The Economics of Flames in Technical Forums

[gusl]

We need to find a balance between welcoming beginners and not annoying the hell out of the experts. Can't someone come up with mechanisms for this?

Beginners can sometimes be annoying, but they could easily be filtered out by those who don't like them. It seems most people keep a reputation system, about how much they respect each person.

The ignored person should ideally know who is ignoring them (filtering them out), and it should also be possible to label your messages in such a way as to indicate the probability of annoyance (statements, in the case of chat rooms). As usual, what I'm asking for is just collaborative filtering.



http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/7060ad1dc1defc9c

My _actually_ expressed motive, not the Coby Beck rewrite, is to drive
_stupidity_ out and make it so painful to act stupidly that people
stop being stupid.
...
I want a technically stimulating forum. When push comes to shove,
that is what most other people want here, too. However, USENET is a
virtual _magnet_ for idiots and opinionated air-heads,
...
Most people accept stupidity and incompetence in every form they come
across because they would rather be seen as easy-going and friendly
than to get what they pay for and want.

Comments

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Such forums need an "activist." That would be someone who is not an expert and glad to help new people by answering their questions. By the time this person is ready to quit, another beginner should be ready to take the roll of activist. The experts will not read the beginners, but they will read the activist to make sure his/her responses are reasonable and add corrections if necessary. In that way, they are helping both the beginner and the activist. What do experts gain on such technical forums is another question? Experts should ask questions perhaps of other experts. The activists should stay out of these threads unless they are questions that require feedback from all. Well, maybe threads started by experts should be visible to all but only allow other experts to participate and perhaps the activist with interesting questions from the beginners filtered through the activist such that beginner questions are asked in an intelligent way.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Also to deal with the stupidity factor, most people create more exclusive forums. With USENET, forums that are unused or barely used lose the people who use them because such communities are higher noise in that there is usually a poor ratio of actual content to spam. In LJ, we create more exclusive communities based on our "friends" lists, and many of the communities have moderators that cut down on the spam.