
The 'broken windows' theory of crime is tested and seems correct - robg
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12630201&CFID=31056247&CFTOKEN=41038121
======
strlen
I wonder how that translates into online communities - both in terms of
wrongful behaviour (spiteful and illiterate comments, trolling) and in terms
of user experience impacting quality of user generated content (wow lot of
user- related buzzwords in the last sentence).

An interesting experiment would be a video/music/file sharing site which
specifically prohibits (and removes) copyrighted content and one that doesn't
-- and how that affects other interactions (e.g. comments, forums).

~~~
robg
I really think there's something to that - broken "windows" in online
communities. A wakeup for me was how trolls are dealt with here and comments
on other sites. Different communities appear to take on the conditions of
their founding and then that DNA spreads as it replicates. However, any
mutations along the way left unchecked become cancerous.

~~~
pg
I'm a big believer in the broken windows theory. I was living in NYC when
Giuliani took over. I was also a Reddit user when it was overrun by trolls. It
was clear there was a correlation between trolling and other types of badness.
That's why News.YC not only bans trolls, but also does things that seem
unrelated, like fixing spelling mistakes and typographical abuses in story
titles.

~~~
robg
I like how you've set the example and then folks here have taken it upon
themselves to help police things. It really has felt like a community watch.

I wonder if the folks at Reddit could have stomped out trollish behavior if
they called it out as it developed. Did users try to do so? Or was it like a
mob smashing windows every where?

~~~
pg
The founders of Reddit had a deliberate policy of never censoring anything.
They only banned spammers. And the trolls arrived gradually, so there was
never a point where it was clear that something had to be done about it.
Exactly like happened to NYC, actually.

All this stuff is still being figured out. I do think that trolling (in the
broader sense) is temporary, though. It's just the kind of bug that happens in
any new system before it stabilizes.

~~~
palish
Is Reddit a stable system? If not, will it ever be?

There is a lot of trolling on present-day Reddit.

~~~
pg
Reddit is stable in the literal sense of not changing, but not in the sense of
being (socially) bug free.

------
jbert
Does a similar effect apply to code?

Perhaps technical debt comes with punitive interest rates, making maintainers
add more cruft than they otherwise would.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt>

~~~
haasted
It does indeed.

Things like amount of unit tests and comments are influenced heavily by this
effect.

It's elaborated further in The Pragmatic Programmer
(<http://pragprog.com/titles/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer>), which actually
introduced me to the concept some time back.

------
JulianMorrison
I read something else into that. You can't be half-hearted, only perfection
will do. It isn't enough to repaint the wall, a handful of candy wrappers will
undo all your good work.

Corollary: litter-precursors (the things that most often get dropped, like
cans and cigarette filters) might need to be banned or somehow forced into
low-litter forms, their cumulative downside looks like it might be harsh
enough to outweigh the property-rights case.

~~~
palish
_"... litter-precursors (the things that most often get dropped, like cans and
cigarette filters) might need to be banned or somehow forced into low-litter
forms ..."_

It seems more beneficial to keep arbitrary restrictions to a minimum. It's
more efficient in the long run to achieve that goal by changing culture, not
by introducing legislation.

~~~
JulianMorrison
The trouble here is that there seems to be feedback - anti-civilized behavior
promotes itself. While they haven't looked at cultural side effects, I would
expect a behavior's prevalence to influence its acceptability.

Where can the loop be interrupted? Probably easiest at the point where no
minds are involved, it's merely physical mess. So, aggressive cleaning. But
for that to be realistic, the spigot has to be closed a little. Hence, bans on
litter precursors.

------
ChaitanyaSai
Reminds of the Just-noticeable-difference concept
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_noticeable_difference>) from
psychophysics. If disorder is evaluated as a general aggregate of cleanliness,
crime etc. An increased baseline of disorder will mean that any personal
transgressions that were perceived as "wrong" before would now be perceived as
lesser wrongs in comparison.

They probably accounted for this, but is it possible that graffiti is
resulting in bikers park elsewhere, implying that it isn't individual behavior
that is being modified, but group make-up.

------
lionhearted
Downright scary to me:

13% to 27% of people were willing to steal €5 from a mailbox. In a first
world, affluent country.

~~~
dejb
Better to take it than allow it to fall into the hands of some
hoodlum/criminal. Seriously I think that would be some people's
mindset/excuse. Especially in the 'Broken Window' case.

~~~
Tichy
If that was the rationale, it would be better to just push it into the mail
box completely.

------
swapspace
Apart from HN, another community which has handled trolls quite well is
MetaFilter.

An interesting paper on MeFi: <http://www.noor.bz/pdf/ali-
hasan_metafilter.pdf> [pdf] I wonder how much the $5 joining fee is
responsible for that.

------
snewe
Not to be confused with the Broken Window Fallacy:

<http://freedomkeys.com/window.htm>

------
alecco
Disgusting.

    
    
      * The Economist (more often than not missing the point and failing on preditions.)
      * No link to original research.
      * Lack of signs of peer-reviewed research
      * Missing analysis of opposing view.
    

This isn't science or unbiased journalism.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows#Critics_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows#Critics_of_the_theory)

~~~
ig1
The article was about the research Dr Keizer has just published in Science.
How is that research not original or peer reviewed ?

~~~
alecco
Somehow I missed that paragraph, sorry. My bad.

Still... The Economist.. Against graffiti... I don't know.

