Still, Silverman and Shirky both consider the question of a site’s credibility to be an audience decision, not an editorial one. Blue takes a more rigid approach, choosing to hold all blogs written for the public to the highest journalistic standards. “I really believe in the concept of a permanent history and keeping a journal that is an accurate telling of history,” she says. “My site is a personal site, but it’s something in the public sphere, something of permanent record.” Blue is quick to say that many of her posts reflect personal opinions that have changed over time. She claims never to have deleted a post—even the ones she posted while drunk.
Moving forward, Boing Boing’s editors promise to involve readers in the archiving practices of the site. Shirky, who is one of those readers, offers this: “I think it would have been optimal if whatever problem the editors had with Violet Blue had led to an editor’s note, a strike-through, or just a sense that ‘we stopped posting her stuff a year ago,’ that she’s persona non grata, and simply letting the other stuff go.”
Silverman hopes that Boing Boing begins to conform to the standard blogging practice of noting how and when a post is updated. And the Boing Boing commenters continue to wage a major debate on new media archival ethics.
“I’m not quite ready to say that I’m glad this took place, but it raised these questions that are fundamentally new questions,” said co-editor Pescovitz. “I’m glad that the discussion is happening on our site.”
Previewing your Comment
This is not the first time I've encountered bOINGbOING unpublishing content they don't like; last year a particularly vociferous politically-leaning post by none other than Xeni was met with hundreds of posts denouncing her comments. Most of us watched as our posts were mysteriously disappearing moments later. It turned out that the site's "moderator" was deleting negative comments that she didn't like - we were calling Xeni a hypocrite. On one hand they encourage dissent - especially on the topic of the current administration in Washington; on the other hand, if you don't agree with their slant they'll simply delete your comments. After all, it is their blog, right?
Posted by Cigar Guy
on Mon 14 Jul 2008 at 10:01 AM
BoingBoing's behavior is childish, tyrannical, and indicates a deep contempt for real discourse. Sure, it's their blog, they can play however they like with it. But the contempt they show for real discourse has generated rather a lot of contempt on my part for them. They'll never get my traffic.
Posted by Fred Frounfelter on Wed 23 Jul 2008 at 03:07 PM
The people who point out that BB is Xeni et al's own blog and not some sort of public institution or property have a salient point. It is also true that Violet's expectation of rigorous journalistic integrity from all content providers, bloggers included, is a bit like world peace; something we can all get behind, but which we can mostly agree isn't an achievable goal in our lifetimes, if ever.
On the other hand, haphazard, counterproductive moderation practices should be called out loudly and fixed at the earliest possible opportunity. At their worst they can turn away precisely the people that the publisher wants to communicate with, and attract the ones they want to avoid.
A sufficiently devoted audience will accept ruthless and dictatorial moderation quite willingly provided it is consistent and relatively transparent. As soon as it is perceived to be fickle, feeble or feckless, you're f**ked.
All BB really needs is a prominent notice above the 'submit comment' button which says something like "We delete stuff that rubs us the wrong way. If your comment gets deleted, don't feel bad; there are plenty of other places on the internet you can tell everyone what bastards we are."
While we're giving valuable advice to BB; guys, wind back a bit on the disemvowelling, ok? If a comment really bugs you that much, just delete it. Email the poster and/or leave a moderator comment in the thread if that makes you feel better about the deletion, but save the disemvowelling for movie spoilers, really funny but potentially offensive jokes, etc. As the policy is currently applied, a disemvowelled comment instantly derails any thread, in many cases more thoroughly than the original unmolested comment would have done (in this pundit's humble opinion, of course).
Posted by Fnord on Thu 31 Jul 2008 at 09:52 AM