
Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities [pdf] - jermaink
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00680v1.pdf
======
krapp
You will not be able to efficiently automate finding trolls with an algorithm.
You may accidentally catch some trolls with it, but this is not really the
same as the algorithm _working_ \- with a large enough userbase you could
randomly ban accounts and probably catch a few trolls as well, given a
flexible enough definition of "troll."

What you will accomplish with an automated filter is a way for trolls to game
the system (that is what actual trolls do), and an excuse for human mods, if
you have them, not to care (or worse, to game it themselves in order to censor
legitimate posters.) "Future banned user?" How wonderfully fascistic. If you
can read that term and feel it's a good way to describe new users to your
whatever community, do everyone else a favor and, please, give someone else
the banhammer.

------
gaius
Du Plessis said, give me 5 sentences written by the most honest of men and I
will find something in them to hang him.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

~~~
ColinWright
Better known as Cardinal Richelieu:

    
    
        Armand Jean du Plessis,
        Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac
    

The quotation is also disputed:

    
    
        Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites
        de la main du plus honnête homme,
        j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
    
            If you give me six lines written
            by the hand of the most honest of men,
            I will find something in them which
            will hang him.
    

Édouard Fournier, in L'Espirit dans l'Historie (1867), 3rd edition, Ch. 51, p.
260, disputes the traditional attribution, and suggests various agents of
Richelieu might have been the actual author.

Source:
[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu)

------
borgia
This is _astonishingly_ stupid. It's also time to retire the word "troll", it
has become so bastardized that its use shouldn't be taken at all seriously
anymore.

~~~
voidz
Care to explain why? Right now you're just making an unbased statement. Please
clarify!

~~~
imakesnowflakes
It is a poorly understood term people use to shoot down unpopular opinion.
This is so common. Here is one from last day where a user is accused of being
a troll for criticizing the new StarWars trailer.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/32yudu/furious_7_cro...](http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/32yudu/furious_7_crosses_1_billion_at_worldwide_box/cqgb4dx)

Another example is my experience from /r/php. If you go there and criticize
the language, you will be called a troll and will be eventually labeled as
such. People are emotional, and they will use terms like this when their
beliefs are threatened. It is an easy response. In a while, everything you say
will be, by default, down voted and even lead to a ban solely out of this
impression.

------
aselzer
It's not just "trolling". the text describes it as antisocial behaviour
(defined as "undesired behavior, which includes trolling, flaming, bullying,
and harassment").

To me it seems like detecting "trolling" could be as difficult as detecting
sarcasm. It requires information about the context and complicated logic.
"flaming", "bullying" and "harassment" usually follow much simpler patterns
(language, targeting specific users).

------
ColinWright
Discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9398399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9398399)

It's not getting much love from the HN community, and has tripped the "flame
war" detector - only 26 points, but 40 comments. Much back and forth, much
heat, not much light.

~~~
krapp
Although, reading that thread, I don't see an actual flame war anywhere....

------
erikb
In a company situation you also experience trolls and you can't get rid of
them, at all. To my personal surprise I find that they, between periods of
stress, also contribute to the company. You just need to get around their
trolling and they can be a productive part of the community.

Maybe instead of detecting them faster we should learn how to integrate them
better. If they troll more when resisted (as suggested in the article) then
maybe they troll less when supported? They are humans, and as humans they
desire to belong, just as we do, right?

------
spacemanmatt
He who controls the topic filters...controls the universe!

------
hewhowhineth
Given the stated accuracy and such a low base rate it looks like it would
yield ten times more false positives than true positives. To eliminate some of
the trolls you effectively eliminate anyone outside the consensus trance. You
might as well use astrology.

But very interesting to see the actual CNN, ING and Breitbart numbers.

------
WhitneyLand
How come so many places don't use a combination of account age and reputation
to score and sort posts?

For example why hasn't Google tried this with YouTube comments?

------
digi_owl
So how long before it flags the whole of humanity as trolls, and go for the
Skynet option?

------
perdunov
The concentration of inside-the-box thinking and bullshit science in this is
unbearable, I think it gave me cancer.

So was this actually written for April Fools' Day?

arXiv:1504.00680v1 [cs.SI] 2 Apr 2015

~~~
pervycreeper
In practice, for active human posters, as account age goes to infinity, the
probability of being banned approaches one.

I look forward to an age when all comment posting and all moderation is
performed by competing AIs.

~~~
reitanqild
> In practice, for active human posters, as account age goes to infinity, the
> probability of being banned approaches one.

Not necessarily?

Every man carves in history an everlasting description of who he is

~~~
perdunov
Every man carves in history an everlasting description of what he has carved
in history

~~~
reitanqild
?

------
Zigurd
In the valley of vanity, viciousness, Full schedules and empty containers.
We’re kissing the coshes that cripple us. Enjoying the Beigeness.

