Subject: PEN abuses

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 07:01:46 -0800

The December '92 issue of IMPACT! (a magazine put out by the Boston Computer
Society on social impacts of computing) has a good article about PEN, the
community access network run by the city of Santa Monica.  The second half
of the article focuses on problems and abuses encountered with the system.
Specifically, they have trouble with conversation on the system being
dominated by a small, vocal, abusive minority, with the effect that lots
of users don't participate for fear of verbal attacks.

We've seen very similar patterns with Community Memory.  We had always
attributed it to the anonymous nature of the system, but PEN (which 
requires real names) sees the same thing.

The article mentions a number of ways people are dealing with the problem.
Women using PEN (who are under-represented and particularly targeted) have
formed a support group.  A few private conferences have been started.  And
e-mail has been used to confront abusive behaviour in a less charged 
atmosphere than the public conferences.

Part of the potential of computer communications is to reduce social
barriers to communications.  But it appears that it also weakens a lot of
social mechanisms which facilitate communications.

What information or experience do other people have in this area?
-Carl

---

From: Jeff Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 16:59:28 -0800

> of users don't participate for fear of verbal attacks.

Hmmm.  Sounds like the old Telecom.priv, and is why I stopped
submitting Calling Nunber ID news and commentary there:  it drew too
many abusive flamers.

At last year's DIAC conference, sysops for the Well, SF Net, and other
services described various methods for dealing with obnoxious users.

One method I recall is to build into the system the ability for any
user to automatically reject or filter out messages from any other. 
It's important that users whose messages are filtered by others be
*told* that, so they know that they are bothering others.  In systems
where users make up their own "handles", people who find themselves
filtered under one alias may just exit and come back in as another, but
over time they may tone down their obnoxiousness.

JJ

---

From: [email-masked] (Foobar Spam)
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 12:14:14 -0800

> <some deleted>

We have the exact same experience on our county wide network here in
some of the discussion forums.

In addition, I have also noticed the same behavior patterns on every 
academic or industry network I have ever been on.

Doug mentioned some discussion at DIAC about how to allow people 
to 'turn off' abusers and obnoxious jerks. This boils down, technically,
to having the system comm software support selective gagging on named
individuals.

On a slightly esoteric note, this reminds me a little of Santa Cruz.
The earthquake of '89 pretty much leveled the downtown. When the plans
for rebuilding were discussed, the City Fathers decided they wanted to
change a couple of things. There had been a 'problem' before the quake
with homeless persons, dead heads, street people of various flavors,
hanging out downtown. The merchants decided that these people were scaring
away business. So when the oppertunity to rebuild the downtown opened
up, one of the things they told the planners was that they wanted no
shade trees on the sidewalks, no long benches to sit on under the shade
trees, etc. In short, they asked the planners to submit an architecture 
designed to exclude a certain class of people.

While the technical ability to selectively gag, or exclude, undesirable
elements from discussions is easy to implement and already has been in
many networks, I am disturbed by the intent which is implied. Not 
necessarily disturbed as in against the concept, disturbed in the sense
that this is something we might want to examine in our roles of
network providers/consumers.

An alternative path is to try to provide the kind of leadership and 
support so gagging is not necessary. This would include the
following elements:

1. orientation of new users to the net and VR relationships. preferable
   to kicking them off the pier and expecting them to adapt overnight.
   seminars, workshops, etc.

2. not moderators, but 'wise elders' (?) to monitor forums, and if
   an individual starts tending to abuse or obnoxiousness, engage in
   email discussions to try to work it out in private. these people
   take a certain amount of responsibility for the _tone_ of forum
   discussions (not the content, which is what moderators or censors
   do)

3. periodic face to face gatherings, for people to meet each other in
   RL and develop 'meat' relationships (as our cyberpunk friends in
   Mondo 2000 might characterize it).

4. keep discussion forums limited to a local geography of participants
   if possible (to make #3 above possible)

As I say, I am not necessarily against the technical controls, especially
as they allow the network user to 'fine tune' their incoming signal to 
noise ratio as they see fit. 

I would rather see a network culture develop in which use of kill files
or gags was never thought necessary, where everyone can participate and
feel powerful and safe without need of technical compensators (for the
overly agressive or overly 'timid').

In that sense, getting the computers, phone lines, hardware and software
is the easy part. Putting together the safe community is the hard part.

ccn

-- 
	"This looks like a good place to pitch camp. 
	 Art's too subtle for these swine..."
			-Knuckle Buckalo

	          [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Foobar Spam)
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 14:39:57 -0800

> to 'turn off' abusers and obnoxious jerks. 

Whoops.
Jeff was the one who mentioned this stuff.

ccn

---

From: Jeff Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 09:19:43 -0800

> to having the system comm software support selective gagging on named

No it doesn't.  It boils down to letting individual users filter
incoming messages.  No one is excluded from the system.  Everyone can
continue using it.  Obnoxious flamers can keep right on flaming.  But
those who don't want to listen to them don't have to.  This sort of
functionality is a subset of the "information lens" technology that Tom
Malone and others have suggested for years:  give people mail filters
based upon, e.g., topic, sender, date, etc.  Such functionality can be
provided regardless of whether the system is e-mail based or bulletin-board-based.

JJ

---

From: Pavel Curtis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 09:57:58 -0800

> Date:	Mon, 8 Feb 1993 09:19:43 -0800
> From:	Jeff Johnson <[email-masked]>
> 
> It boils down to letting individual users filter incoming messages.  No one
> is excluded from the system.  Everyone can continue using it.  Obnoxious
> flamers can keep right on flaming.  But those who don't want to listen to
> them don't have to.

I think that it may be naive to believe that gagging at the receiver is really
enough of a solution to the `obnoxious jerk' problem.  On LambdaMOO, a question
like the following arose:

    Suppose that a jerk enters a public room and begins making slanderous
    comments about you.  In response, you gag that person.  Other folks in the
    room, however, see the slander continue and, further, do *not* see you
    defending yourself against the accusations.  By the frequently-used
    `silence gives consent' assumption, you are losing a great deal of face, so
    isn't your gagging of the jerk worse than ineffective in protecting you?

(The actual question on LambdaMOO concerned sexual harrassment, and whether or
not the gagger was still being harrassed.)

I think that virtual societies may need more collective mechanisms for
protection than simple, individual-receiver gagging.

	Pavel

---

From: [email-masked] (Foobar Spam)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 12:18:52 -0800

> those who don't want to listen to them don't have to.

I am using the term 'gagging' in the MUD sense, which is exactly 
as you describe above.

I also didn't mean to imply, with my blurb about the re-planning
of the SC downtown, that a user be excluded physically (or virtually)
from the system. Merely that architecting such mechanisms into the
system don't deal with the core problem, merely a symptom.

The real problem has to do with the dynamics of VR relationships.
There is no software solution to _that_ problem.

One thing that needs to be remembered is that we are people networkers,
not computer networkers. (A point brought up by a CPSR person at one
of the DIAC panel discussion...) There is a point where the technology 
can take us no further, at least unilaterally. We also need to be working 
on the human side.

So yeah, let's put filters in the software.
But let's also make them unnecessary.

How many people on this mail list are on the west coast?
Let's all meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a banquet room
and some hot sake and get into this. It's a tough nut.

Who's flying into town for the Privacy conference, or Usenix?
How 'bout it Peter?

ccn