I don't have too much faith in this idea, but RealID could limit trolling and flaming, not by revealing the troll, but by revealing the victim. It's easy to be a jerk to Lawlgoleslo, but what about John? Maybe the assholes will see that they are being assholes to real people, just like them. Could this evoke mercy, sympathy, human connection?
I'm sure it will.
I'm equally sure that the truly horrible people will have that much more with which to attack a person.
I'll take a thousand flame wars over one real life incident.
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9 comments:
Now YOU'RE trolling !
How? I'm just trying to find the one good thing. And then remembering that it's outweighed by the one really, really bad thing.
Then there's some of us who don't care, and will flame anyway, real name or not.
I spilled my coffee...
There is another interesting angle: a troll registering under the name of his / her victim. Nice, eh?
Just read your response to the first comment, and... what, you were serious??!
"I'm just trying to find the one good thing."
RealID will not stop trolling. Determined trolls will simply use fake names or names of other users.
What RealID will stop is posts from legitimate non-trolling users.
It remains to be seen whether the percentage of troll posts will go down. With a decrease in the number of posts from legitimate users, it might easily go up.
I don't think it will pan out like this Kleps.
If someone posts in a nerd rage about being corpse camped by xxLeggolasxx it is about game things.
If someone posts in a nerd rage about being corpse camped by Susan Chang it will be about game things and real life sexist and racist assumptions.
For an angry person anything that gives them a handle to use as ammunition is fair game.
People already insult other players for being fat no-life basement dwellers and they don't even have any information about the person at all.
Think how that would change if you have angry people with access to pictures and videos of the other player.
Would knowing that the person who scammed you in WoW was actually this person make you behave nicer?
http://www.break.com/index/wow-gangsta-threatens-ex-guildies.html
I'm not sure how ReadID is going to stop any trolling apart from making real life death threats a lot more commonplace :)
You make a good point that I've been concerned about.
ANYTHING about an individual can be made fun of, and things can get personal real quick.
It doesnt hurt much to make fun of someone's character name, but someone's real name will be connected with all sorts of negative stereotypes by whatever the troller can read into your name.
Names can reveal ones heritage, gender, and even socio-economic class. Vitaly, DeShawn, Goldberg, Jessica, Sanjeet, Muhammad...we can make many assumptions about these people based on their names alone.
Instead of someone just trolling another's comments/spec/class, etc, people will troll that person's IDENTITY. Racial slurs, innuendo and other grabage will only have a great impact.
Stabs, I agree, but I desperately hope we are wrong.
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