Are people free of responsibility for rising to the bait?
You ask that as if there were some conservation of responsibility, where the people rising to the bait are responsible for doing so, and this somehow means the troll is not responsible for deliberately giving the opportunity, and by the troll not being responsible, this somehow means the troll is not causing damage.
The damage is the result of interactions of multiple causes, and for each of those causes that is a decision by an agent, you can consider that agent “responsible”. This can get complicated when causes include not-so-agenty behaviors of quasi-agents. At some point “responsibility” stops being a useful concept, and you just have to decide whatever policy it was supposed to inform by actually looking at the likely consequences.
Public notice: I’m now considering this user a probable troll and will act accordingly.
In the future, I may so consider and act, under these sorts of circumstances, without such public notice.
Does any (old-time, trusted) user want to volunteer as the mod who goes back and deletes all the troll comments once a user has been designated a troll?
Does any (old-time, trusted) user want to volunteer as the mod who goes back and deletes all the troll comments once a user has been designated a troll?
That seems like something that should be automated. I could give you a script that (for example) goes through a user page and deletes (or rather sends the appropriate button press that would be a delete command when run by a mod) any comment with less than 0 karma. It would make more sense for this to be an implemented feature of the site but “something I could implement in an hour without accessing the source code” seems like a suitable proxy for “is easy to make a feature of the site, one way or another”.
He could have just been talking about trolling in the abstract. And even if not, after reading a bit of his history, his “trolling”, if any, is at most at the level of rhethorical questions. I’m not really a fan of his commenting, but if he’s banned, I’d say “banned for disagreement” will be closer to the mark as a description of what happened than “banned for trolling”, though not the whole story.
You can respond to the argument.(it might even do you good). or you can refuse to consider criticism. It’s your choice. From which I will draw my own conclusions.
You can state that you’ve never trolled in this site (not even “low-level”) and promise to never troll here (not even “low-level”) in the future.
As a sidenote, previously you argued that people who respond to trolls are also to blame. Now you argue that EY would be to blame if he does not respond to a possible troll.
From this discrepancy I just drew my own conclusions.
A troll (no matter how low-level) wastes time, ruins people’s mood, and destroys trust.
Every actual troll increases the probability that some other innocent newcomer will get accused of trolling wrongly, making a community just that tiny bit more hostile to newcomers, and thus less open to the outside world. Then those newcomers judge the community badly for the community’s negative judgment of them. Bad feelings all around, and a community which is now less receptive of new ideas, because they might just be trolling.
So, yeah, trolling does damage. Trolling is bad, bad, bad.
It could be argued that such trolling can cause circumstantial damage or emotional damage, through intermediaries, with an example that takes a couple of weak steps in reasoning.
It could be argued back that this is circumstantial, and therefore not caused knowingly by the troll, and the example taken apart by all those weak points by giving them actual numbers for their probability.
Then it could be counter-argued again that the amount of possible circumstances or possible combinations of circumstances that would bring about some form of damage is such, compared to the circumstances that would not and the probabilistic facts of the trolling, that it ends up being more likely than not that at least one out of the incredibly many possible sets of circumstances will apply for any given instance of trolling.
I need a sanity check for motivated stopping here, but I don’t see any good further counter-argument that I could steel-man and would show that this isn’t a case of “trolling causes damage in a predictable manner”, unless my prior that such damage would not occur in the absence of trolling is completely wrong.
That’s like saying you shouldn’t drive on your street when Joe is driving because Joe is a bad driver. It’s true that you should update and avoid driving when Joe is out. But you find that out after Joe crashes his car into you. At which point, damage has been done to your car that updating won’t fix.
If you present a depressed person with strong arguments that they should commit suicide, this is likely to cause their beliefs to change. So changing their beliefs back to their old level so that they can continue functioning as before (as opposed to killing themselves) will require work in addition to realizing they shouldn’t talk to you anymore, possibly in the form of support and hugs from other supportive people. Similarly, if your car has been damaged in an accident, it will require additional work to run again, such as replacing deformed parts. The car won’t magically start running once Joe is off the road.
You ask that as if there were some conservation of responsibility, where the people rising to the bait are responsible for doing so, and this somehow means the troll is not responsible for deliberately giving the opportunity, and by the troll not being responsible, this somehow means the troll is not causing damage.
The damage is the result of interactions of multiple causes, and for each of those causes that is a decision by an agent, you can consider that agent “responsible”. This can get complicated when causes include not-so-agenty behaviors of quasi-agents. At some point “responsibility” stops being a useful concept, and you just have to decide whatever policy it was supposed to inform by actually looking at the likely consequences.
I’m still not convinced there is any damage in the kind of low level trolling which is just teasing.
Public notice: I’m now considering this user a probable troll and will act accordingly.
In the future, I may so consider and act, under these sorts of circumstances, without such public notice.
Does any (old-time, trusted) user want to volunteer as the mod who goes back and deletes all the troll comments once a user has been designated a troll?
Thank you! Intentional troll or not, this user’s extremely prolific posting of low-value comments is something I’d rather not see here.
That seems like something that should be automated. I could give you a script that (for example) goes through a user page and deletes (or rather sends the appropriate button press that would be a delete command when run by a mod) any comment with less than 0 karma. It would make more sense for this to be an implemented feature of the site but “something I could implement in an hour without accessing the source code” seems like a suitable proxy for “is easy to make a feature of the site, one way or another”.
That sounds helpful. Let’s give this a shot. (I’m running updated Chrome on Win7 if that’s relevant.)
He could have just been talking about trolling in the abstract. And even if not, after reading a bit of his history, his “trolling”, if any, is at most at the level of rhethorical questions. I’m not really a fan of his commenting, but if he’s banned, I’d say “banned for disagreement” will be closer to the mark as a description of what happened than “banned for trolling”, though not the whole story.
Hi.
You can respond to the argument.(it might even do you good). or you can refuse to consider criticism. It’s your choice. From which I will draw my own conclusions.
Hi.
You can state that you’ve never trolled in this site (not even “low-level”) and promise to never troll here (not even “low-level”) in the future.
As a sidenote, previously you argued that people who respond to trolls are also to blame. Now you argue that EY would be to blame if he does not respond to a possible troll.
From this discrepancy I just drew my own conclusions.
...um, Aris, you’re feeding the troll...
A troll (no matter how low-level) wastes time, ruins people’s mood, and destroys trust.
Every actual troll increases the probability that some other innocent newcomer will get accused of trolling wrongly, making a community just that tiny bit more hostile to newcomers, and thus less open to the outside world. Then those newcomers judge the community badly for the community’s negative judgment of them. Bad feelings all around, and a community which is now less receptive of new ideas, because they might just be trolling.
So, yeah, trolling does damage. Trolling is bad, bad, bad.
Doesn’t it take two to waste time?
Yes, most crimes take at least two people, the victim and the perpetrator.
Isn’t “crimes” just a wee bit overheated?
For very minor moral crimes (e.g. insults) the same applies: the insulter and the insulted. The spitter and the spat upon. The troll and the trolled.
Insults are highly subjective too.
It could be argued that such trolling can cause circumstantial damage or emotional damage, through intermediaries, with an example that takes a couple of weak steps in reasoning.
It could be argued back that this is circumstantial, and therefore not caused knowingly by the troll, and the example taken apart by all those weak points by giving them actual numbers for their probability.
Then it could be counter-argued again that the amount of possible circumstances or possible combinations of circumstances that would bring about some form of damage is such, compared to the circumstances that would not and the probabilistic facts of the trolling, that it ends up being more likely than not that at least one out of the incredibly many possible sets of circumstances will apply for any given instance of trolling.
I need a sanity check for motivated stopping here, but I don’t see any good further counter-argument that I could steel-man and would show that this isn’t a case of “trolling causes damage in a predictable manner”, unless my prior that such damage would not occur in the absence of trolling is completely wrong.
It could be argued that there is a opposite process by which people label undamaging behaviour as trollig so that,eg, they don’t have to updaate.
That’s like saying you shouldn’t drive on your street when Joe is driving because Joe is a bad driver. It’s true that you should update and avoid driving when Joe is out. But you find that out after Joe crashes his car into you. At which point, damage has been done to your car that updating won’t fix.
Too much metaphor. What is this damage?
If you present a depressed person with strong arguments that they should commit suicide, this is likely to cause their beliefs to change. So changing their beliefs back to their old level so that they can continue functioning as before (as opposed to killing themselves) will require work in addition to realizing they shouldn’t talk to you anymore, possibly in the form of support and hugs from other supportive people. Similarly, if your car has been damaged in an accident, it will require additional work to run again, such as replacing deformed parts. The car won’t magically start running once Joe is off the road.
And who is doing that?
I think trolls.
Well, no-one is encouraging suicide here, so there are no trolls here.
Uhh. There are no trolls here, therefore trolls do not cause damage?
I dare say high-level trolls cause all sorts of damage, but what’s the relevance?