Show HN: Radiopaper – Troll-resistant public conversations
About 14 years ago, I also tried to tackle the public conversation troll problem and created a forum that got quite a bit of traction. While Radiopaper takes the carrot approach ("write things people want to engage with"), I took the stick approach: "anyone can ban anyone else for a non-trivial amount of time, but you must reply to their post, and people will see that you banned them."<p>It was a probabilistic method to filtering out the trolls, and it worked well. Trolls wanted to ban, but they themselves became the more-frequent targets of bans. Eventually, they would get frustrated with the bans and leave. The people that remained, stayed civil to not become a clear target of a ban. There would be brief chaotic behavior, but it never lasted. Cooler heads always prevailed.<p>Radiopaper mentions that there is a lot of room for exploration in this space, to try different models for creating emergent social behavior and productive conversations. I hope we see more of it!