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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

> After reading Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism[1], I am convinced that banning is vastly underused. Many of us are professionals. Our time is valuable; our communities, even more-so. There are so many fools with so many maladaptive behaviors. Considering what else we could be working on, correcting them all simply isn't worthwhile. The opportunity cost is too high.

Let's take it a step further. I don't think any of us would object to paying a nominal fee (say, $2/month) to obtain voting/posting privileges on HN. Although this would drastically reduce the amount of activity on the site, it would undoubtedly increase the quality of whatever activity remained. Not because a lot of people wouldn't be able to afford it, but because a troll wouldn't enter his credit card information and other personal details just to obtain the ability to flame someone on the internet.

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It's an extremely common mistake to think that the pop psychology we pick up by sheer experience is a sufficient measure to understand what works. It's entirely too easy to forget that we, personally, are largely unaware of any proven methods for cultivating gardens. We're running off the anecdotal data that just happens to stick to our brains like burrs on a fur coat.

As others have duly stated, there are many people who are more than willing to pay for the privilege of trolling. It might not even start that way: I paid $40/mo to play a particular online game, and maintained my subscription as my play dwindled and my forum trolling increased. I eventually cancelled, but that was not an altruistic action: I simply needed to stop posting, and to stop paying for a game I didn't enjoy anymore. If someone has a similar experience with HN, you're relying on their self-control to end their own privileges.

Quite frankly, no one knows how to police a community perfectly. This is why religion was invented, after all, why politics exists. And see how that turned out, a few thousand years later. We're struggling damn hard, despite all the progress.

You never know what people will do. Every action, every ban, every harsh or kind word, every (pay)wall around the garden, every disincentive, carrot, stick, every reputation system, every voting system... you're going off your gut, at the end of the day, because there is no unified theory of sociology you can tap to actually justify it.

I think that the biggest complication in this is the fact that the people who want to police others are usually the same people who want to abuse others.

I gently disagree with your post.

But I would agree that the meta anguish[1] that some forums go through is often driven by people who just don't know any better and who probably shouldn't be given any power.

[1] they start small and really good; they get popular; someone decides that something must be done; there are long and bitter threads about moderation; mods get appointed; and then there's a slew of stickied threads and rules and closed threads and bizarre restriction.

How about this: the need to police others often comes from the same root as the need to abuse them.

> Not because a lot of people wouldn't be able to afford it, but because a troll wouldn't enter his credit card information and other personal details just to obtain the ability to flame someone on the internet.

Patently incorrect. People have been paying for the privilege of abusing others at least since the days of Ultima Online (just to name one example). So-called "griefers" have a presence in every online community, even the paying ones.

Though I agree with the spirit of what you're proposing - erect a barrier to entry to make people decide how serious they are - in all likelihood it will only deter a few trolls and will almost certainly keep out future valuable contributors.

IMHO, I think the best way to keep trolls out is to not respond to them, and to continue writing quality HN contributions. At times I've been discouraged over the last year that "HN was on the decline". Each time, I've been encouraged by the fact that the elders of the community seem to come back and raise the tone again.

I think if you stick around long enough and learn to use your karma score as a barometer for what type of discourse is valuable and which is not, you can eventually become a good contributing member.

I would have agreed with you until reading Freakonomics.

By charging trolls, you are essentially validating their behaviour - "I'm paying for this, so I'm your customer! The customer is always right!"

Even worse, you warp the social structure into one where those willing to pay get to make the rules, removing the sense of community and pushing people away.

If you haven't read Freakonomics, I believe he's referring to the case of a nursery school that decided to fine parents if they were late in picking up their children. Instead of starting to be on time, the parents actually came later, as they were willing to pay to be late.

That I am.

Finishing the story: when the nursery stopped fining parents, the behaviour didn't improve. The parents saw this as a paid service that became free.

Trolls and malcontents have infinitely more time and will put infinitely more effort into abusing a community than good standing members will in participating. Trolls will jump through every hoop. I've seen serious trolls not care if their personal details are known; they're unafraid. But I've seen honest valuable members work extremely hard to keep their information provide.

SomethingAwful is a great example of how poorly the "require payment to deter trolls" method works. It completely warped the user base into a pseudo-facist circle jerk.

MetaFilter does symbolic payments for a different purpose (controlled community growth) and that is working out well.

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