Dealing with trolls

In recent days I have found myself pondering the complexities of social media. Social media plays a huge roll in our day to day lives, whether we like it or not. For this reason it’s a good time to regurgitate some amazing content created by Sitepoint.

Social Interface

Their posts covers the dreaded “trolls” that loom around your site waiting to get a rise out of someone, including you. Alyssa Gregory does an excellent job of covering the basics, and she isn’t the only one talking about it on Sitepoint. However, too many times the trolls succeed no matter how hard we try.

I believe this is due to poor social interface.

I scratched the first draft of this post. I found it stated the obvious things, who, where, when, and why. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about social interface and how we can use it to create better communities.

Facebook has an excellent social interfaces, I have yet to encounter a troll. Unlike MySpace, Facebook has done something amazing that I think every site should tap into.

Making better communities

First, Facebook did something radical when compared to MySpace. They took a lot of user control away!

Second, they redefined the social culture in a way that’s hard to explain. They created a site were self expression was key and connecting with friends means everything.

Twitter has a different approach. Share what you are doing to the world.

The difference is huge and so are the implications. On Facebook people always know who is specking, they made you their friend. On Twitter anyone can speak to you, or attack you.

Twitter’s approach may smell like bad social interface but its not; its a different type of tool. With Twitter its about who you are in the world not just among friends.  Your reputation is still on the line and if you troll you get blocked or reported.

Whats the key to it all?

Reputation! In both Facebook and Twitter your reputation is on the line, it is critical.

Why? Because people are listening to your “brand” or “name”. They are communicating with you on a personal level; not an anonymous commenter on a blog or forum.

What does this have to do with trolls?

Trolls don’t want or care about reputation. Building a site that requires it will always prove cumbersome to trolls. Like Facebook and Twitter, if we build reputation into our social interfaces we will have a lot less moderation to do.

This is so true that Stackoverflow has built their site around it; and its the biggest programming Q and A website around because of it.

Making a site that puts users on the line sounds scary but it works; and if you have a site with killer content they will be willing to take a chance.