Having been on and off and on Joan's list (great control, btw:)) and done my own listing - where "trolls" often come from a strange mixed subjectivity of privilege (implicitly assuming that "the Internet" is a "free" and "democratic" space...haha - and buying into certain culturally - situated in hierarchies of race, gender, geography, class, langauge...you name it) specific notions of no-censureship - in a sense, pretty naive, I would say, about the possibility for a lack of power wielding and hierarchy in internetworked spaces... i could go on in loops of hyphens, semicolons and paranthesis... but...) and a lack of privilege in the specific context - if "privilege" can be taken to mean a lack of nettiquette and knowledge, cultural capital within the specific context (whether of internet research as a body of knowledge or women's studies or postcolonial theory as defined within certain epistemologies or engaging specific contexts inaccessible to varieties of Other people - or creative writing by so-called and percieved-as "Others" - here i refer to my own various interestingly failed attempts in listing and ethnographing - etc). In my managing of various lists (a couple of which got parallyzed into silence because of the dilemma regarding who speaks and who doesnt), I've done my own share of gatekeeping so I am not criticizing anyone else's - but I'm always fascinated at the issues and discussions that emerge. r
For what it's worth, I might note that in the eleven years I've been responsible for WMST-L (a large academic list for discussion of women's studies teaching, research, and program administration), I've seen a number of trolls follow a pattern similar to the one Michael Gurstein describes. At first, they tend to seem interested, engaged, sincere. Soon, though, their postings become increasingly off the wall and disruptive. Eventually, it becomes clear that they're interested primarily in creating chaos and being the center of attention.
I for one am very pleased that Lachlan has been removed from AIR-L.
Joan
Joan Korenman, Director Center for Women & Information Technology University of Maryland, Baltimore County Baltimore, MD 21250 USA korenman@umbc.edu http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/
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