Disemvoweling: A Brief Explanation (and Proposal)
This blog has rarely, if ever, been plagued by trolls — rude commenters who hang around insulting people. Honestly, I don’t get that much traffic here (or comments) which is OK. I cross-post elsewhere in blogville where the traffic is higher and that works for me.
Anyway, I recently came across a good solution that stops rude people from spouting off in the comments section. It’s a procedure called “disemvoweling:”
In the fields of Internet discussion and forum moderation, disemvoweling (also spelled disemvowelling), which appears to model the word disemboweling, is the removal of vowels from text either as a method of self-censorship, or as a technique by forum moderators to censor unwanted posting, such as spam, internet trolling or rudeness. The net effect of disemvoweling text is to render it illegible or legible only through significant cognitive effort, thus suppressing unwanted comments and discouraging such comments from being made in future.
Regarding the use of disemvoweling to police internet blog comment sections, Xeni Jardin, co-editor of Boing Boing, says of the practice, “the dialogue stays, but the misanthrope looks ridiculous, and the emotional sting is neutralized.” Also, Boing Boing producers claim that disemvoweling sends a clear message to internet forums as to what behavior is unacceptable.
“…legible only through significant cognitive effort…A clear message…the misanthrope looks ridiculous…behavior is unacceptable.” I like it.
So, for example, this…
It appears you didn’t know what Dean did. So the correction was needed. As to the rest…I’m here talking to you while you fled with your tail between your legs. You can’t take it, I can.
…becomes this:
t pprs y ddn’t knw wht Dn dd. S th crrctn ws ndd. s t th rst…’m hr tlkng t y whl y fld wth yr tl btwn yr lgs. Y cn’t tk t, cn.
Disemvoweling is attractive to me because nothing is hidden and everything is transparent — no wholesale re-writing of comment content, no hidden hanky panky, etc. — and no comments are deleted nor are any commenters banned.
There’s even a simple web app that automates the process. Anyway, I’m seriously considering instituting this as a policy.
What do you think?
What do you do if the misanthrope writes in L33t $p33k?
I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.
snds rsnble.
Don’t start me, baby.
I’m not that kind of troll.