Hi Carla,
Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/WP/WP02-03B.htmlI thought it was a good read - it gave me some new ideas about how to engage in constructive discussion in a community like debian-women. Naturally the situation described in the paper isn't completely the same as here, but anyway I thought the rest of you might also be interested.
That's a pretty good link. Could you be persuaded to write a short description and send it to Jutta? She is putting together a links page. I'm working on some contributions for the links page too.
After trying a couple of times for a good short description without coming up with something I like, I'd suggest either using the title:
"Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum"or the abstract, which sums it up nicely, but may be longer than Jutta wanted.
" A common phenomenon in online discussion groups is the individual who baits and provokes other group members, often with the result of drawing them into fruitless argument and diverting attention from the stated purposes of the group. This study documents a case in which the members of a vulnerable online community—a feminist web-based discussion forum—are targeted by a “troller” attempting to disrupt their discussion space. We analyze the strategies that make the troller successful and the targeted group largely ineffectual in responding to his attack, as a means to understand how such behavior might be minimized and managed in general. The analysis further suggests that feminist and other non-mainstream online forums are especially vulnerable, in that they must balance inclusive ideals against the need for protection and safety, a tension that can be exploited by disruptive elements to generate intragroup conflict. "
Or does anyone want to write a better, shorter description than that? Helen.