The troll’s tweets: http://twitter.com/WNCGOP … As @HumanFolly says “this shouldn’t be behavior that becomes part of the Twitter hustle and we should push back. Not cool.”

Unfortunately people got sucked in. The troll and responses: http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=1355938289&page=1&q=%40WNCGOP

STOP THAT! “Please don’t feed the trolls”!!!! WNCGOP wasn’t spamming any hashtags. If people ignore him, he’s likely to get bored.

But alas, the troll has now been fed; so we have to do something about it. When this behavior becomes normalized, it marginalizes women. [Ref: Susan Herring, Gender and power in online communications, and many others.]

As Tracy Viselli pointed out in email, the key is to engage without giving positive feedback. So I decided to give negative feedback. Since trolls love attention, why not encourage people how to ignore them — and give steps to make it easier.

My tweets:

RT @HumanFolly: How cute. @WNCGOP is deriving power from being a troll on Twitter. (grr. i hate trolls.) #topprog

A Troll On Twitter? @WNCGOP #gop #tcot #sgp #teaparty, are you embarrassed or proud? #trolls

please don’t feed the #trolls. to ignore, add “-@WNCGOP -from:WNCGOP” to your searches #topprog #p2 #rebelleft

And it appears to have worked! People stopped responding to the WNCGOP, and he dropped the personal insults.

I wonder if we’re on to something here?

jon

because conveniently, Twitter’s provided us with an example-in-progress of a troll. w00t w00t! stay tuned …

What is the point of a hashtag community anyway, if not openness?

Although I am new to this community (Twitter), I am not new to politics or heated debates or technology, for that matter. I think debates are good. One person’s troll could be another person’s convert – it is possible.

Although we probably would all agree on what is not allowed, we may all disagree about what is allowed, considering there is a hazy, grey zone in all interpretations of reality.

As a professor of educational anthropology I have taught many courses on race and diversity. My students were often white elite females. I have learned that it is better to love everyone openly even if those people are closed minded.

Perhaps it would be okay to have someone like Joe, or whomever, step in as moderator such as in a forum? The moderator could suggest through DM, if possible, or if not DM, then replies without the hashtag, that the discussion take place elsewhere.

Or if the individual was abusive, everyone involved should block him or her and not use the hashtag or change the hashtag in extreme cases. Perhaps there should be a back up hashtag used that is more secretive for that evening or week or so.

I hope this short introduction to me and my style of being political has endeared me to you because I would really like to be a big part of this diversity attempt. I can give you my political background if you like under private cover — nothing is truly safe! LOL

An Ignore feature would be great … what I want is a little more, though: ignore, and ignore people replying to this person. For example, I wouldn’t want to ignore either of you; but, if you wound up in a heated discussion with somebody who I’m ignoring, I’d just as soon not see those posts. Things are moving fast in client-land, though, so hopefully Tweetdeck and other clients will wind up supporting that at some point as well!

And good feedback on the techiness, Carlo. Tracy and I will be talking about this as well as other topics at NIM in Reno in a couple of weeks, so it’s particularly useful. I’ll think about how to simplify things.

(To be clear, a more useful and user-friendly option would be a kind of one-click “ignore” button provided by Twitter….)