On anonymous comments

[ciphergoth]

(Unrelated note: LJ is under a denial-of-service attack last I heard. Things may be slower than usual. I hope more net vandals start turning up mysteriously dead in unpleasant ways.)

Inspired by events in faerierhona's journal.

Question: when people get abusive comments in their journal, how come they don't just delete them?

So far I haven't had abusive comments here, but I've seen it happen in other journals. I can see some reasons why those people don't want to delete those comments - I'm guessing that part of it is a "standing up to it" thing - but that I can stand up to it isn't in doubt, it's whether it will benefit me or anyone I care about to do so instead of silently deleting it.

If I think someone's just trolling my journal or trying to get a rise - anonymously or otherwise - I'll not bother to reply, I'll just delete the comments. I'm only interested in justifying myself to strangers in so far as either I genuinely hope either to bring or gain enlightenment or it will entertain me to do so.

As a matter of general policy, I leave anonymous posting on in my journal, and I have IP logging off. But this is so that people who don't yet have LJs can comment, and so my friends can tell me interesting things under cover of anonymity if they need to - I've seen and made interesting use of this possibility so I'm open to it.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The image of "LALALAICANTHEARYOULALA" is certainly evocative, but also misleading. Everyone sometimes decides they're not interested in hearing what someone else has to say for whatever reason; the reason children sometimes express it that way is often because they don't have a better option. Adults will more usually express it by getting up and wandering off, because they usually have that option.

I think deleting the comments is one of those better options. I can't see who except the troll gains from leaving them in place - I don't gain anything, and neither do the other readers of my journal, while the troll gains the attention they crave.

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with that image: that it would be an admission that the troll had hit a nerve? One reason I'm discussing this when it hasn't happened to me is precisely that I'm not in a position of justifying something I've done, so people can't impute such hidden motives.

Fuck 'em: there are a billion web pages out there, and we can't read all of them, so we rely on dozens of filtering mechanisms to find the content we're interested in. My limited control over comments here is simply another such mechanism. If they want to slag me off, they can get their own web pages; I can't think of a reason to give them space or publicity.

[stevenothing.livejournal.com]

I'm being hypothetical here, as I've never had such a troll on my livejournal. But I'd have imagined that deleting something they have posted would just lead to the m posting more stuff. I'd have thought ignoring it completely would be more effective (as long as everyone on your friends list doesn't ignore the usual don't-feed-the-troll guidelines, and jumps on the troll. I guess deleting the comment would stop this from happening.
If I were trolling, I'd think that any action (commenting, deleting) would be a sign I was getting at someone, and prompt me to post more.
As I said, all hypothetical, though.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

People can and do feed the trolls. And they gain some satisfaction simply from seeing their comments there. Silent deletion is likely to be most effective.

If they keep posting, I can start screening anonymous comments and barring non-anonymous abusive users.

[babysimon]

Remember Bob Kiley and NYC subway graffiti.

[Graffiti was a huge problem. Bob refused to allow trains out of depots with graffiti on. The cleanup workload was horrendous for a few weeks, then all the graffiti dropped away. No incentive to do it if it gets wiped almost immediately.]

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and one reason for me to make a declaration like this in advance of any abusive comment arriving is so that it's clear that any deletions are a result of this policy. A comment doesn't have to get to me at all to be deleted; it just has to be a waste of bandwidth.