When the net’s wisdom of crowds turns into an online lynch mob

The internet’s great advantages – speed, access and shared communication – can also have drawbacks, as Richard Dawkins found out last week. Here, author James Harkin reflects on the nature of discourse when everyone has their sayEven hell hath no fury like an electronic crowd, as Richard Dawkins discovered to his cost last week. Dawkins’s mistake was to update his website with a letter politely giving notice of a few planned changes to its “community” bulletin-board, where 85,000 enthusiastic atheists come to air their views and discuss them with like minds.”Dear forum members,” his cheery email began, and before long the feedback was coming in thick and fast. Dawkins returned to his computer to find himself being described as “a suppurating rat’s rectum”. Another anonymous community member expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails down your throat”, while a third described the author of The God Delusion as having “a slack-jawed turd-in-the-mouth mug if ever I saw one”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/28/richard-dawkins-wisdom-of-crowds