SFGate.com is the online destination of The San Francisco Chronicle and I’m pretty sure all of their print stories are put on the website but it’s a known fact that the comments on SFGate are only a step above YouTube in the category of ignorance, grammar mistakes and trolling. For those that don’t know, Trolling is, “Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it’s the internet and, hey, you can.” You can find alternative definitions here. Now that we’re all caught up on the definition of trolling, I’d like to provide a few quotes from a recent SFGate article.
The article was posted today and you can read the entire post on SFGAte.com and the story is called, “Comments on news stories a double-edged sword”. The post explains how SFGate’s traffic has exploded since they began allowing comments on news stories back 2007. Page views on the comments grew from 30 thousand page views to over 4 million so comments aren’t going away anytime soon but SFGate along with other publishers admitted that comments aren’t always of the highest caliber and racism, idiocy and trolling is rampant on the site and sometimes the comment wars (AKA flame wars) go rampant and erupt into serious arguments.
As you know, I’ve been a recent supporter of breaking anonymity on the Internet and using systems like Facebook Connect or Amazon to verify the identities of your commenters to help raise the quality of comments and breed a community that serves the reader and doesn’t look like hundreds of simple minded people bickering back and forth. Below are some excerpts and I’m going to comment and offer my thoughts.
The over-the-top declarations and playground humor often spring from the ability to comment anonymously. Most sites have required registration for their commentators, but they’re able to hide behind screen names without punishment, at least until they get booted off for objectionable behavior.
That shroud can be empowering for people who are emboldened to speak up, as if addressing a crowded town square. Or it’s like an invitation to open mike night at a comedy club.
Exactly. Asking for an email address isn’t acceptable and often times, people use fake email addresses or email account reserved for “junk”. Think of a community member as a member of your family. You’re allowing them to post content on your site and this serves to spark conversations and increase pageviews but your first experience with that person is asking for an email address and a username (which can be anything they want to use) and this “family member” doesn’t have the decency to give you an email address they check regularly. It’s similar to allowing my sister’s boyfriend to stay at my place while he’s in town and the first thing he does is give me a fake name and phone number. I think we’d all agree that this relationship is off to a bad start. Let’s continue.
Michael Lee, a vice president for Bank of America in San Francisco, enjoys both options. He often takes to SFGate and the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Web site (he follows the Packers) to present his views, usually from a more conservative perspective. Other times, he tries out a one-liner or two to lighten the mood.
He said he looks forward to the challenge of facing an often-hostile crowd and getting his thoughts across on news as it’s happening.
“If you’re a conservative voice in a liberal environment, it takes a certain amount of courage and mettle to stick with it,” said Lee, 34. “But in the same vein, it’s easier to take a stand online than in real life.”
I think it’s great that Michael is honest about this and he raises an excellent point. I’ve spoken to HUNDREDS of people who spend hours a day engaging with other people on blogs, forums and chat rooms and when I ask them if they would use their real name, they instantly object despite the fact that they are very responsible users and their comments and interaction with others is always free of foul language or trolling. I feel that most people think they need to hide behind a facade but the truth is, it’s not really necessary. Michael is about to post a comment that reflects Bank of America and I understand why an anonymous voice is important to him but I say to him that you don’t have to comment. If you’re a member of the PETA but think a CGI commercial of a duck being hit by a car is hilarious but you don’t think it’s appropriate to comment then you don’t have to. In my opinion, commenting as “steve from PETA” is a great idea! You can be a little official but also recognize the hilarity of an animation involving the duck. The issue of covering your ass and watching what you say stems from a corrupt society and my opinion of, “who gives a crap” but we’ll save that for another blog entry because this is the society we live in and you have to conform or you’ll be out of a job.
Basically, I don’t think you need to comment on every post that you read and if it’s not appropriate given your job, location or political views then don’t comment and tell your friends later over beers what you think but the few people that have to conceal their identity is only a “few people” compared to the millions of people trolling boards, blogs and chats looking for their chance to dump nonsense into the mix with their hatred, foul language and stupidity. I don’t mind giving up a little privacy if the community as a whole improves and benefits from exposing the first name and last initial of its community.
For many, the draw is to just run a thought up a flagpole and see who salutes. JonSmith, a 49-year-old San Mateo technical writer, is often embarrassed by his many comments, which he dashes off in a minute or two, rife with misspellings and bad grammar.
But he looks forward to communicating and connecting with people, finding validation in both the acknowledgements and attacks of fellow readers.
So Jon likes being anonymous because he’s a technical writer and enjoys the fact that he can say, “whatever” to his grammar and typos and quickly spout off opinions about a subject matter. He then loves “shooting the shit” with other readers who either agree or disagree with his opinion. That’s great Jon and I’m happy you’ve found a place to be lazy, give some commentary and participate in a community. However, SFGate is owned by a newspaper that carries itself to a high caliber of editorial integrity (or at least you’d assume that was the case) and your comment that’s full of errors, misspellings and whatever you feel like saying only causes the quality of comments to degrade to the point where people like myself just don’t bother to read them. People that read SFGate to learn something ignore the comments because it actually leaves us with a bad taste.
You being a technical writer can probably find dozens of issues with my grammar in this blog post but I do my best with a limited education on writing but you would be doing everyone a service if you tried your best to be formal with your comments so everyone benefits from a comment that’s easy to digest and understand.
Jon Continues:
“We do this for the response, and if you get a reaction either good or bad, it’s more worthwhile than if you get nothing,” Nadelberg said. “The disappointing moment is when you write something and no one hated it or liked it. That’s when you fail, when no one gives a damn.”
Jon, this is considered trolling (in my opinion) and if you’re saying something to get a positive or negative response from someone, then join a fight club or create an Argument club on Meetup.com where you can meet up once a week to argue with people. What I find interesting is how childlike this sounds and how no one realizes that these tendencies are so animalistic and basic. Maybe some of you have younger siblings or children and I’m sure you have realized that once the kid figures out what gets a rise out of you, they’ll keep doing it because they get attention. Some kids become starved for negative attention and they keep doing all of the wrong things just so you’ll yell at them. What do you do about this? Ignore it and they’ll stop and go away.
I’ve been ignoring trolling for years and it’s not going away. The issue is becoming more widespread but now that we have the tools and software to combat trolling, it’s time to take a stand and force our users and commenters to hand over a valid E-Mail Address, upload a real photo of themselves and use their real name. If we continue supporting anonymity then the Internet will become worse than reality television and I fear it may be too late.
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