OnlineAbuse

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OnlineAbuse means creating some text (written, verbal, visual, whatever) that is meant to offend someone emotionally (weak sense) or otherwise disrupt their daily affairs (strong sense). On IRC, you write knowing TheAudience intended is present and listening. This audience may be your victim, or his or her friends that you want to bad mouth behind their back. On a wiki, you have a similar chance of this happening, but we also have the opportunity to DefendEachOther by eliding the text before it reaches its intended audience. So, suppose Alice had flamed Bob. Charlie can see this and delete the flame before Bob sees it. As a method of ConflictResolution and disempowerment of the abusive, this is very strong. Sure, Bob may read the flame war first, but there are opportunities for others to intervene. As a result, the social system that is employed on IRC is having a channel moderator to buffer the SnipingCriticism (or whatever) from the intended audience. But this is an ActiveDefense?, and thus expensive, and thus rare, and also politicized.

Secondly, a FlameWar from Alice to Bob will PunishReputation of Alice as well, tying her to the site. On IRC, Alice would have done the social damage to whomever was reading. On a wiki, similarly, but there is the added problem (not present so much in IRC excepting RecordKeepers) that third parties will read the text and look down upon a person. So, we have to ForgiveAndForgetInSoftware as well.

I would add spam do the definition of abuse. -- ZbigniewLukasiak

Is spam really abuse of an individual, or more of a nuisance? -- SunirShah

It starts as a nuisance, but then proceeds to destroy the shared communication channels. -- ZbigniewLukasiak

There are (at least) two types of abuse we are talking about then. Social abuse meant to fit into the PowerOverCycle with respect to some PeckingOrder, and another one which is more about the TragedyOfTheCommons, which is more like economic abuse of the system. -- SunirShah

OnlineAbuse

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