Cyberspace is a rotten place.

Rotten is, of course, a relative term. Fresh fruit left on the kitchen counter is only rotten after another creature has beat you to eating it. What's tastiest to us is what's tastiest to molds and fruit flies. I bet you'd rather have a fresh plum right now than a manufactured corn chip. So would your average Drosophila melanogaster.

Discussion boards, email lists, and comment threads are the ripe fruit of cyberspace, attracting all sorts of constructive people. But they also bring out the virtual fruit flies and molds who have their own agenda.

The common reaction is to declare the other as some epithet ("trolls") and claim moral superiority. I prefer a much more neutral approach– to take a step back, and try to conceive a proper framework for defining a policy for managing comments and community.

[This article has now been split into 5 parts since I posted it this morning.]