As the people in your case study suggested, the idea of a YouTube-style voting system is a good one - it would help the sensible lurkers to moderate the idiot's behavior without having to enter the debate themselves. How to reconcile this with freedom of speech? How about you just make the idiot's font smaller, in proportion to how many people think they're an idiot. It won't stop them being idiotic, but it will make them less noisy.

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for being interested in the Noisy Idiots debate - if you're new and would like to read my paper that kicked it all off - have added it again here.

Your recent really helpful comments have given me a lot to think about - thank you. In particular, am working on tightening up the definition of what I mean by Noisy Idiot and thinking about the concept of the neighborhood we are collaborating. Does the environment change the way we all behave as a group - and define what… Continue

"THWONK is an exciting web (4.0? debate) platform and community for designing the rules of online communities such as email lists. THWONK is revolutionary because it gives you full access to manipulate and change the social rules of email list communication!"

http://www.thwonk.com/

(re-adding as I accidentally deleted it.)

I am not at all sure what thwonk is doing really works but it looks like it might reveal useful insights.

Maybe you should put the paper online in wiki form and see what the crowd of angry idiots do to it ;)

I understand that the choice to use the term "noisy idiots" is meant to be eye-catching and edgy, but what exactly do you mean by "extreme" viewpoints? If the Pirate Party or right-wing groups can elect MEPs to Brussels, than it represents in a way, that their views have been institutionalized or become more "mainstream" even if they are still minority viewpoints.

I guess what I have to more c… Continue

I'm also a graduate of ITP and was deeply influenced by Red Burns. Glad you're using ITP to do some online community. I believe their main focus is physical computing, but they do have Clay Shirky, who I think is a genius.

I guess the question is what kind of community environment are you in? how big? web-based? game-based? What is the age of your audience? What's the business model? The answers determine whether social pressure shuts up a noisy idiot, or a staff member has to use network tools… Continue

Am going to use this tag to continue the twitter discussion post PDF - please join in!

I want to be a noisy idiot! Or maybe I already am?

Hi

Thank you for joining this group and being interested in the Noisy Idiot Dilemma. I am really glad you are participating.

I'm Catherine White, a graduate student at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. My research is primarily focused on how we work together in groups, particularly how to make collaboration more fruitful, and efficient (and less painful - because it sometimes is). Specifically, I am looking at groups we are part of online.

My thesis project came out of a midterm p… Continue