I think the more interesting question is what is the impact of these volunteers leaving. Are the toxic comments directed at people who tend to get in the middle of flamewars, or are they innocents? Do these people do good work? Or are they just annoying people until someone snaps at them in a fit of toxity?
Sure-- where you're driving is usually more interesting than the highway that will take you there, but this isn't an off-the-cuff editorial-- it's presenting a quantitative analysis. Trying to study the qualitative impact without data like this means merely assuming the fundamental size and shape of the problem, which at best reduces it's utility. At worse it points you in the completely wrong direction.
There are very few water is wet articles in T&S research. It’s pretty dang hard to get any good scientific information. It’s only in the past few years that I have got an idea of churn and impact of toxicity behavior online on communities.
I’ve been looking into this from before the term trust and safety existed.
It’s THAT bad. Most of our data is behind platform walls.
I think the more interesting question is what is the impact of these volunteers leaving. Are the toxic comments directed at people who tend to get in the middle of flamewars, or are they innocents? Do these people do good work? Or are they just annoying people until someone snaps at them in a fit of toxity?