The Psychology of Online Comments - The New Yorker

[Ginseng]

Came across this rather interesting long form article in the New Yorker.

The Psychology of Online Comments

I found it to be illuminating with respect to some of the incivility we've all seen, experienced, and perhaps engaged in while online.

Wilkey

[khomeinist]

Mildly interesting. Covers trolling fairly thoroughly but what about group-think and synchophancy?

The subtler forms of human interaction on the Internet require further exploration.

[Ginseng]

There are many dimensions and phenomena here as you have noted.

By all means, edify us. Preferably with shorter digests than what I linked because that was substantial by online forum link standards.

Wilkey

[Trevor2118]

I liked the line:

"On (Gawker), in the process of voting a comment up or down, users can set the tone of the comments, creating a surprisingly civil result."

Basically member moderation.

[khomeinist]

Actually Gawker sites are a bit different than standard (utopian?) user moderation. Comments are essentially threaded and promoted according to overall response. This rewards interesting comments or debate points but can also promote a culture of 'cute' puns and other forms of 'hilarity' (gifs, memes, etc).

I like Gawker sites generally but they can be awfully snarky. Not that there is anything wrong with that.