Funny place the internet.

The lack of the subtleties of tone and body language mean that sometimes innocent remarks are taken as insults - it's happened here.

But there are some people who are, or seem to be, determined to cause trouble.

I've been doing a little study about this for my new college course.

Using a football forum as a model because

a. There are lots of people on it

and

b. Opinions tend to be more forcefully expressed.

I monitored the site for 6 months, logging disagreements, arguments and downright shouting matches.

The results are quite illuminating.

Of the 316 incidents, one poster could be assessed as the aggressor, either in language, controversial view, or criticism/unfounded claims in 224 cases.

These cases featured 189 forum members, accounted for by certain member appearing more that once.

Of these 189 members 182 used anonymous type user names.

182 out of 189.

The others either had a full name or a Christian name/initial.

So what does that tell us? It would seem that the biggest trouble makers use a pseudonym.

There are many reasons for using a pseudonym, and I’m not suggesting that everyone who uses one is a trouble maker. I think it may be cause and effect – the anonymity gives the poster a feeling of invulnerability. A bravery that they would not have except for their anonymity. This means that they will use insults and make unsubstantiated claims because they think they are “safe”.

Most people use several forums and I’d appreciate your feedback as to whether you think this theory holds true, either here or in other forums.

Much Appreciated

Chris

Theory? I would have thought that it was almost, but maybe not quite, self evident fact that the anonymity promotes aggravation.

Similar to on the road behaviour, people do stuff they would bever dream of doing as pedestrians on the pavement

John

I've been told I'm "Reading too much into it", but I think it's valid, it was a long survey and the results are pretty clear.

Cheers

Chris

hmmm na

see you have to think about the bigger picture…

folk outsides the forum could do a very simple search and locate posts done by anyone who uses their name or even part of it

when I worked at shell, they did searches on the web for potential job applicants, quite funny the stuff we use to pull up, having pub crawls, pi$$ ups and being arrested sprawled all over the web in glorious colors is not the greatest thing for future (on not so) employers to see... not to mention the topless table dancing

as for this site, the type of persons you refer too were hardly unknown anonymous posters, we all know fine well who everyone is

i think its very very rare for anyone to use their real full name on any forum. have a look the the picture archive thing, and in this case, its probably about half and half (just looking through the A's for example)
of those using names, its usually first name and initial of surname (blakep, chrisg etc)

I would actually say its more coincidence. maybe more a case that forums in general have this effect (because its not face to face) and the names people use is kind of standard on forums. not sure there's a great link myself. er, you w*nker

*i'm joking!

In our field of work as "private" fraud investigators we work on about a 60% success rate in finding out who a forum user name really belongs to. That's without using any specialist IT tools and working similar to how Mr W described above. The rate amongst those under 30 is much higher (about 80%) but us oldies bring the average down.

So as much as people think it's anonymous - it's usually not.

Correlation does not imply causation here I'm afraid - just because the people making the comments were anonymous doesn't mean they made the comments because they were anonymous... or vice versa.

In order to assess this, you should see what proportion of user names on said forum were anonymous, as a proportion of all users (try to control for posting frequency) and then see if there is a difference in proportion in the 'offensive' posts. That would help to give some force to your argument that the anonymity leads to offensive posting....

eg: 90% of offensive postings were made by anonymous posters, whilst only 45% of a random selection of control postings (n=xx, P<0.05)

(unpaired T testing, or Mann-Whitney U test (if not assuming normality) would be good statistical tests)

Chris

[Edited on 27/10/08 by chrsgrain]

[Edited on 27/10/08 by chrsgrain]

Theres a great cover for your college work:

why not to use things like facebook...

be anonymous & keep your job

might not be totally worksafe linky

Explains why I am so mild mannered and not contraversial at all!

Many football supporters verge on being tribal, so the fact there is animosity / aggression on those sites doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Take a look at the Football365 Forum and contrast it with the PlanetF1 Forum. Both run by the same group, but VERY different rules of posting, types of user and levels of self-moderating acceptability! The Football365 Forum is littered with aggression, porn, foul language, racism, etc. The PlanetF1 Forum has a more 'sarcastic' feel to it, geekery and compliance. Hell, during the Max Mosely saga, the word 'nazi' was censored!

One forum that I found very interesting as a 'social study' was the SELOC (Lotus) forum. It had it's good guys, it's cheeky guys, and it's bullies. Unfortunately, when I was last a member, the number of bullies (interestingly in one communicative group) turned the place into a cess-pit and forced many decent spuds out with their bile. One of the main protagonists ( a truly revolting character) gave his full name in his 'profile' and linked it to his company (of which he was a director) that boasted of dealing with many 'blue-chip' organisations. I often wondered what these trading partners would have thought had they been pointed in the direction of some of his internet musings?

Thanks chaps!

Chris

I've got some figures on the forum.

Active posters in 6 months - 987

58% of these posters have a completely anonymous username.

Percentage of offensive posts (by my own rules) in general posting (whole forum)over 13765 posts is 4%.

Percentage of that 4% posts by anonymous posters - 79%

Cheers

Chris

chrisg,

Can I ask what defines a 'completely anonymous user name' please?

What I am questioning here is, where there is a facility for creating multiple sign-ins, which one (or more) would you, for instance, define as anonymous and why?

1. Fozzie...(a name derived from my surname which I have had since knee high to grasshopper, and of which my brother also had at school)

2. Fred Bowen... a name, completely made up, but a proper name nonetheless

3. CYF......totally meaningless to everyone, but real as it is a persons initials.

Or do you clarify anonymous as in their profiles devoid of all info ie blank, and not known to admin,

Or just because the 'name' is meaningless to you, but not particularly to their peers in their locality........?

Just interested to know.......I mean, just because you have signed up as chrisg, for all I know you could be Fifi LeBlanc in 'real life' .........

Fozzie

Real names / psuedonyms.

There are many people who I know now in that other universe known as 'real life' who I first encountered in here.
Several use my real name now, others have stuck with the shortened version of the psuedonym as often seen in here.

Go figure as they say in the western colonies.

This was the criterion I used. It wasn't easy. The major fault is of course honesty on sign up, but I couldn't do anything about this. I worked on the theory that an equal number of posters from each group (real name/anonymous)would be honest. I had no option.

First sort - People with obvious non names, eg "ytuyty, 34545" into group one.

People with apparent real names who signed their posts - tentatively into group two for observation.

Second sort - profile search for real name information in group two. confirmation in profile - into group three.

Nicknames - obvious correlation with real name in sort two - into group three.

Double identification, for example user "Bluebear" identified by social contacts as "Dave" Treated as anonymous, on the basis that their initial sign in was not in their real name - into group one.

Multiple identities - apparent real names, treated as real names but obvious alter egos discounted.

Multiple identities - no apparent name amongst them, treated as anonymous, where possible alter egos identified and discounted.

I observed the posts over the entire period to try to place posters in the correct group via peer identification and annecdote - some people give away quite a lot about themselves in forums.

Any posters not placed in group one or three by the end of the survey discounted.

Phew!!

Cheers

Chris

quote:

---

Originally posted by chrisg

Active posters in 6 months - 987

58% of these posters have a completely anonymous username.

Percentage of offensive posts (by my own rules) in general posting (whole forum)over 13765 posts is 4%.

Percentage of that 4% posts by anonymous posters - 79%

---

Thanks Chris,

Would it be valid to take a random sample of posts now, as it's outside the survey period?

I might be able to do it using a search in the archives but there are only three months records - the forum in question ran into legal trouble and removed thousands of posts.

There are obviously too many variables to insist upon a complete proof of my theory, but I'd like to get all my ducks in a row before I hand it in!

Cheers

Chris

Obviously in an ideal world would have been better to get it at the time, but now would give you an indication - the important thing is to be honest about the data - just say that the random posts were measured after the others - risk is that the pattern of posting has changed over time - in your discussion you'll then need to make an argument as to whether or not you think that is likely, and how you might, in future work, go about demonstrating that change.... nothing is ever finished!

Once you've got that data (say 50% of random posts are posted anonymouslyf in a sample of 100 posts) you can statisticsally compare the obscene posts and the random posts to se if any difference is likely to have occurred by chance, the routine statistical standard is 5% - so if there is a chance that it would have occurred by chance only in less than 5% of samples, then it is said to be statistically significant.

Hope that helps - if you need a hand with the stats let me know.

Chris

Thanks for that chrisg

All good interesting stuff......and chrisgrains too!

Fozzie

Thanks Chris!

Cheers

Fifi LeBlanc

I try to only ever say things on forums that I would be quite happy to say face-to-face, and I can see how it would make sense that I also wouldn't mind using my real name as my username.

Keyboard warriors really do bug me, as do the people mentioned earlier in the thread who behave in their cars in ways they would never dare to outside of them.

I don't know if it would be of any use in this study, but a quick look through the comments to just about any posting on Youtube will reveal numerous keyboard warriors and generally people with quite significant attitude problems, IMHO. I don't think I've seen a single page without some sort of unjustified vitriol on it. I'm not exactly an old fart (yet) but I do wonder what's going wrong with the world these days.

I made the decision to use my real name in all the forums (fora?) I visit - it's my name, I'm proud of it, and I stand by what I write. Saying that, I did use an alternative name in the Haynes forum - but it's not too hard to work out who is behind that name! (jerkins). Later on I wished that I'd stuck to my real name in the end.

Not that I'm criticising those who use pseudonyms - it's a personal choice.


[Edited on 27/10/08 by David Jenkins]

quote:

---

Originally posted by chrisg
Thanks Chris!

Cheers

Fifi LeBlanc

---

I thought you'd like that one Fozzie!

Cheers

Fifi

quote:

---

Originally posted by chrisg
I thought you'd like that one Fozzie!

Cheers

Fifi

---

i must admit that i use a pseudonym when i post on here but that was an extension of my msm messenger days (its where my trogdor name comes from) when peeps knew who you were anyway!

I do post my real name sometimes and i don't really mind peeps knowing.

However i always look carefully at what i write, because i know its so easy to take offence at what someone has written without the body language to help. So i try to take that into account.

I think also a distinction should be made between situations where causing offence can be accidental, and where there are some KW's who seem to prowl around certain forums looking for posts on which they can pounce, and say nasty stuff, implying that others are stupid, or misinformed.

The sort of person I'm thinking of virtually never asks questions, and rarely offers an actual solution to the original question, but simply uses the opportunity to be nasty.

If one comes across a case like this, it's often interesting to look at their profile and search their previous posts, and see if they can find a post where the KW has actually provided real assistance or advice (they tend not to because they don't want to subject their own ideas to peer review) (not that these people think they have any peers anyway!)

John

Interesting point John, I might look into that, although the football forum isn't really like this one because people tend not to ask questions but just state their position.

As someone remmarked earlier in the thread it's quite "tribal".

Cheers

Chris

quote:

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Originally posted by chrisg
Interesting point John, I might look into that, although the football forum isn't really like this one because people tend not to ask questions but just state their position.

---

Actually this forum is pretty easy to read in that respect.

There are trouble makers, but because this is quite a "tight" group, everyone knows who they are and (mostly) ignore them.

I know that if I see a reply from certain posters that I could guess the content without opening the thread!

I think they add to the amusement, my self, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Cheers

Chris

It's just no fun around here since you-know-who left for the place beginning with C.

Younger people (my 13 year old niece for example) want to "be famous" more than anything. Why is an interesting question.

quote:

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Originally posted by RK
It's just no fun around here since you-know-who left for the place beginning with C.

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i think he is talking about a poster called CaLviNx he did cause i lot of uproar sometimes but he was/is a helpful person.

I found him to be so at least.

He would be before your time i think

quote:

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Originally posted by trogdor
i think he is talking about a poster called CaLviNx he did cause i lot of uproar sometimes but he was/is a helpful person.

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