Today's New York Times ran a column called
How to Argue on the Internet Without Losing Your Mind - The New York Times. It's worth reading, but here are a couple excerpts:
quote:
We also find that there is no ‘pay it forward’ for good behavior, but there is ‘pay it forward’ for bad behavior, Dr. Leskovec explained. Negative behavior is much faster to spread and leads to a downward spiral of more bad behavior. The findings were enough for the researchers to conclude that under the right circumstances, ordinary people can behave like trolls. Trolls are not born that way, Dr. Leskovec said. The environment makes them become toxic.
This explains why discussions here almost always spiral in only one direction.
quote:
Researchers at Cornell studied how people win arguments online by analyzing the Reddit community ChangeMyView. Changing a person’s opinion is a common goal in many settings, but is extremely challenging at the same time, said Chenhao Tan, one of the co-authors of the study. It would be very useful to understand its underlying mechanism, and how arguments might shape the persuasion process.
If you go to Reddit's
ChangeMyView webpage you'll see that they're looking for moderators:
quote:
[Mod Post] CMV is looking for new mods
Hey all.
As the sub has continued to grow, we find ourselves in need of more moderators. We're hoping that some of you, the members of the community, would be willing to help out.
What are the qualifications?
- Have some time available. The commitment isn't huge. The minimum is about 100 actions per month (just an average or 3-4 per day, distributed as your time allows - although we'd welcome a lot more.
- Be able to moderate from a browser. Unfortunately, some of the tools we use (Toolbox and Snoonotes) aren't available on mobile
- A passion for doing thankless but important work, knowing you'll get sworn at and abused for doing the stuff we say we are going to do on the sidebar - but also that you'll be appreciated by many of our users and helping to make our little corner of the internet just a little more civilized.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Fix typo in title.