often repeated, but in practice, "troll" is a term that is often used against people whose viewpoint is minority, but who are legitimately arguing it.

Those with the majority viewpoint often find it convenient to dismiss (and attempt to discredit) those they disagree with by simply calling them troll. And it's not uncommon for forums to be operated in such a way as to actually ban people with minority viewpoints.

> but in practice, "troll" is a term that is often used against people whose viewpoint is minority, but who are legitimately arguing it.

Of course, but the "troll" wants to have that conversation, and the rest of the community does not. That doesn't mean the conversation or opinions are unworthy or wrong, just that they are unwelcome in this context.

Good or bad doesn't matter, the "troll" is a disruptive influence that turns a comfortable place into an uncomfortable one.

Most people don't come to the Internet to have their beliefs challenged, no matter how wrong those beliefs might be.

Right, but you can find correlations between being black and committing crime - compiling data and running logistic regressions be damned.

These measures they came up with are heuristic proxy measures at the very best, and noise at the worst.

The troll hunting algorithm has to face the false positive problem [1], which the paper does not address.

My very legitimate content has been censored various places (notably Facebook) because it tripped 'anti-trolling and scam algorithms' but the things I was trying to post were Snowden and Manning, and TPP leaks.

[1] http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/238

I have. Profanity is a weak indicator.

Disproportionally faster engagement over a given short time period and low variance of word choices along with repeated use of n-grams >= 4 words are all much more indicative then profanity.

Trolls are argumentative and tend to resort to trite sloganish language. They are no more rude then the average commentator (which is fairly impersonal and insincere)

It's about a general discordance with a generic community and what that looks like. There's two kinds: the salvageable and the hopeless. The hopeless is unwavering and defensive - irritable and divisive.

You can see where and when users post - them there are extreme outliers - those are usually bot spammers; the next group in, the first humans, they are the trolls

These are not hard things to compute - and profanity has nothing to do with it.

Alas,yet another thing I should have written up in LATEX and sent off to a fancy journal...

I think high predictive accuracy is not the only important consideration. For science it may be enough, but not for real world usage.

Because once you implement the classifier you affect the world. And you have to take into account what those effects are. Two properties I think are desirable: 1. It should encourage good behaviour. By this I mean that if you adapt to the get a better evaluation that means you also become a better member of the forum. This relates to not being gameable. 2. It should give everyone a chance. For example I could see how being poor could correlate with low quality posts. But shutting out all poor people means you can lose valuable perspectives, so its not an ideal solution. As long as your posts are good you should be welcome, even if your a pleb.

I light of these, consider what filtering for poor spelling actually does. What do we know that correlates with poor spelling? a) being a foreigner. b) being poor / uneducated. c) being underage. Those are the people you filter out. This goes against the 2'nd principle I mentioned of giving everyone a chance. It's a tradeoff, of course, and I could see how it's worth it sometimes.

I think parent was getting at the classical problem of using a scientific result to justify a policy. The problem is that no statistic (not even the proof of a causal link) is enough to justify a policy. A policy is also about the question "what should be". How much do you value each of the conflicting goals - silence trolls vs hear every opinion? The problem is when people think they can answer this kind of question with logistic regression, too.

> Some people are just jerks and "trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations.

I believe the core of paulhauggis' point was closer to the idea that trolling and behaviour that leads to being banned are not the same thing. Scope in studies is as important as anything else.

> Do people that can't spell very well deserve to have their opinions ignored?

Yes. Indeed they do. Good spelling is a mark of conscientiousness and attention to detail. Bad spelling is indicative of loose morals and an addiction to video games and misogyny that should be extirpated from polite society.

Note also that users of a public channel ( Twitter ) choosing to accept other peoples suggestions as to who they should ignore so that they are not subjected to the vilest forms of verbal/textual abuse that humanity has invented; is not censorship.

Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/

I can't tell whether this is serious or a joke, I hope it's a joke since it sounds like taken right from the McCarthy era. Ah, now I understand, you're trying to be a troll, very clever ;)

The gentleman to whom I was replying made a reference to shared blocklists as censorship. Having had to support a couple of friends through the showers of verbal excrement that get thrown their way by a group that call itself "Gamergate".

I am less than sympathetic to the viewpoint that someone can demand the right to be listened to as well as the right to speak. Allow me to be explicitly and excruciatingly clear on that point. You are free to say whatever you want, to print it, to publish it on the internet, to build signs on your property, etc. without fearing arrest or detention. But; you do not have the right to demand that others spend even a fraction of a second of their time on this earth paying attention to you.

And by loose morals I mean that disgusting sense of entitlement to others time and bodily affection that seems to characterize the "Gamergate community".

You forgot to add pedophilia, racism, terrorism, and drugs to that list.

Hundreds of millions of people all over the world speak English as their second, third or fourth language. That fact alone makes them more interesting than some grammar sharia asshole.

Edit: grammar :)

>Bad spelling is indicative of loose morals and an addiction to video games and misogyny that should be extirpated from polite society.

Is that a joke? How can you possibly justify that conclusion?

I was waiting for the /s as well.

Having spent some time on the internet I've spoken and chatted with people for whom English is a second language. Are you telling me that their deficient understanding of English indicates a lack of morality? Is the English language a religion now? Guess I didn't get the memo.

related: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18667

The author is the daughter of Czech emigrants, writing about her experience visiting the Czech Republic, with an focus on the difference between learning a new language as an adult and re-learning a language you once knew. From the link:

> There can be a striking lack of accommodation or cooperation on the part of listeners [in rural Czech areas]. Once, when traveling with my brother, I watched him flounder in Czech at a small town gas station, trying to convey which pack of cigarettes he wanted to purchase—he had forgotten the brand name, and was trying to describe the appearance of the package. Ignoring his pointing gestures, the cashier sat stone-faced through his attempts. When she finally identified what he wanted, she tossed the cigarettes on the counter, saying contemptuously, “As you can see, the package is red, not pink.” My brother apologized, “I’m sorry, my Czech is very bad.” “I can see that,” she replied without cracking the slightest smile.

Experience with second-language learners is, speaking broadly, vanishingly rare among humans. Most people never meet any language learners. The rural Czechs are going by a rule of thumb: someone speaking that badly is more likely to be severely mentally retarded than anything else. (And they're correct about that! If they started seeing a flood of foreign tourists with rudimentary Czech, they'd adjust accordingly.)

> accept other peoples suggestions

Are you insinuating they should accept suggestions from other nations and tribes? Or did you just omit the "'" , thus exposing yourself as a misspellist, a loosemoralist , a videogamist and misogynist? I hope the Trolly Inquisition finds you and burns your router!