"Plague of game dev harassment" (Polygon article)

Wow, I feel like we're actually getting somewhere productive now. Nice done.

Well its less about dissauding trolls and more about creating a more clear cut way of ethics for interacting online. I mean I'm not blanket against anonymity, there are plenty of times where that's useful; but domain owners should take it upon themselves to police their webspaces more.

Of course that depends site to site, depending on each site's culture. But if they choose to be insular and reactionary are going to have to deal with the scrutiny of others. That's how things work.

edited 27th Aug '13 5:52:30 PM by Scherzo09

The internet doesn't exactly have rules. Its just a more..."pure" way of people to interact (no masks)

Assholes will be assholes on the internet and good people will be good on the internet.

Its just easier for assholes to be themselves. Is all.

Then deploy the banhammer on all the assholes.

Well the idea is to corral assholes into the dark corners of the internet where they can't hurt anyone but themselves. They have a right to 'exist', sure, but we don't have to like or tolerate them shitting over everyone else.

The main reason it's easier to be assholes on the internet is because more things are socially acceptable there because of the anonymity it gives.

We need to (ban)hammer home the idea that morals exist everywhere. Even online.

That's the idea; the Civil Rights didn't 'end' racism, but it made it so public displays of racism were no longer acceptable. That has created a generation of people who see the overt racism of the past as completely alien and horrible to them. What we want to do is create a culture that sees that type of asshattery as unacceptable, so that future netizens will have a more civilized environment to exist in.

Exactly! Agreed 100%! That's it!

-Prances in a field of daisies-

Scherzo, thumbs up◊.

That doesn't address that much of the really heinous harassment happens over private channels such as email, PM, etc.

I'm cynical enough on the subject of human nature to be more in agreement with Thom here than not. Yes, ostracize it, don't tolerate it, have there be consequences, whatever, but to actually have it completely stop, you'll have to change human nature. Ignoring won't stop it (I know this to my cost), reacting won't stop it. I've seen really good examples of an almost Turn the Other Cheek empathy response being effective against some individuals but that takes serious skill to pull off and most people don't have it.

(To be clear, I'm talking about general GIFT-induced doucebaggery, not certain more specific harassment issues about which the prior thread got locked.)

That said, there is another approach: giving people on the receiving end the tools and support to mitigate the ill effects. When I first heard of this topic being a thing in the news it was about the idea of setting up support groups for people being harassed. Better reporting/blocking/diciplinary tools in online systems are a part of that too.

edited 27th Aug '13 9:21:38 PM by Elle

That sounds like a great idea, actually.