Although I believe that Jon has accurately described the condition of public Internet forums such as the newsgroups, I dispute his conclusion that the Internet is becoming a more hostile place. Rather, we have lost our mechanism for selecting the participants in these areas.
In my earliest experiences with on-line communications in the dial-up bulletin board systems, the gatekeeper was the System Operator. He could (and did) grant or deny access to the system, and anyone sufficiently annoying to the Sysop or the his community tended to disappear rather rapidly. Later, on the academic Internet you had to employ a certain amount of social skills to convince someone to give you access, and the clueless and the obnoxious tended to generate sufficient social pressure in that environment that they either reformed or lost their access.
Today the commercial and public Internet has lost it's gatekeepers. You can walk into most public libraries and colleges and obtain access to the Internet anonymously and at no cost. You can have access from the comfort of your own home at a very modest cost.
The cost to the 'net of this enourmous influx of people who haven't had to "earn" their access has been the near-destruction of those forums on the net that lack gatekeepers who can enforce a code of social conduct. Lacking gatekeepers, only the thick-skinned or the totally oblivious tend to survive. The rest of us seek out those locations with gatekeepers who enforce an effective code of conduct.
Concurrently with the near-death of Usenet we have seen an explosive growth of private Mailing List. (CNet News alludes to this in their article today about the Excite@Home UDP)
I do not believe that the Internet is in any danger of being destroyed by bad behavior. Instead, the 'net is simply growing defense mechanisms against bad behavior that makes it more difficult to discover the majority who are extremely well-behaved and who decline to participate in the rough-and-tumble of the uncontrolled commercial Internet.
The situation reminds me a bit of my days at the University of Arizona: On a public area of campus there was an area designated as a "Speaker's Corner." Anyone (and I do mean ANYONE) was free to stand in this area and say anything that crossed their mind. It was frequently populated by the religious fanatics and the political extremists. Few people took either seriously. Quality discussions took place on campus in the areas of philosophy and political science, but participation in those were limited to people who met certain community standards. If you stood next to Speaker's corner, it would be easy to claim that the University was a hostile, angry place populated by idiots.
My reaction to JonKatz's article is that he has spent a little too much time at the Internet's Speaker's Corner.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I believe that Jon has accurately described the condition of public Internet forums such as the newsgroups, I dispute his conclusion that the Internet is becoming a more hostile place. Rather, we have lost our mechanism for selecting the participants in these areas.
In my earliest experiences with on-line communications in the dial-up bulletin board systems, the gatekeeper was the System Operator. He could (and did) grant or deny access to the system, and anyone sufficiently annoying to the Sysop or the his community tended to disappear rather rapidly. Later, on the academic Internet you had to employ a certain amount of social skills to convince someone to give you access, and the clueless and the obnoxious tended to generate sufficient social pressure in that environment that they either reformed or lost their access.
Today the commercial and public Internet has lost it's gatekeepers. You can walk into most public libraries and colleges and obtain access to the Internet anonymously and at no cost. You can have access from the comfort of your own home at a very modest cost.
The cost to the 'net of this enourmous influx of people who haven't had to "earn" their access has been the near-destruction of those forums on the net that lack gatekeepers who can enforce a code of social conduct. Lacking gatekeepers, only the thick-skinned or the totally oblivious tend to survive. The rest of us seek out those locations with gatekeepers who enforce an effective code of conduct.
Concurrently with the near-death of Usenet we have seen an explosive growth of private Mailing List. (CNet News alludes to this in their article today about the Excite@Home UDP)
I do not believe that the Internet is in any danger of being destroyed by bad behavior. Instead, the 'net is simply growing defense mechanisms against bad behavior that makes it more difficult to discover the majority who are extremely well-behaved and who decline to participate in the rough-and-tumble of the uncontrolled commercial Internet.
The situation reminds me a bit of my days at the University of Arizona: On a public area of campus there was an area designated as a "Speaker's Corner." Anyone (and I do mean ANYONE) was free to stand in this area and say anything that crossed their mind. It was frequently populated by the religious fanatics and the political extremists. Few people took either seriously. Quality discussions took place on campus in the areas of philosophy and political science, but participation in those were limited to people who met certain community standards. If you stood next to Speaker's corner, it would be easy to claim that the University was a hostile, angry place populated by idiots.
My reaction to JonKatz's article is that he has spent a little too much time at the Internet's Speaker's Corner.