Good & Bad Karma In Net Communities

“Why does everyone hate me?”

If you hang out in a net community long enough, eventually you will have those who just don’t like you. The technical term I use for them are detractors and they fall into 3 categories:

• Passive detractors. These are people who, if exposed to something you write, will tend to criticize it, even “unfairly.”
• Active detractors. These are people who will go out of their way to “stalk”  you on a particular site or news group to flame you.
• Motivated detractors. These are people who dislike you so much that they are actually willing to put in effort to do you harm. They’re the guy who will contact your ISP, start a home page dedicated to attacking you, create posts and threads about you.

No matter how nice you are, no matter how pleasant you are, you will eventually have detractors if you hang out long enough. Each time you do something publicly, you are putting out what we’ll call “Karma”.  Everything you do generates both good and bad karma.

Good karma makes people like you. Bad karma makes people not like you. But everything will generate both. Even a simple “Hi everyone!” post in a thread will generate some bad karma. Why? Because there is always someone, somewhere that is going to be offended by something you write no matter how innocuous. Some people don’t like happy people for instance. Some people get mad at “noise” being posted in a thread.

The goal isn’t to eliminate bad karma. The only way to do that is to not participate. The goal is to try to control how much you put out.

Understanding communities

I’ve been involved in on-line communities for 17 years. And I mean involved as in daily postings via modem onto bulletin boards and such.  I started out on BBSes back when I was 15 years old in 1986 (300 baud modems). I have always enjoyed interacting with people around the world.

At the same time, I’ve always held strong opinions and because of constant activity for 17 years, my typing speed has slowly increased to the point that I now type 130 words per minute if I am in a hurry.

As a result, I’ve gotten my share of detractors. No one has created a website dedicated to flaming me or anything (yet) but I’ve come to understand what patterns of behavior generate detractors fastest.

Every net community has 5 basic types. (here is a link to a site that lists lots of different categories of net users but they boil down to these 5 really: http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html). My type is here: http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame21.html (except I know why I get loathed on occasion! J ).

1)      The Contributor. This is the most common type of person participating in a community. They are a friendly, well adjusted people who see participating in an on-line community as an extension of their social life. Good karma and bad karma don’t affect them that much. Abrasiveness and other factors tend to slide off them pretty well.

2)      The Mover. The mover is the type of person who wants to help shape the course of events. They’re a leader of sorts but more to the point, they work to organize the community to do various things. These activities make them a natural target.

3)      The Wannabe. The wannabe might as well be called the “Anti-Mover”. They don’t really want to put in the work to be a mover but they want the respect and admiration that movers get. Therefore, they try to tear down their opponents for moral lapses (real or imagined). Those who oppose them aren’t just wrong, they’re evil.

4)      The Critic. This is the person who tends to want to criticize things or “Suggest” things all the time. They’re not trolls because they honestly want to “help” the community.

5)      The Troll.  This is a pretty universally understood term. These are the guys who see other people as part of a video game. They subconsciously dehumanize their targets. Their goal is to generate enjoyment for themselves at the expense of others.

Most people exhibit multiple traits at different times. You mix these primary colors to together and you get the couple dozen types found on the flame warriors page.

Understanding Karma

So you’ve been posting on a news group or web forum for 2 years. You’ve never flamed anyone.  You see a “flamewar” going on and you go on and try to play the roll of diplomat only to get flamed for “no good reason”. What happened? You tell yourself that it’s like interfering with two wild dogs, don’t get in the middle. But that’s not really the cause.

As mentioned in the introduction, everytime you post you generate karma. Both good and bad. And it builds up over time with other people. The problem with net communities is that they provide an incomplete picture of a person. As a result, as bad karma builds up, people will tend to ascribe to you personality traits that may have nothing to do with what you’re like as a person.

So the person who tries to peacefully resolve a dispute may get flamed because he (usually a she actually) is thought of by the regulars as being “aloof” or “holier than thou”. In this example, it might be because those who get involved in trying to resolve a net dispute may in fact come across as trying to force their belief system on others. Some people, after all, like to debate.

But let’s go with some practical data.

When you post you can break down what you write in terms of these factors that can generate bad karma:

• Abrasiveness. How rude do your writings come across to others?

• Wordy. People who write long posts tend to generate more bad karma because it subconsciously makes people think that you believe your posts are so important that they should be willing to invest significant time to read what you write.

• Special Treatment. Does your post flaunt in some way special privilidges in people’s faces? For instance, in a post I made recently on WC, my posting editor is an HTML editor. I pasted my last post right from MS Word. This had the unintentional effect of having my font larger than others. Most users only get to put in text. So I was “flaunting” my special priviledges. This will generate bad karma, especially when used frivolously. Or maybe you’re a moderator on a website. Don’t make threats or remind people that you’re a moderator unless you have to.

• Double Standards. Lots of people have a standard of behavior for themselves and one for other people. That standard is usually pretty lax on themselves and very strict on others. This can irritate people quite quickly.

• Arrogance. Do your posts imply that you are more knowledgeable than others? Do you treat those who disagree with you as being ignorant, unenlightened, or unable to comprehend your “wisdom”?

• Noise. Do your posts tend to take a thread off topic or add nothing constructive? Females tend to fall into this a lot. In the middle of a thread discussing the Presidential Race, a female is much more apt to jump in and say “Hi Bobby! How you been?”

• Do you post things on topics that you financially benefit from? Someone who sells cell phone accessories hanging out talking in a cell phone accessory forum might be quite knowledgeable but it will still generate hostility from some people (or people who are involved in making customization software for a living participating in customization forums).

• Judgmental. Do you tend to make judgments on things that you really don’t have all the information on or don’t really know what you’re talking about?

• Melodramatic. Do your posts tend to overstate the importance of the topic? Or spend a lot of time talking about how some relatively insignificant thing was the end of the world? Do you make “Goodbye” posts on websites when something on a website has offended you? Basically, are you posting to get attention or are you posting to interact with others?

In the cold hard statistical world, you can almost imagine having points assigned to each of these characteristics. Each time you post, you can almost imagine a -1 karma simply for doing anything at all and then various larger negative points if your post contains any of the above.

Repeat the cycle enough times (i.e. be active in a community) and voila, eventually a detractor is born.

And there is another factor that compounds the situation. Ideology.  Most users don’t have a hard ideology. But some people are really set off by certain things.

For instance, talk about commercial software in an open source area and the ideology multiplier really takes off. Money is often a real ideology multiplier. Some people just hate the idea of other people making money. This is particularly true of Europeans for some reason (statistically speaking, the bulk of my active detractors have, for whatever reason, been European over the years). 

But there are plenty of other ideologies. Religion. Politics. Operating Systems. Child Care. Etc.

Controlling Bad Karma

I say controlling because sometimes you just can’t avoid producing bad karma.  Or maybe you simply make the judgment that you would rather produce some bad karma than not participate.

For instance, my public activity, as myself, on our websites produces not just negative karma but probably costs sales. But I’ve made the personal decision that I would rather participate, as myself, than use an alias and lose a few customers and generate a few detractors than to hide behind an alias.  Same thing on other websites. I love talking about and making desktop enhancements and PC games so much I made those two things my career. So whenever I talk about these things on-line, I’m creating higher than average negative karma because I indirectly benefit from the topics at hand.

The same goes for other traits. Are you opinionated? I sure am. And being opinionated means you’ll generate some bad karma since you’ll get zinged for some amounts of arrogance and other traits.

The goal isn’t to eliminate, if you know what things to look for, and how to avoid offending someone’s ideology if you can, then you can keep the amount of detractors to a level you can live with.

The more negative karma your posts generate, the more important it is that you have an idea how much they do generate and who is your audience. I.e. you don’t want to turn detractors into active or motivated detractors if possible.

With these things in mind, hopefully you will find having a long term presence in a net community to be enjoyable and rewarding. I know I have. I’ve learned a lot, mostly the hard way, over the years about this kind of thing.  Hopefully you’ll find this helpful.