You know why Reddit and Twitter became some toxic environments? Because they're not designed for healthy community development. And neither is this. It's a mindless clone and it already looks like it's turning toxic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/
I can tell you right now that reddit provides virtually no useful tools to moderators -- we have to turn to browser extensions to get even basic functionality like "remove this comment and its children" or ability to issue a ban while looking at the offending post/comment -- and that for a large or growing subreddit, moderating is essentially an unpaid full-time job.
So when people inevitably point to /r/askhistorians or similar as examples of "good" subreddits, please keep in mind that you are not seeing something reddit itself nurtured or helped or provided tools to do -- you are seeing something that succeeded in spite of the way reddit is built and run.
How so? Would you expand on this? With Twitter, I agree. But how is Reddit not designed for healthy communities? (I agree that they are not always healthy)
You prevent people from posting terribly toxic comments in the first place, whether that's automatic moderation or warning them that their comment is toxic and to reconsider what they're about to post. I'm gonna plug http://www.getspectrum.io here b/c it's relevant.
Require answering a question related to the topic at hand before allowing comment submissions. I read about this being done by a news site in Europe not too long ago.
Prompt the audience/community with a specific question/prompt that the discussion/comments will be in about. That way every comment is a direct response to the same question. This could help keep things on topic. I think a lot of toxic comments are often from indirect tangents.
What if you could see comments that have been posted only after posting one of your own? That way your primary contribution is an organic thought and not an angered response to what someone else has said.
But there's also just non-technical stuff. Which I would argue is actually more important, since any piece of social software can be perverted if a certain subset of users is determined. A non-technical example: setting community norms. Hacker News also does this reasonably well -- the community doesn't respond well to goofy memes, for example. This isn't something you read in the rule book, it's something you experience by reading comments and feeling out the tone of the conversation. And if you do post something that doesn't fit the community, you'll pick up a few downvotes or some-such. Most users understand the nature of the community so it self-polices relatively well (with a little help from moderators). I think large open communities (Twitter, Reddit) that need to maintain a ton of traffic to make money have trouble with this: It's tough to want to service the community needs of the entire planet and tell people "Behavior X isn't something that's appropriate here."
I'm not an expert and before you tear me a new one, remember that this is a Hacker News comment and not a peer reviewed journal article. I'm just tossing out some thoughts.
But my belief is that designing for communities is actually quite a challenge, and the fact of the matter is most people putting communities up online right now don't really put much thought into it. Which is a shame. It allows a small subset of toxic users to really damage what should be a good thing for the rest of us.
Back in the days of yore -- late 90s through 2006-ish -- community design was actually a pretty hotly debated topic. But, like I said, it really seems like these days old fashioned comment threads (like you see on news articles), Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter have established themselves as the blueprint for community design and people just sort of copy those without thinking about how they do and don't work. And then online communities become toxic and some people assume all online communities are toxic and then some people start thinking all people are toxic and -- hey! Look where we are. (I'm stretching a bit at the end, here, of course. ;-) )
You bring up a great point about the self policing. That's why HackerNews, ProductHunt, and many of the smaller subreddits do quite well.
But what differentiates an old fashion comment thread from a better solution if not the "technical tricks"?
Also, "in the days of yore", when community design was a hotly debated topic, what were the debates about? I'd love to learn more about that discussion.
Again: I'm not an expert. But I feel I've been around the block on this topic.
Some people think it's a naughty word, but: Moderation. Or -- to put it in different terms -- a community manager. That's one way to try to enforce norms. But I'd say that the most powerful way is via intelligent growth. For example, don't just open the floodgates. Grow a community at a rate where newcomers never overwhelm the existing users. Communities that "break" can be hard to "fix" once toxic norms have been established.
The debates would probably seem fairly simplistic to today's ears, but remember that the community design of Twitter (140 chars, public, "following") was a novel idea a dozen-or-so years ago. There was a ton of experimentation with how different communities could be built. Big business at the time!
One place I've found interesting as far as learning about community design is online games. Game designers are trying to design very specific experiences for users, and you can learn a lot by looking at how Overwatch (for example) tunes both gameplay and community to craft that experience. Even when playing with a dozen strangers.
Anyway, maybe those are some leads for you.
When were they toxic environments? Reddit and Twitter are what you make of it.
Are you saying it's toxic because people are able to express opinion that you disagree with?
Nope. That's not what "toxic" means, here. See my comment further up the thread.
Think about what the metaphor of "toxicity" does for speech. By all means, you can find speech to be disagreeable, or annoying, or factually or morally wrong. I read all sorts of things that I disagree with, and some that I find actively annoying. But the metaphor of "toxicity" implies something more -- that these ideas are actually dangerous, and some kind of public health hazard. If something is "toxic" then you don't just dislike it, you need to actively protect yourself from being contaminated with it, and it activates your disgust reflexes. After all, better to be safe than sorry when it comes to toxins, right?
Basically, the idea that ideas can be "toxic" seems to be a roundabout way of inviting censors to come in and save us all from the danger of having to read things that we don't like.
Let's ditch the word "toxic" for things that aren't actually harmful chemicals, and learn to deal with the fact that things we don't like on the internet are best dealt with by not reading them.
If A is discussing with B their plans for my murder, or creating fictional dossiers of alleged crimes of mine and sending them to police and my employer, or sharing compromising photos without my consent, then ignoring them does not work.
Less hyperbolically, it's only safe to ignore the speech of others against you so long as it has no chance of having an effect. Whether that's through legislation or street violence.
Toxicity is exactly the right word for hate speech, because it can cause hate to spread out in ways that cause real injury or death.
Toxic means poisonous. Toxicity in communities spoils the community because people place bickering, verbal fighting, and beating other people at insults over communicating ideas, debating, and respecting one another. It damages and will eventually kill a community as people get upset and then tune out and go other places. And if they don't feel they can go elsewhere, they'll feel stuck, wounded, and bitter.
Hate speech is an example of toxic behavior. At least, that's the reason awful people use it: It's a disruption. It distracts people and angers people so they act out in their own possibly negative ways. It's the whole MO of people like Mile and Ann Coulter: Say offensive things, but then attempt take the high road when people get visibly upset. It's a pattern that can quickly convert otherwise healthy communities into group of screaming upset people. That's toxic.
So, yes, "toxic" is a great word. And communities should protect themselves from toxic behavior.