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I can't help but see your comment as a symptom of the problem it's describing. Not trolling, but geek bias... specifically the blind spot of assuming everyone is as sincere as you. The big problem with comment sections isn't "trolling", it's that most people aren't there to have a fair, rational discussion in the first place. They are there to be entertained or distracted, that will be the main motivation of people doing the browsing. They want to see their opinions and choices validated, while uncomfortable and inconvenient facts are hidden or mocked. At minimum they will avoid anything that reflects badly on themselves and where they can't shift the blame easily. See for example the latest wave of "criticism = harassment" in news sections and on Twitter, where being called out for saying stupid things in public is frantically derided as "sea lioning" which must be stopped. So trying to fix comment sections behaviorally does not work because they stop being comments. At most you can do something like StackOverflow, which follows a strict Q&A format and bans repetition. It's not really a forum, it's a wiki of googleable questions, and like Wikipedia, is mostly unappealing and unwelcoming to outsiders with fresh ideas. Besides, the appropriate answer is not to censor and hide, but to confront and refute. You want bad ideas to be catalogued and paired with their antidote, not let people remain blissfully unexposed, their mental immune system ready to overreact to the slightest provocation. The only forums I know of where everyone gets along with everyone are echo chambers. In real discussions somebody's toes always get stepped on. Real names do not help there btw, people still make plenty of dumb comments with their face next to it, it only helps the offendees play the victim card. I think your "inevitable descent into trolling" is a bad description of how intellectual forums grow their audience: they become more superficial, more emotionally driven and more focused on presentation than merit. Like TED talks. But if you don't grow, you stagnate and turn into an echo chamber. Neither is desirable, you can only try to grow responsibly. You have to allow disruptive voices no matter what. |
That is some of the ideas behind Marc Stiegler's "decision duel" idea in his book "David's Sling" [1]. He envisioned a system where two sides would lay out their arguments, and then the two duelists would link in arguments and counter-arguments to each point. This duel would occur with an audience watching, who would also contribute ideas and research to the duelists.
It is actually the right time to be able to implement something like this now, with the advent of WebGL and other browser technology for the presentation. I was just looking at another HN link about the 'wikigalaxy' visualization system which just hints at what is now possible.
[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3064877-david-s-sling