I just followed a link from Sunir Shah’s page to John Suler’s “The Bad Boys of Cyberspace”, an extremely detailed look at problem behavior in online communities and the ways of dealing with it that have been developed over time. It’s based on Suler’s early field research on the Palace avatar chat communities, so some of it is fairly specific, but there’s a metric boatload of insights in there.



The whole thing basically reads like a chat wizard’s handbook. Here are a few section headings from the table of contents to give you a taste of what’s inside:



3. More Complex Social Problems

Revolutionaries

Freedom Fighters and Other Tenacious Debaters

Bible Thumpers

Identity Theft, impostoring and Switching

Detecting Impostors — Intervening with Impostors

Genuine Identity Disturbances — Depressives

Pedophiles — Scam Artists

Gangs — Banning the Gang

[…]



The colourful jargon used makes it rather enjoyable, especially when read literally. This from the section on intervening with Bible Thumpers:



[Wizards] may encourage the Thumper to move to another room (or another Palace site) where there may be members who are more interested in their ideas. If Thumpers refuse to stop accosting other members, wizards may follow the procedures for gagging. The other users in the room also should be reminded about the “mute” command. Experienced wizards recommend that Thumpers never be killed.



“The Bad Boys” is actually part of Suler’s vast online book, The Psychology of Cyberspace. I recommend you have a look, but be warned that once you dive in you may not emerge for quite a while…

[Many-to-Many]