Don’t feed the trolls

An interesting study done of social networks and up/down like/dislike voting mechanisms on posts and comments.  Bottom line:

– Positive feedback doesn't do much.
– Lack of feedback leads to people leaving.
– Negative feedback encourages more posting, of lower quality, and the passing on of additional negative feedback.

So the most effective thing you can do (outside of emergency situations that require intervention) is simply ignore the folks who are saying stupid things. Downvoting give both encouragement and resentment for them to chew on.

(h/t +Yonatan Zunger)

Reshared post from +Jim Wilbur

“Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more, but also their future posts are of lower quality, and are perceived by the community as such,”

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/aad9d49da238