Raise the Hammer

Forum moderation when it works optimally — requires very few editorial interventions or up/down voting tools - 'to achieve cooperative outcomes'.

On Open Salon, multiple discussions and comments seem to be working in harmony for a long time — [ ...more on Open Salon, and the genesis of blogging, and what it is becoming...]

While trolls do often damage discussions, silencing them by the less common approach of leading/teaching by example with dogged persistence, is a far better way to achieve progressive outcome in conversations.

Locally we have many people who get easily fatigued by reading full paragraphs. Our local journalism in response invented 'one sentence paragraphs' as a response - which in turn, over time, has reinforced a tragic way of thinking and responding in our city — as often seen in the many wise 'one-liner' responses on our many local blogs.

A lot of the spiraling in our conversations in Hamilton springs from this rapid response 'one-liner mentality' — which provides triggers for competing viewpoints or trolls to jump in and do the damage.

The Nash equilibrium could help us in developing an approach that takes us beyond this cyclic action-reaction, tit for tat play — towards a deeper understanding of crowd behavior, its predictability, and how predictable conflicts can be mitigated to achieve progress.

One approach if I may suggest, that could lead to interesting results is to show all the "comments" made by registered users on the corresponding existing 'Author page' (below their Articles & Blog entries).

This compilation, easily searched by Google, would act as a self-enforcing factor for registered writers who continue to post comments in an irreverent or negative manner. (Very few would want to see their silliness neatly compiled on one page). This solution would be quite simple to auto-implement, given that each comment is already tagged with the user ID.

A similar approach could be taken with some clear thinking (i.e.voting down threshold), for unregistered comments that categorically spiral a conversation — by simply compiling them on a new 'RTH Graveyard page', which would be fun to read on a slow day!

Over time, this simple approach could also provide some good research insights into how collective positive behavior comes to impact deviant individual behavior on this forum.

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"The Nash equilibrium is used to analyze the outcome of the strategic interaction of several decision makers. Nash equilibrium has been used to analyze hostile situations like war and arms races and also how conflict may be mitigated by repeated interaction."

"It has also been used to study to what extent people with different preferences can cooperate, and whether they will take risks to achieve a cooperative outcome."

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Mahesh P. Butani

Comment edited by Mahesh_P_Butani on 2010-07-01 15:35:15