I had lunch today with Kevin Reynen, who is going to be leaving Bradley University to take a job with the University of Nevada, Reno. He’s going to be “working with the graduate students and faculty at UNR’s [Journalism] School to create a next generation news ‘portal’ for the Lake Tahoe area. The idea of the project is to convert the ‘people formally known as the audience’ into content contributors.”
In other words, he’s trying to create a blog-like site where citizen journalists and professional journalists would be treated as equals, each posting stories (either “letter to the editor”-type or researched reports) and having an on-line conversation about those stories. Sounds like a fun job — and a beautiful place to live!
Kevin and I don’t always agree on things (like the Kellar Branch issue or Muni Wi-Fi), but we can still be friends and discuss things without insulting each other. Unfortunately, on blogs and especially with anonymity, you can easily end up with verbal slug fests like, say, this argument on Bill’s site. Thus, one of Kevin’s biggest hurdles in his project at UNR is going to be figuring out a way to promote civil discourse without any heavy-handed moderating/censoring. People aren’t going to want to blog and have any meaningful conversations if there’s always someone in there doing nothing but making fun of their points of view, or insinuating they’re on drugs.
The problem is magnified in Kevin’s case because what he’s promoting is not just people being able to comment on posts like they do here on the Chronicle, but to write the posts themselves. So, for instance, imagine my site being open to Bill, Polly, Eyebrows, Vonster, Tony, Anon E. Mouse, et al., to write any post they want and have it show up on my front page. I think you can see the potential for that to turn into a cyberspace version of “Lord of the Flies” pretty quickly.
Kevin suggested some form of collaborative filtering, like Reddit’s “karma” system. There, each user gets to vote on each post by either promoting or demoting it (moving it closer to the top or further to the bottom of the page). “When a particular item is promoted or demoted, the user who posted it is either rewarded or punished — a system of editorial karma. In the same way that popular submissions are voted to the top, the individuals who post them get increases in karma.” Those with more karma have a better reputation and thus, presumably, will be read more, while those without karma will be ignored and hopefully go away.
The karma system sounds good, but it might be over the heads of less tech-savvy users. Yet that’s the only technological solution I can envision. So I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to Kevin. I really don’t know a way to make people be polite or understand where “the line” is that they’re not supposed to cross. It seems to me that there would have to be a moderator, no matter how you look at it.
But then I thought maybe some of you, dear readers, would be able to offer Kevin some better insights. Any ideas on how to promote civil discourse and meaningful conversations without making people feel overly-moderated or censored?
Promoting civility has it’s benefits and its drawbacks. What constitutes incivility and what is simply kidding around? A comment meant to gently heckle a previous commenter can be taken as an insult. In the end, it comes down to a value judgment.
Now, I have no problems making value judgments. As Ayn Rand said, “Judge and be judged.” But if you ban too many commentors, the result is a hallelujah chorus instead of a real exchange of opinion and ideas.
Still, there are some people who can be counted on to lower the level of discussion in almost any situation. Still, I find it best to not lower the boom unless there’s libel or vulgar obscenities, and even then it has to be pretty bad.
I hate to say it, but perhaps there’s an idea to be borrowed from AOL. Back when I was an AOL user, I frequented the chatrooms, and they used a feature that let individual readers ignore specific participants.
In the situation Kevin is about ready to enter, civility is going to be hard to achieve. A one-man blogger can let the animals run free. Institutions are deeply concerned about their reputations.
Good points, Bill. Hey, where were you at lunch? I can’t believe you just blew us off like that. 😉
As Bill knows, certain members of a local club started the fight by saying trail opponents like Bill and I were lazy fat-asses. ‘Member, Bill??
So WHO lowered the bar?
Actually Vonster, I believe you MIGHT have a point. But you gave as good back by calling them pedophiles …
AND the lazy fat ass comment was on another forum, I believe.
While UNR is starting the project, the idea is to build something that runs itself. I don’t think there is as much of a concern that someone will say something that reflects poorly on UNR as that people will get tired of responding to the Vonsters of Tahoe. We don’t want a moderation system that could be abused by a group to eliminate posts with a different POV, but I don’t think letting Vonster insult people really adds any value to a discussion.
Another thought I had was to have a profile page that showed all the comments a user made similar to BoingBoing’s blog as comments approach.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/18/why_slashdotters_sla.html
My page would look like a fairly normal blog. Vonster’s would look like…
BOONDOGLE!
Go smoke more pot!
Those that can do, those who can’t teach.
GFY, turd merchant.
Hail Oat Willie! – Onward Thru The Fog!!
Would forcing users to write responses that have to stand on their own (more like a blog posts than a comment) elevate the level of discourse? The site itself becomes something of an aggregator and popularity ranking of a post like BlogsNow or Technorati. Both of these sites link to the external blogs that linked to the post… which is what gets a post to rise in placement on the sites to begin with. I envision this being initially limited to users posts to an internal “blog-like” system, but maybe it would eventually be opened up so that someone with a Blogger account or their own WordPress site would be able to participate.
The Slashdot karma system has a feature like the AOL’s ignore user that allows users to ignore posts rated bellow a level they set. This is nice because it ignores everything that is in response to that post so you don’t see gaps in the conversations like skipping just one user would create. To a lesser extent, you could look at Digg’s page by page viewing as a type of filtering. You’d have to really “digg” deep to see less popular content.
This is really going to be a test to see if the inmates will live in an asylum they run. If given the digital equivalent to a printing press, will a community produce the type of content they’d like to read or will an editor/reporter model emerge from this experiment?
The only thing I am really sure of is that the sucess of the project is going to depend largely on a user’s intial experience with the site. We need to have enough content, a UI that is easy to use, and a moderation metaphor that keeps the Vonsters in check without censoring someone’s opinion.
I used to run threaded comments on my blog, but most people ignored the structure and posted at the bottom of the page anyway.
Still, this Karma Slashdot system intrigues me.
And I wish WP had a way to insert a carriage return into long URLs so that column widths wouldn’t go out of whack. Still, there is such as thing as TinyURL …
so like a digg but for blog posts and local news rather than apple fanboy posts and case mods
Actually, Bill, you’re mistaken once again on that issue. You won’t ever find where I said that because I didn’t. I might have made a mistake with the initials of the little he-man train-hater club involved but I never said any such thing.
And Kevin: Really, I’d like to help you out. Which way did you come in?
Slashcode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashcode) really is awesome. It’s insanely flexible and deep.
Unfortunately, I fear that it might take a pretty high ‘critical mass’ of active participation to make the moderation and karma systems effective. Kevin mentioned as much in his post, worrying that a vocal minority could go all lynch-mob and silence anybody it doesn’t agree with.
Vonster,
Thanks for the offer, but in order to “help me out”, you’d have to actually see me in person which everyone knows you’re never going to do, but I really don’t need your help. In a way I AM leaving Peoria the same way I came in. Both my current job at Bradley and my new gig at UNR were designed around my qualifications in an effort to get me to take the job. I’d love to help Vonster move on, but there are very few jobs that fit his profile…
http://oneproblem.blogspot.com/2006/06/who-is-vonster.html
Here’s the NAMBLA comment Vonster said he didn’t make…
http://tinyurl.com/jy7cu
# Vonster Says:
May 9th, 2005 at 7:56 am
Kevin. Give it a rest. It’s a bad investment – in fact it’s no investment at all, despite your childish personal invective. Good luck with your NAMBLA or whatever….
—
Then he goes and does it again just a few weeks ago…
http://tinyurl.com/gd66s
” I wonder if the North American Mountain Bike Lovers Assoc. has endorsed this?”
—
VONSTER: Damn the internet. It is nothing more than a liberal funded boondogle that uses my tax dollars to make make me look stoopid.
I’m planning on building on Drupal (http://drupal.org/). I’ve been lookin into adding more digg-like features to this moderation module (http://drupal.org/project/nmoderation).
Do you think a “Belongs on Page 1” button will make sense to less technical users?
Nice try, Sport.
Geez, I guess I won’t be getting a Christmas card from you, eh? Oh well.
And you mean there ISN’T a North American Mountain Bike Lover’s Association?? Anyway, thanks for providing the evidence that I never called you a pedophile, only a pedalophile.
Kisses.
Oh, and the oh-so-civil Kevin started off this whole thing with this little nugget directed at Bill Dennis and I –
“Maybe if you and Vonster got off your a fat lazy asses…”
Thanks for providing a link to your comment.
And one more thing – you’re still wrong about the modern internet being built with tax dollars. Step out of the classroom and see the real network.
Sorry for so many comments, CJ but this deserved to be added too:
“Man I’m a bit surprised at the name calling by the [name of organization deleted] Social Ride Coordinator. It seem like that position would require a little better people skills. I’m glad I know a few members of [name of organization deleted] and know that attitude isn’t representive of the entire group.” – a commenter on that same thread named Bob.
Remember that, Kev?
If there was an ignore user option, how many people would even see Vonster’s must-get-the-last-word snarks?
Would that be a bad thing?
We’re trying to continue this conversation on Bill’s site…
http://tinyurl.com/rceoo
Vonster, if you feel the need to continue snarking… please do it on this thread. I’d be willing to discuss any topic with you, but you need to do the following.
– Stop calling me a pot smoking hippie. I drive an Audi TT and live in Morton. I might not share your conservative beliefs, but I am very much a capitalist.
– Stop comparing PAMBA to NAMBLA. PAMBA has been recognized by every land management organization in the area at the federal, state, and city level as hard working volunteers who bring value to the parks we’re involved with. Next year PAMBA will host the Midwest Mountain Bike Festival in Peoria. This event is sponsored by Kona and New Belgium Brewing and has brought 300-400 mountain bikers to the St. Louis area. The reason PAMBA was asked to host this is that they’ve proven they can 1) build great trails and 2) throw a good party. They have more than 100 members and can stand by their record… and what is your record again?
– Along the same lines, stop implying that you know more about networking than I do or give some type of description of what you do or have done that would make you such an expert in this area.
If you have something constructive to say, please do. If not, leave your last-word snark here and let the rest of us have a productive discussion.
Hey, wait a minute! What’s this “we’re continuing this on Bill’s site” stuff? Stick around a while. 🙂
To answer your earlier question, yes, I think a “Belongs on Page 1” button would be much easier to understand for the less tech-savvy users, especially if that’s whom you’re trying to target. Perhaps you could also have a “Belongs on the back page” or “Should be lining the bird cage” button.
For the record, I do, in fact, have a fat ass. It’s huge. There’s no getting around it, figuratively or literally.
Also, Vonster is doing us all a service by demonstrating the value of an “ignore this commenter” feature.
Gee thanks Bill. Love you too.