How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community

By Cory Doctorow

Good article on how you might control abusive members (aka trolls) in online forums. Worth reading if you intend to use the class discussion or group forums facilities in your module websites. The article also touches on the notion of Bloggers Code of Conduct which was proposed by Tim O’Reilly in the wake of the Kathy Sierra mess. Personally I’m taken with the notion of becoming a troll whisperer and the act of disemvowelling, in which you remove the vowels from the offending message. The idea is that you leave the words more or less intact but require the reader to read more slowly such that the sting is taken out of what’s being said. Alternatively as Stephen Downes points out you could just delete offending messages and remove the trolls from the forum.

Full post