Future Workbook: Wired.com Worksheet

Everybody hates trolling. Or at least they would, if they knew what it was.

Trolls are "vicious, raging, insult-hurling" hate-mongers who leave nasty, toxic comments on online discussion-threads. Websites like YouTube have trolls (oh GOD, have you ever read YouTube comments?), and it is a concern of nearly every blog that trolling can interfere with a positive, useful discussion. Websites like The Huffington Post, which mostly deal in politics, are particularly prone to trolling. When President Obama launched the new Whitehouse.gov in January, it lacked any meaningful way for people to comment on the White House's blog. It still does, largely because it does not have a solution to trolling, and the site's administrators may not want hateful speech polluting an otherwise open conversation.

Particularly in politics, it is difficult to moderate people's postings without dealing with issues like First Amendment rights and censorship. Additionally, kicking someone off of a discussion-thread entirely, based on their views, would only fuel their anger. One of the articles I read on Wired.com described new solutions for trolling: Some programs solicit their readers to describe others' postings with comments like "funny" or "off-topic." The system then gives each posting a value (-1 to 5) based on a selection of responses, and those posts receiving low scores are not published. Or, on another system, if a comment or post receives a low score, it is invisible to everyone else, but still visible to the user who posted it, encouraging the troll to think that everyone is just ignoring him (or her).

What do you think about a solution like this? What others could you offer to keep online conversations positive and useful and free from trolls? Or should trolls have the same right to have their posts read as someone else?