There are many places, of course, on the internet where a utopian ideal of "here comes everybody" prevails, where the anonymous hive mind is fantastically curious and productive. A while ago I talked to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, about some of this, and asked him who his perfect contributor was. "The ideal Wikipedian, in my mind, is someone who is really smart and really kind," he said, without irony. "Those are the people who are drawn into the centre of the group. When people get power in these communities, it is not through shouting loudest, it is through diplomacy and conflict resolution."

Within this "wikitopia" there were, too, though, plenty of Lord of the Flies moments. The benevolent Wiki community is plagued by "Wikitrolls" – vandals who set out to insert slander and nonsense into pages. A policing system has grown up to root out troll elements; there are well over 1,000 official volunteer "admins", working round the clock; they are supported in this work by the eyes and ears of the moral majority of "virtuous" Wikipedians.

"When we think about difficult users there are two kinds," Wales said, with the same kind of weariness as Moderatrix. "The easy kind is someone who comes in, calls everyone Nazis, starts wrecking articles. That is easy to deal with: you block them, and everyone moves on. The hard ones are people who are doing good work in some respects but are also really difficult characters and they annoy other people, so we end up with these long intractable situations where a community can't come to a decision. But I think that is probably true of any human community."

Wales, who has conducted perhaps the most hopeful experiment in human collective knowledge of all time, appears to have no doubt that the libertarian goals of the internet would benefit from some similar voluntary restraining authority. It was the case of the blogger Kathy Sierra that caused Wales and others to propose in 2007 an unofficial code of conduct on blog sites, part of which would outlaw anonymity. Kathy Sierra is a programming instructor based in California; after an online spat on a tech-site she was apparently randomly targeted by an anonymous mob that posted images of her as a sexually mutilated corpse on various websites and issued death threats. She wrote on her own blog: "I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. I am afraid to leave my yard, I will never feel the same. I will never be the same."

Among Wales's suggestions in response to this and other comparable horror stories of virtual bullying was that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments altogether, and that they be able to delete comments deemed abusive without facing accusations of censorship. Wales's proposals were quickly shot down by the libertarians, and the traffic-hungry, as unworkable and against the prevailing spirit of free-speech.

I find it very ironic (or, maybe it's hypocritical) that Jimmy Wales would play such a prominent role in an article about civility online. First, the author Tim Adams describes Wales as "the founder of Wikipedia", which itself is a deliberately disruptive fiction that Wales began to perpetrate a few years ago. Dr. Larry Sanger is the one who came to Wales, asking him to install wiki software on a server to provide a content platform for Wales' dying standard encyclopedia project. Sanger named this project "Wikipedia", Sanger issued the first public call for participation in Wikipedia, and Sanger spent his full-time career for the first year crafting and shepherding the very protocols and policies that still govern Wikipedia today. Because Wales's partnership owned the server and paid Sanger's paycheck, Wales was given a "co-founder" recognition along with Sanger. For years. Until Wales stopped paying Sanger and began rebranding himself as "the founder" or, even more ridiculously, "the sole founder" of Wikipedia.

Furthermore, The Guardian used to have a journalist named Seth Finkelstein. When Finkelstein began getting to close to the financial status of Wales' for-profit enterprise, Wales silenced Finkelstein publicly with the disparaging comment, "Seth, you're an idiot." That doesn't sound "really kind", to put it in Wales' own words.

So, here we have the mainstream media continuing its blind homage to the mythical Jimmy Wales, serving up his hypocrisy unfiltered to readers. No, thanks!

Furthermore, The Guardian used to have a journalist named Seth Finkelstein. When Finkelstein began getting to close to the financial status of Wales' for-profit enterprise, Wales silenced Finkelstein publicly with the disparaging comment, "Seth, you're an idiot." That doesn't sound "really kind", to put it in Wales' own words.

So, here we have the mainstream media continuing its blind homage to the mythical Jimmy Wales, serving up his hypocrisy unfiltered to readers. No, thanks!

Do you think there's some connection between the fact that Guardian let go of its only anti-Wikipedia journalist, and that only comments favorable to Wikipedia are tolerated by Guardian gatekeepers?

Yet Mr. Civility Wales has a large website in which unmasking people there, is deemed very very bad.

RogerHogsky

25 July 2011 4:50PM

According to this criticism site, apparently the Guardian is itself stifling criticism of the author Tim Adams and/or his erroneous portrayal of Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia. What does that say of ethical accountability, that on an opinion piece about Internet commentary and anonymity, Guardian suppresses the ability of a reader to thoughtfully engage under his real name?

Note that "Roger Hogsky" is an anagram of "Gregory Kohs", and that neither Roger nor Gregory think that the "premoderation" feature on Guardian comments is being employed in an ethical manner. Note, also, that author Tim Adams suggested that Gregory contact the "Guardian web team" for resolution of the problem, even though the Guardian web team deliberately initiated the problem. (I.e., can you say "given the run around"?)

Making some progress:

This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs

Hello,

Thanks for your email. I can confirm that you were put into premoderation because a number of your posts were legally problematic and also implied the Guardian was corrupt.
Some of your comments while in premoderation have not been approved because you then questioned moderation, which in itself is clearly off topic.
Here are a couple of sections from our community standards which should make things clearer:

Q: When I post a comment, it says that my comments are being pre-moderated – what does that mean? Does that apply to everyone in the conversation?
A: There is a further exception to the overall reactive-moderation approach adopted by guardian.co.uk: in isolated situations, a particular user may be identified as a risk, based on a pattern of behaviour (e.g. spam, trolling, repeated/frequent borderline abuse), so a temporary filter can be applied to anything they post, which means that their comments will need to be pre-moderated before appearing on the site.

This is a temporary measure applied by moderators to a very small handful of people based entirely on patterns of actual behaviour, and should result relatively quickly in either their posting ability being suspended completely if no improvement is shown, or the filter being removed. The decision to do either of these things would, again, be based on that user's behaviour and activity during the pre-moderation period.

and

1. We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated. The key to maintaining guardian.co.uk as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent discussion of topics.

2. We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focused argument and smear tactics.

8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic ("off-topic") then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or comments about moderation, which should not be posted as comments.

Hope this helps,
Cif Moderation Team

GuyChapman

25 July 2011 11:35PM

For several years I have been hounded online and offline by an individual hiding behind a pseudonym. Privacy legislation protects him from me, but does not protect me form (sic) him. He has visited my house and broadcast the registration marks of cars observed there, with fictitious "bad driving" reports; he has also made dozens of nuisance calls to my home using services like 0800 REVERSE. In order to get his details I have had to scour the internet to find the appropriate forms (N244, if anyone wonders) to get court orders for release of data under the Data Protection Act. It's cost me hundreds of pounds so far, and I am still waiting for the outcome of a number of applications.

There is, in my view, a pressing need to come up with a simplified process by which you can get the real world identity of people who are abusing anonymity with malicious intent. I don't think the victims want to know the actual identity, in ost (sic) cases, but they do want their internet service provider to take action to prevent the abuse. I have fair evidence that my attacker has had his internet service revoked by at least one firm (judging from the fact that he called me the C word in capitals repeated 520 times and then reappeared with a different ISP), but providers are not able to share this data and blacklist persistent abusers. I would support an extension to Ofcom's remit to cover this kind of abuse.