[Reader-list] what is to be done?

[Vivek Narayanan]

Strange... I have no idea about the recent "incident" that you all are 
talking about...  I feel completely calm and happy with what has been 
happening on the reader list.

Oh, wait a minute, that must be because I have 58 unread messages (since 
january 21) that went directly into my "bullshit" folder!  Time to go 
and delete them, I suppose.

Vivek

Tapas Ray wrote:
> I agree with Aarti and Nishant. I have been using filters quite 
> effectively against these individuals, whose crudity entertained me 
> initially in a perverse sort of way, but became tiresome after a while. 
> There is no need for anyone to engage with them, since it is now clear 
> that their objective is not to take part in rational debate but to 
> destroy this space by swamping it with hate speech. (The reason, I 
> think, is that they know they lack the ability to engage in reasoned 
> debate, and cannot hope to "win" it.)
>
> Mail filters are effective and can be put in place by anyone in a few 
> minutes. Nishant's suggestion about tagging and reporting abuse is also 
> good, but having such a system would mean someone, acting as moderator, 
> having to spend part of his/her day because of the actions of these 
> individuals - and I do not think they deserve so much importance.
>
> Tapas
>
>
>
> Nishant Shah wrote:
>   
>> Hi Arti, All,
>> I have been a silent lurker in these days of virulent invective and
>> hate-speech that have unfolded on the reader-list. I haven't been silent
>> because I had nothing to say, or that I was not provoked. I haven't been
>> silent because I did not feel equally angered, sometimes to such an extent
>> that I had to walk away from the computer and swear for the nth time that I
>> will just unsubscribe from the reader's list. I have been silent because I
>> do not think I have the vocabulary to counter arguments that are based on
>> nothing more than personal prejudices, or the resources to deal with emails
>> that read a little more than poison pen.
>>
>> However, there is also another reason why I prefer to be silent, as missiles
>> are hurled from one end to the other, one camp offering peace flags and
>> reasons, the other camp packaging the same in mails that resemble hand made
>> grenades used in violent spaces. Out of long habit of dwelling on various
>> digital forms, I have realised that the behaviour (read as writing) of some
>> of the members who have come to haunt this particular digital platform, can
>> only be classified as 'Troll'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll).
>> And as the classic motto goes, 'Do Not Feed The Troll.' There have been many
>> discussions on the reader-list about questions of censorship, moderation,
>> facilitation and so on. Each time a particularly venomous bunch of people
>> descend upon the reader-list, probably abusing their office time and
>> professional resources to spew horror on to the unwary people, we talk about
>> the possibilities of lags, of delays, of moderation and of down-right
>> banning. However, all these, as we have have often observed, will lead to
>> nowhere. Death, assassination and banning on the interwebz is unfortunately,
>> only notional, symbolic. There are no finalities to either of them and the
>> banning or the moderation of one ID would only lead to the Trolls spinning
>> of many more IDs which would then come back for their pound and a half of
>> flesh.
>>
>> Hence, IMHO, the best thing to do is to stop FEEDING the TROLLS. I second
>> your request that there are so many other more fruitful ways of engaging
>> with so many different topics, that it is almost criminal (in the non-legal
>> sense of the word) to waste time and resources in trying to convince the
>> digital equivalent of a black box with six pre-fed scripts and no semblance
>> of intelligence - artificial or otherwise. We might, next, as well start
>> arguing with characters in a novel, parts in a movie, components of a
>> website. Instead, it is best to just move on.
>>
>> Having said that, I also realise that it is sometimes difficult to move on.
>> More often than not, Trolls specialise in putting their finger on the exact
>> right spot that triggers our buttons and induce instantaneous combustion.
>> And hence, there will always be people replying to these Flames that come
>> our way; unfortunately thinking all the time that they are doing
>> fire-fighting, when actually they are just adding fuel to the Troll Fire.
>> One technical measure that I can think of - and this takes away the
>> unenviable job of a list moderator - is to implement a tagging system in
>> place for all mails that come to the reader list. This at least, allows
>> people to tag their mails - sometimes the titles are misleading and provide
>> no warning for what is to come - so that when a mail arrives, the readers
>> can see the tags and decide for themselves whether they want to read the
>> mail or not.
>>
>> The second suggestion I have might be more open for discussion - Most user
>> based free spaces of interaction in the cyberspace have developed a policy
>> of reactive resistance to what they look upon as an abuse of the space or
>> its resources. Under such a policy, you do not ban users from saying what
>> they want to say, in whichever way they want to say it, but instead allow
>> other users to 'Report Abuse' against a particular user. The Terms of what
>> constitutes Abuse can often be generic but also be very specific in nature
>> and can have a large consultation from the people who have any stake in it.
>> Reporting Abuse eventually needs some sort of a moderator who either
>> resolves the problem or simply marks the charged person as guilty of abuse.
>> Many times, the reason for this marking is also made public. This ensures
>> that some IDs which are seen as destructive or Trollish, can appear
>> differently in the conversations, flagged as potentially abusive in nature.
>> This also helps in new readers or readers who have more invested in the
>> questions, to stay away from the responses that these IDs might be
>> generating.
>>
>> I hope both these suggestions sound feasible. I would be available for
>> further communication or planning out of the architectural integration of
>> such sort to the Reader's List. I am glad for your intervention and pleased
>> to see that instead of wasting time in responding to the Trolls, we are now
>> looking upon them as symptomatic to a certain kind of problem that emerges
>> in 'free speech and free space' and trying to constructively deal with them.
>>
>> Un-lurking after a long time,
>> Nishant
>> On Jan 22, 2008 12:54 PM, Aarti Sethi <aarti.sethi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> It is becoming more and more difficult to read the writing on the
>>> reader-list. From misogyny, the likes of which I do not recall ever seeing
>>> before, to threats of physical violence against women's bodies, to
>>> right-wing Hindu vitriol, what is going on? It is actually now painful to
>>> have to see 37 responses on a thread which deserves not even one, because
>>> people are valiantly trying to talk rationally, reason with, respond to
>>> people who should just be told to shut up. I know its very hard to keep
>>> quite and let things go, especially when we have exemplars like chanchal
>>> and
>>> vedavati on this list. But we are all just getting fatigued now with this
>>> relentless barrage of invective and hate that the list is constantly
>>> subjected to.
>>>
>>> So now I am asking for solutions. What is to be done?, as Lenin asked many
>>> years ago. What is to be done to save the reader-list? Can we have a
>>> discussion on this? Clearly responding to them in any rational fashion is
>>> not a solution. And I frankly have no interest or hope that anything any
>>> of
>>> us can say will make any difference. This is not about me refusing to have
>>> a
>>> conversation, because the fact is, they do not want to have a conversation
>>> at all. And i think that is quite clear from the writing on the list in
>>> the
>>> past two weeks.
>>>
>>> This is a request to to please stop engaging with them. Lets ignore them,
>>> lets not respond to them, lets please just mark all their mails so they go
>>> into our collective trash folders, lets talk about other things, anything.
>>> They can then keep talking to each other about the wonderful Hindu nation
>>> they will build ad nauseum. But we dont have to listen to this. And of
>>> course they will claim this as a victory etc etc. How we cant respond to
>>> them, how we have nothing to say to their brilliant argumentation. I can
>>> already predict the responses to this mail. But I have no trouble saying
>>> that they are right. I am limited by my own linguistic incapacity to
>>> respond
>>> to writing which is so poisonous.
>>>
>>> And a final qualification about my use of "us" and "them" and any
>>> questions
>>> regarding othering, insularity, assumption of moral superiority etc etc. I
>>> can unabashedly say that I have absolutely no problems creating this
>>> binary
>>> divide. I have no issues saying that these are people I want to have
>>> nothing
>>> to do with, as far as I am concerned they are unethical and violent and I
>>> dont see why they should have any purchase on my time at all. There are
>>> far
>>> more interesting things being said and there are interesting people saying
>>> them who I would much rather read, than the reams and reams of boring
>>> hateful drivel that constantly issue from the likes of chanchal..
>>>
>>> If anyone else has any other ideas please lets hear them. And if anyone
>>> has
>>> forgotten how to make filters so you can trash the trash, here is a link
>>> to
>>> Vivek's very instructive mail on the matter:
>>> http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2007-November/011005.html
>>>
>>> best
>>> Aarti
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>>>     
>>>       
>>
>>   
>>     
>
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