I’,m an introvert with an INFJ personality so coming online has helped me to become more outgoing and “social”. I’ve also been exposed to a minority of trolls, whom I wouldn’t tolerate on my property or in my life for single moment. But the vast and overwhelming majority of folks in cyberspace are great people, who want to connect and communicate and build community. They have befriended me and helped me come out of my shell. I salute them. Long may they blog.

I mean there are plenty of places that people can go on the web still and be complete goons to one another, and if that is what they choose to surround themselves with I guess that’s up to them, but I thoroughly agree. We need to be responsible for the presence that we are making and the kind of material that we release into the world. The cyber is even more important I believe because our actions are not limited to a circle of people. We have an ever expanding community and it is our responsibility to feed things into the community that are beneficial. IE well built argument and constructive criticism and not just raging ideals or blithe praise.

Keep it up. I can’t wait to hear more.

When adults who have not previously used computers enter cyberspace they bring they same behavior they exhibit offline with them. If they are courteous offline then they will be courteous online as well. Of course, as we mentioned above there are different policies on each different site. Generally speaking though the most abusive and ignorant people I have experienced online have been adult trolls who are not courteous offline and who revel in the assumed protection that anonymity provides. Second in the running are obnoxious adolescents who think that verbally abusing and libeling other people is exercise of freedom of speech, when it most certainly isn’t.

We are witnessing an extremely emotion-driven cyber society. Many ignorant people find logic and sticking to the point extremely frustrating and are only interested in expressing their feelings on a topic, without any chain of reason. They don’t have a clue about what fallacious arguments are. http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html They react emotionally when those who do know what they are challenge them to stick to the subject matter and stop the ad hominem attacks. For these cyber brats, cyber bullies, and psycho trolls the idea that you’re “entitled to your opinion” has far overshadowed the notion that we have any responsibility to form opinions based on actual data, proven fact, and critical reasoning.

As the internet community matures and as more and more people conduct their professional services and business online, we are bound to see in increase in legal activity and court challenges when libel is committed. When those who are cyber bullied and libeled can demonstrate to the courts that the defamation (character assassination) has negatively affected them in ways that can be measured in dollars and cents we shall see a leveling of the playing field, and that leveling has already begun. Here’s an example: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/models_suit_exposes_cyberbully.html?ft=1&f=103943429

It’s about bloody time that we people in cyberspace were held to the same standards online as we are offline.

Also this is a fantastic blogging idea.