Finally I recalled the last resort of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: "Let them eat brioche."
Yeah, we've all been here before so many times. Inevitably, when people begin to lose patience with anonymous comments, the argument is made that they empower the powerless. Then, inevitably, there are comments about freedom of speech. Then, eventually and equally inevitably, the forum either goes to seed entirely or freely anonymous posting disappears. You might as well skip to the last step.
In the last forum where I saw all this, an anonymous poster had the chutzpah to complain that his comments would be less effective, if he couldn't pose as several different people. That was one of the strongest arguments against freely anonymous posting.
That and more generally that some anonymous posters act like they own the forum: "Censor me and I will quit in protest! I demand my rights!" Or they counterfeit credibility with claims about themselves: "I was shot three times in the Vietnam War! I know what I'm talking about!" Apart from whether the comments are "rude" or "polite", eventually the forum is too fake to function.
Anonymous comments creates a way for those without power to question the status quo, or for anyone to ask potentially stupid questions without worrying to embarrass themselves.
There were a number of heated discussions in the comments section related to STOC/FOCS selection process, basically all of them were initiated by anonymous comments. Yes, there were some trolls, but there were also insightful comments left by STOC/FOCS PC members, shedding light on the selection process, providing suggestions to improve the current status - which I believe end up benefit the community as a while.
By introducing a second-class comments track, not only the trolls are punished, but also the above-mentioned groups. Do we want to end up in a state where punishing the guilty is more important than assuring no innocent gets wrongfully punished?
Basically all trolls want is attention; the worst thing that could happen to them is we ignore them. Next time, when you see a troll, please ignore them instead of wasting your time trying to reason with them.
It's an ironic quote in this discussion, because the accepted explanation is that the quote is an anonymous fabrication.
The internet is full of trolls. I am surprised how anybody could be shocked by any sort of "nasty" comments. Have you looked at comments on typical news sites? On Youtube?
One obvious way to handle the volume of comments that recent events have caused would be to have people vote on comments and to show them according to their ranking. This is the model used on several link aggregator websites (like slashdot). Trolls tend to get pushed down to the bottom. This doesn't make a lot of sense when there are 10 comments, but when you start to get 100 comments or so, it could be useful.
Anonymity is good, trolling is bad, anonymity plus refusal to delete trolling = comment section turns into garbage.
My preferred approach is treat this place like a classroom: yes, free speech is absolutely vital in society, so everyone is entitled to start their own blog and write what they want on it. THIS blog should not attempt to be a forum for that. So, encourage open, civil discussion, and on-topic questions (even if stupid), but delete trolling aggressively.
Yeah, that's always the trajectory. Eventually, moderators "refuse" to delete the trolling because they can't; there is no good place to draw the line.
Yup, I agree with Greg that its hard to draw a line between the good and the bad, and to designate an axis of evil comments.
For me, there is a presumption that an anonymous post should be ignored, unless it clearly states with "I am posting anonymously because ..." with a solid reason given (the reason "I am a student" is good enough, for example).
First, I am certainly not married to the two-track idea, it is just a proposal for resolving the dilemma very nicely summarized by the previous poster:
Anonymity in itself can be good, since people can express more freely. E.g., the recommendation letters are almost always anonymous. To be fair, most of the anonymous comments on this blog seem so non-controversial that they could be as well signed. Still, perhaps not all.
However, anonymity also enables the troll behavior. Unfortunately, there are several reasons why simply ignoring the trolls does not work. Here are some of them:
- There is a cost of sifting through trolly stuff. There is only so much nonsense you can read before it starts getting to you. Most people are put off by jerky speech or behavior. I know a few people who stopped reading this blog for precisely this reason. At some point you need to make choices.
- We (as in, the TCS community) are not the only ones reading this blog. E..g., let's say there is a rumor that someone proved a major theorem, and people arrive at this blog to see what this TCS thing is all about. If there are unlucky to stumble on some of the threads, the impression is that we are a pretty mean crowd. "Insular" would almost sound like a complement in comparison.
Now, going back to the two-track proposal. It is certainly not perfect. It has some advantages though: it is relatively low-maintenance; it still enables anonymous comments, so issues can be raised; everyone can switch tracks by (literally) just signing up; it provides incentives to sign a post (which often works as well). At the very least, I think this is something to consider.
The worst comment was in the Dana Moshkvitz comments. There was a comment that accused Bill and Lance of being pedophiles.
My preference would be to continue to allow anonymous comments but to moderate them much more stringently — remove or disemvowel obvious trolling, pro-pedophilia advocacy, etc. My experience is that the forums that do this (e.g. metafilter, boing boing) are much better behaved than the ones that allow anons to comment completely freely (this one, and plenty of others that are much worse). Of course, all that moderation is more work for somebody, and I'm not volunteering to do it on anyone's blog other than my own...
So this shows that 11011110's idea of disemvoweling a troll is almost as effective as disemboweling a troll physically in public. To complete the process, remove all the 0's of the troll like this: 111111.
Death threats should be reported to the police. Even for anonymous comments IP address would be recorded by blogger and the police can try and trace the originator of this threat.
Tempers occasionally run high in the online world as in the real world :) Should cool down soon enough. Freedom of speech is gr8!
I would not be surprised if after 50 years from now some historians and TCS researchers come to this blog to see how TCS folks were thinking half a century ago.
So some cultures use threats of religion to keep you from the “flesh”, while others insidiously use mathematics! Same difference! Hmm! Mathematicians are quite gullible people for all their purported smartness…
Mommy Mommy I just posted a proof on the arXiv can I have my milk and cookies and an adult diaper change now? ROFL :D
News of GP's solution and rejection of the prize(s) arrives on July 1. Dick Lipton pulls up a British-Indian (Hardy-Ramanujan) reference on the same day.
(Anon. 26 points out Lance is Michael's student . And Dick Lipton was a teacher of Michael's! Michael Sipser's MIT was trapped by teacher and student. Scott Aaronson is from Berkeley like Michael Sipser. So is Stephen Cook!)
Canada is a franchise of the British queen. No wonder Canadians fear and hate Starbucks for having more global franchises!
Vinay Deolalikar - an Indian citizen, India was a British colony for about a century until 1947. August 15, 1947. rjlipton broke the news a week before August 15th, 2010. On August 8, 2010.
Hmmm. Not exactly a win for the British so far. But they’ll never give up trying to make the US a franchise again.
USA helps bankroll Israeli dominance in the middle east with impunity in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Supported by Christian Bible Prophecy and Zionism.
Americans find out they're not invincible. They decide to softly ally with a "non-violent", "neutral" "democracy", India. Suddenly they are also into "green" ideology to attack the financial nerve center of OBL - oil.
Now, the Christians (jealous Berkelites and others) and Indians (who hate the $200,000 vote of no-confidence) are back at the throats of the Jews (Michael Sipser and Scott Aaronson) again!
I can vouch based on the words of a Muslim who has spent time in Saudi Arabia that Muslims don't want to eliminate the Jews. Hindus want to eliminate Muslims for starters. Christians want to eliminate Jews and Muslims for starters!
I like the ideas, however, similar to Habermas’ critique of functionalist reason (his refinement of a more vaguely and globally defined ‘instrumentalist’ reason) is potent, he is often caricatured as a stool pigeon for a ‘grim,’ arrogant Enlightenment agenda. But reason isn’t somehow hostage to arrogance. Independent views, that are given rationally structured expression should not be taken as somehow exposing an inherently arrogant nature of reason. The capacity to think rationally isn’t hostage to anyone’s agenda, in particular to complex issue like this. That’s the whole point of a discursive theory of judgment. Nice blog otherwise.