[Reader-list] what is to be done?

Thu Jan 24 15:46:29 IST 2008

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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-- 
Nishant Shah
Ph.D. Student, CSCS, Bangalore.
Project Manager, COMAT, Bangalore.
# 0-9740074884