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One Percent of Reddit Users Cause 75 Percent of the Drama (theoutline.com)
Just 1 percent of all Reddit communities set off 74 percent of all conflicts on the site, a new research has found. The Outline: In the self-published research from Srijan Kumar, Jure Leskoec, William Hamilton, and Dan Jurafsky of Stanford University, "intercommunity conflict" is defined as "negative sentiment to comment in another community." These users wouldn't necessarily qualify as trolls or sockpuppets; they're instigators, posting links to other subreddits and encouraging other users to target, harass, and fight with users on that subreddit.
If they did this for a day or two, it would be the fault of that one percent of the users. After a month or two it would be the fault of the Reddit moderators and owners for putting up with the one percent of the users. After many years, all the remaining users are now to blame for putting up with the Reddit moderators and owners who put up with the one percent of the users.
I've been a moderator of a few forums over the years (not Reddit). The obvious bad-eggs don't last long, they're easy to isolate and remove. A lot of the problems come from people who like to do the wind-up but they do it subtly. People who do just enough to provoke a conflict (sometimes just stoking the fire and sitting back). They never do one act that by itself is bad enough to get them the boot, but they do lots of winding-up, getting other people to overreact. They are the real problem of most forums, and they're hard to justify booting for a single act. They know what they're doing, and they do it slyly.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Pareto Principle.
Roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Reddit seems extreme, but it's not unusual.
Can anyone think of something where this doesn't apply?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
These users wouldn't necessarily qualify as trolls or sockpuppets; they're instigators, posting links to other subreddits and encouraging other users to target, harass, and fight with users on that subreddit.
For those of us old enough to remember what the word "troll" used to mean back in the usenet days, that sounds exactly like what we used to call a troll. Of course now the term has been adopted by the mainstream media, the meaning has changed to mean more someone that causes offence or attacks others.
Ah, true trollery. It's easy to say offensive words. It's art to make others overreact to say them for you.
Now who is more at fault; the one who "winds-up" a thread or the people who overreact? I know it's the troll but there is a reason you don't feed the trolls.
I think it's indisputable that a small number of people create the majority of chaos in any social circle. However, I've observed an increasing percentage of online participants that cannot ignore anything they disagree with (yes, this is a behavior with a long and glorious tradition https://xkcd.com/386/ ).
Everyone seems to be so damn serious these days and no incursion against our beliefs can remain unchallenged (exacerbated by the fact that sarcasm is easily missed when it's in written form). The 1% want drama and we give it to them. The oldest counsel is best: Don't Feed The Trolls.