I don’t think the solution of online community disruption is necessarily in verifying the users in a community (though, it would help); the solution is to manage the content the users product and the ability to manage those accounts effectively.

Many of my pains in managing destructive communities, was not solely directed at the frequency of illegitimate accounts; rather the inability to manage content in a method that would scale. (For instance, someone who posts 300 unacceptable messages, I need tools to manage those messages accordingly.)

Though I haven’t followed WaPo’s history in online community, I would imagine that every large journalism source receives the same vitriolic response from critics. I want to say this because even for the Arizona Republic (AZ’s dominant newspaper), about 15-25% of comments just criticize the coverage of a story rather than the story itself… not including the usual array of hate speech and off-topic targeted attacks.

Shifting gears a bit, another thing the Post can do, is not to silence their disruptive users [entirely], just provide users who can maintain positive community discourse more voice. (I mean that’s what we all kind of hope for in posting comments, is to get attention, right?) That is, if one’s comments are rated highly they are “bumped” upward in view instead of being buried on the last page. As a byproduct of this, it enables moderation of disruptive comments to become less labor-intensive when it is done from the bottom of the queue upward.

Paid-communities are great when managed effectively — but usually (as Brady eludes to) people will behave better when they have something to lose or can be identified easier. Something Awful Forums are a great example of this, and from what I hear, they have fun with it where members can pay more money to sanction another member — maybe not the best discourse in community, but discourse nonetheless.

Anyhow, thank you for your insight on this topic. Hopefully whatever WaPo does, they do it with reasonableness and consider their audience in the decision and perhaps other news syndicates.

~Joe

I think Jim was saying that he wasn’t sure how to do it, but that some method for assuring people who “choose to participate in a community” (after all, washingtonpost.com doesn’t lasso people and drag them into the community)are held accountable for abiding by the guidelines they agreed to when they joined the community.

You have a short memory if you don’t remember your frustration with not being able to track folks who disrupted communities you managed.

As long as The Post or any other site are clear about the purpose of the community interaction, the behavior expected, and what will happen if guidelines aren’t followed, then a user can make an informed decision about whether or not to participate there.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I once managed community for washingtonpost.com and it’s earlier version Digital Ink. In the Digital Ink days users had to post under real names and those names were verifiable by credit card (it was a paid service). Later, when we became a free service as washingtonpost.com, we still expected people to post under real names and there was a verification process.

I think a business has every right to design and define community any way they want. Users have the right to decide whether they want to participate or not. That’s what makes things interesting.

NYM