I have written on this before, but Independence Day brings it up again.
I spoke to the Tea Party group Saturday, following a lady who suggested going to Council or County Commissioners or SAISD meetings. As a "been there done that" person, I reminded the audience, ALL these bodies are open meetings. Anyone can address them in favor of or in opposition to whatever is on the agenda, in fact if your topic is not on agenda, there is a "Public Comment" opening where any citizen can suggest a new topic for the next meeting.
Texas may still have a "redneck" image, but it is perhaps the most open state in the Union. Things that twenty years ago I would have had to take a day off, physically walk from office to office, file Freedom of Information forms and wait for the beauracracy to find a reason to deny my request: I get that now at 3:00 AM in my bathrobe and slippers: literally.
You need to look at an ordinance or city Charter? Online, two clicks of a mouse. You want Texas Statutes, same thing. You want Federal Statutes, well it may take a while to download unless you have the bill number handy, but it's there. A Supreme Court decision you heard about, it's there. Maybe you don't trust the press as it reports the new Arizona immigration statute; it's there.
Recently, San Angelo even started posting what is called the "Agenda Packet", in short, all that stuff the Councilmembers have on their laptops, you can have it too, before the meeting. It's a lot of reading, tomorrow's is 360 pages+, last week was only 297 pages, BUT if you want it, it's there. Someone, I suspect Alicia Ramirez, went in to put that up today on a holiday, it was not there yesterday.
I mentioned to our Tea Party crowd, San Angelo has at least 20 Boards and Commissions advising Council and they are all open to the public. Some of them are so seldom used they might be slightly shocked to see an actual citizen, but they will also give you a hearing, probably feel complimented someone bothered to show up!
Last but not least, check any agenda lately for Council. There are ALWAYS open spots on advisory boards. Doesn't pay anything, some of them buy you lunch, but toward bottom of agenda we always have "appointment of soandso to board xyz" which in my memory is always unanimously approved.
Don't sit and bitch, get in there and make your case. You won't always win, God knows I haven't, but if you don't play you sure won't win.
Me, in a world full of wolves, I'd rather be a shepherd than a sheep.
Showing posts with label Forums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forums. Show all posts
Monday, July 05, 2010
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Mayor Forum 10-5-09 Question 5
Fifth question from the 10-5-09 Mayor candidates forum. How can you increase revenue from the outside and living wage jobs.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Mayor Forum 10-5-09 Question 4
Fourth question from the 10-5-09 Mayor candidates forum. How important is it to be a full time Mayor and do you have the time?
Mayor Forum 10-5-09 Question 3
Third question from the 10-5-09 Mayor candidates forum. Why run for Mayor instead of council?
Mayor Forum 10-5-09 Question 2
Second question from the 10-5-09 Mayor candidates forum. Should the Mayor and council take diversity training like the rest of the city staff is required to do.
Mayor Forum 10-5-09 Question 1
First question from the 10-5-09 Mayor candidates forum. What can be done by the Mayor to help lower local electric rates?
Mayor Forum 10-5-09 intro
Mayoral candidates introduce themselves at the Democrat Club Forum, 10/5/2009. Videos of the questions will follow soon.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Questions for Mayoral candidates at the Democrat Club
Questions for the candidates for Mayor at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club meeting. There were 4 questions
Questions 3 & 4
Question 1
Question 2
Questions 3 & 4
JW Lown at the Democrat Club
Video of JW Lown's introductory remarks at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club Meeting. He is running for the Mayor's seat on the council and is currently the Mayor.
Lars Nyberg at the Democrat Club
Video of Lars Nyberg's introductory remarks at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club Meeting. He is running for the Mayor's seat on the council.
William Bryan Jr at the Democrat Club.
Video of William Bryan Jr.'s introductory remarks at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club Meeting. He is running for the Mayor's seat on the council.
SMD 4 Q&A at the Democrat Club
Questions and answers for the SMD 4 candidates, Fredd Adams and Richard Bart, at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club forum
Richard Bart at the Democrat Club
Video of Richard Bart's introductory remarks at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club meeting. He is running for the single member distict 4 seat.
Fredd Adams at the Democrat Club
Video of Fredd Adams' introductory remarks at the April 6th 2009 Democrat Club meeting. He is running for the single member district 4 seat.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Anonymity Redux
The following, for those who may no longer read the Standard-Times, was printed there June 13. With the kind permission of the S-T, we reprint it here. The points have really been made in other articles here, hope I am not being repetitive, but for the record. I am going with the full submission, some few phrases were deleted by S-T in interest of space, but nothing which changes the substance of the letter, in my opinion.
Keep anonymity on Web postings
6/08/08 (published June 13)
Saturday, June 7 edition of the Standard-Times, since the usual exerpts of online comments were non-existant by decree, printed an opinion by Mr, Griffin, congratulating the S-T for banning anonymous comment, if and when the online comments are reinstated.
Mr. Griffin, I dissent, and not for personal reasons. Anonymity in public comment has a long and noble history. For my part, though I used the handle “barkeep” out of habit, I have self-identified for nearly as long as I have posted.
America exists in part due to anonymous writing. Prior to the Declaration of Independence, many of the “Founders” published screeds under psuedonyms, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, etc. Most of what are now the Federalist Papers, (I call them the user's handbook to the Constitution) were originally written under false names to insure the ideas, not the personalities were foremost in the readers' minds.
To this day, our society recognizes the utility of anonymity. “Whistelblowers”, be they governmental or corporate, are protected from disclosure and potential retribution. Most states have press “shield laws”, giving reporters protection from being forced to disclose sources. Rape victims are protected from public disclosure of their identities when they testify. Do these grants of anonymity sometimes result in exaggeration, even false accusations by the protected parties? Sure do, and I'd hate to be on the wrong end of such an accusation, but we have decided as a society that there is more value to encouraging those “in the know” to speak out than demanding all public comment be for attribution.
I agree, there was a problem with the gosanangelo comments. Especially as to the FLDS matter and the Police Chief race, many comments went “over the top”, were either slanderous, unsubstantiated, or just plain “Yeah, well your Mother dresses you funny” silly.
I have looked at the Scripps-Howard policy as to anonymity and breach of privacy. As best I can discover, of the 19 newpapers in the chain, only the Standard-Times found it necessary to put its readers in a “time-out” corner by suspending comments. Only the Standard-Times suffered a wholesale release of user profiles in the closing days of a hot political race. Any open online forum will attract loons, limiting them is the job of the online moderator. Enforcing the rules already written would be a good start. We might try limiting to one or two posts per day, I prefer two. That's less than a chatroom, but allows a post, look at the response, then reply specifically.
My point here is that this suspension is more the fault of the sponsor than of the participants. Any sports referee will tell you, don't “let them play” for three quarters and then try to regain control of the game in the fourth.
Honestly, my opinion, we have a pretty good local paper with some outstanding reporters. This episode has been poorly handled, and as some of the comments on our www.conchoinfo.org Blog show, it will take some time to regain trust. It would help if the newspaper took full responsibility for its part in this mess, and treated its readers like adults.
Jim Ryan
Keep anonymity on Web postings
6/08/08 (published June 13)
Saturday, June 7 edition of the Standard-Times, since the usual exerpts of online comments were non-existant by decree, printed an opinion by Mr, Griffin, congratulating the S-T for banning anonymous comment, if and when the online comments are reinstated.
Mr. Griffin, I dissent, and not for personal reasons. Anonymity in public comment has a long and noble history. For my part, though I used the handle “barkeep” out of habit, I have self-identified for nearly as long as I have posted.
America exists in part due to anonymous writing. Prior to the Declaration of Independence, many of the “Founders” published screeds under psuedonyms, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, etc. Most of what are now the Federalist Papers, (I call them the user's handbook to the Constitution) were originally written under false names to insure the ideas, not the personalities were foremost in the readers' minds.
To this day, our society recognizes the utility of anonymity. “Whistelblowers”, be they governmental or corporate, are protected from disclosure and potential retribution. Most states have press “shield laws”, giving reporters protection from being forced to disclose sources. Rape victims are protected from public disclosure of their identities when they testify. Do these grants of anonymity sometimes result in exaggeration, even false accusations by the protected parties? Sure do, and I'd hate to be on the wrong end of such an accusation, but we have decided as a society that there is more value to encouraging those “in the know” to speak out than demanding all public comment be for attribution.
I agree, there was a problem with the gosanangelo comments. Especially as to the FLDS matter and the Police Chief race, many comments went “over the top”, were either slanderous, unsubstantiated, or just plain “Yeah, well your Mother dresses you funny” silly.
I have looked at the Scripps-Howard policy as to anonymity and breach of privacy. As best I can discover, of the 19 newpapers in the chain, only the Standard-Times found it necessary to put its readers in a “time-out” corner by suspending comments. Only the Standard-Times suffered a wholesale release of user profiles in the closing days of a hot political race. Any open online forum will attract loons, limiting them is the job of the online moderator. Enforcing the rules already written would be a good start. We might try limiting to one or two posts per day, I prefer two. That's less than a chatroom, but allows a post, look at the response, then reply specifically.
My point here is that this suspension is more the fault of the sponsor than of the participants. Any sports referee will tell you, don't “let them play” for three quarters and then try to regain control of the game in the fourth.
Honestly, my opinion, we have a pretty good local paper with some outstanding reporters. This episode has been poorly handled, and as some of the comments on our www.conchoinfo.org Blog show, it will take some time to regain trust. It would help if the newspaper took full responsibility for its part in this mess, and treated its readers like adults.
Jim Ryan
Monday, June 02, 2008
Standard-Times Time-out
As it happens I had just last week written the Standard-Times my quarterly subscription check, so I shall continue to find my daily supply of fishwrap on the lawn most of the summer. After Sunday's column I can't think of a reason I should continue to fund the enterprise. No, that's unfair, the local paper is always worth reading. My very first published editorial was in the Raleigh NC News and Observer, an unabashedly liberal paper whose ownership included some of the archtects of FDR's New Deal. That goes back a ways, JFK was still President when my first editorial got ink.
I would have been pleasently surprised to find a Sunday lead editorial giving us the sincerely apologetic straight story on how the "outing" of anonymous posters happened. The explanation so far provided lacks in timeliness, details or sheer believability. What I was not prepared for was to find myself and my fellow readers lectured to, admonshished like naughty children and essentially put on "time out" and probation!
I quite agree with editor Archuleta, the quality on online posts is on the decline, but whose fault is that? Look, anonymity was never an issue for me. I "outed" myself when I took Archuleta's seat on the City Charter Review Committee just to put aside any ethical concerns about advocating for that Committee's recommendations.
Those posters who trusted the Standard-Times to abide by its privacy policy, those people who expessed opinions they would otherwise have been reluctant to state for attribution, people who have legitimate concern over possible retribution on the job or in the marketplace, those are the people with a complaint. At its best, the online comment site did attract loons and irresponsible comments. In a typical "thread" from a given story with enough interest to go "hot", let's say 50 comments, I would usually see maybe half that were worth the time to read, but so what?
One soon learned to skip lightly past the sillier tin-foil hat wearing authors, perhaps take them in for amusement. Sadly, a lot of the folks whose commentary I became accustomed to looking forward to have vanished, and who can blame them? I don't know how the Standard-Times can ever regain the trust of its readers. I suspect the San Angelo Police Dept. is experiencing a bit of difficulty developing new "confidential informants" in drug cases. Similarly there, only the desperate or the deranged would put their lives on the line and trust that organization not to put their identity on the front page. Trust once betrayed is exceedingly difficult to regain, be it a marriage, a church, or a newspaper.
What I do know is that everything the S-T has done so far has been just about precisely wrong. The "leak" of user profiles had been out there for 10 days, was being actively discussed by posters whose feelings of betrayal were evident in their comments before the S-T ink-on-dead-trees edition acknowledged it. Then the article revealing it used the "outed" user profiles to out one of the high profile Police Chief candidates, compounding the betrayal of anonymity. Assuming that article should have been written and published (two separate actions, BTW), It should have gone beyond identifying Davis and mentioned that all the candidates were using online anonymity to post, if not directly, certainly through surrogate spokespersons. I caught this incident fairly early, an SAPD source gave me a heads up that lists of user profiles were circulating in the Dept. by Thursday noon, but by the time I knew about, the barn door had been shut.
Amazingly, the S-T seems still to maintain its IT people don't talk to its reporters, who have to go to out-of-paper sources for information. While S-T passes blame to "new employees" in a Tennessee division of Scripps-Howard, a check this weekend shows the other papers in the chain are managing to keep their online comments services up and reasonably well moderated. Tells me we do have a problem, and that problem is somewhere in the Harris St. building.
Newspapers across the country are realizing the old fishwrap on the lawn model is trending toward buggy-whipdom. A recent NPR interview revealed the San Francisco Chronicle, heart of the Hearst chain, is losing a $million a WEEK. I believe the ink version of the Standard- Times is down to about 25% of households. When I was a young man, no one with pretensions of caring about "things" would have admitted to not reading the paper, and a hefty chunk of them paid for morning and afternoon editions.
I don't know how significant online revenues are to the S-T overall, but I know that online edition is a revenue source. As treasurer of two local issues SPACS, I have made out checks to pay for those annoying ads. Commercial advertizers want to see numbers of "hits" and "pageviews" to justify the ad rates. One can safely predict a sharp drop there during this "cooling off" month.
My co-author makes the case well that anonymous comments have a justifiable place in public discussion. Often exactly the people with real knowledge are in a position vulnerable to pressure from employers or commercial partners, and unlikely to risk comments for attribution. This reality justifies whistle-blower statutes granting anonymity and/or legal blocks to workplace retribution.
I hope during this period the S-T will re-examine the no anonymous posts policy announced by Mr. Archulteta. Allowing anonymity does not necessarily result in a slanderous free-for-all, that's where moderation comes into play. Set rules, keep them simple, and ENFORCE them.
I would have been pleasently surprised to find a Sunday lead editorial giving us the sincerely apologetic straight story on how the "outing" of anonymous posters happened. The explanation so far provided lacks in timeliness, details or sheer believability. What I was not prepared for was to find myself and my fellow readers lectured to, admonshished like naughty children and essentially put on "time out" and probation!
I quite agree with editor Archuleta, the quality on online posts is on the decline, but whose fault is that? Look, anonymity was never an issue for me. I "outed" myself when I took Archuleta's seat on the City Charter Review Committee just to put aside any ethical concerns about advocating for that Committee's recommendations.
Those posters who trusted the Standard-Times to abide by its privacy policy, those people who expessed opinions they would otherwise have been reluctant to state for attribution, people who have legitimate concern over possible retribution on the job or in the marketplace, those are the people with a complaint. At its best, the online comment site did attract loons and irresponsible comments. In a typical "thread" from a given story with enough interest to go "hot", let's say 50 comments, I would usually see maybe half that were worth the time to read, but so what?
One soon learned to skip lightly past the sillier tin-foil hat wearing authors, perhaps take them in for amusement. Sadly, a lot of the folks whose commentary I became accustomed to looking forward to have vanished, and who can blame them? I don't know how the Standard-Times can ever regain the trust of its readers. I suspect the San Angelo Police Dept. is experiencing a bit of difficulty developing new "confidential informants" in drug cases. Similarly there, only the desperate or the deranged would put their lives on the line and trust that organization not to put their identity on the front page. Trust once betrayed is exceedingly difficult to regain, be it a marriage, a church, or a newspaper.
What I do know is that everything the S-T has done so far has been just about precisely wrong. The "leak" of user profiles had been out there for 10 days, was being actively discussed by posters whose feelings of betrayal were evident in their comments before the S-T ink-on-dead-trees edition acknowledged it. Then the article revealing it used the "outed" user profiles to out one of the high profile Police Chief candidates, compounding the betrayal of anonymity. Assuming that article should have been written and published (two separate actions, BTW), It should have gone beyond identifying Davis and mentioned that all the candidates were using online anonymity to post, if not directly, certainly through surrogate spokespersons. I caught this incident fairly early, an SAPD source gave me a heads up that lists of user profiles were circulating in the Dept. by Thursday noon, but by the time I knew about, the barn door had been shut.
Amazingly, the S-T seems still to maintain its IT people don't talk to its reporters, who have to go to out-of-paper sources for information. While S-T passes blame to "new employees" in a Tennessee division of Scripps-Howard, a check this weekend shows the other papers in the chain are managing to keep their online comments services up and reasonably well moderated. Tells me we do have a problem, and that problem is somewhere in the Harris St. building.
Newspapers across the country are realizing the old fishwrap on the lawn model is trending toward buggy-whipdom. A recent NPR interview revealed the San Francisco Chronicle, heart of the Hearst chain, is losing a $million a WEEK. I believe the ink version of the Standard- Times is down to about 25% of households. When I was a young man, no one with pretensions of caring about "things" would have admitted to not reading the paper, and a hefty chunk of them paid for morning and afternoon editions.
I don't know how significant online revenues are to the S-T overall, but I know that online edition is a revenue source. As treasurer of two local issues SPACS, I have made out checks to pay for those annoying ads. Commercial advertizers want to see numbers of "hits" and "pageviews" to justify the ad rates. One can safely predict a sharp drop there during this "cooling off" month.
My co-author makes the case well that anonymous comments have a justifiable place in public discussion. Often exactly the people with real knowledge are in a position vulnerable to pressure from employers or commercial partners, and unlikely to risk comments for attribution. This reality justifies whistle-blower statutes granting anonymity and/or legal blocks to workplace retribution.
I hope during this period the S-T will re-examine the no anonymous posts policy announced by Mr. Archulteta. Allowing anonymity does not necessarily result in a slanderous free-for-all, that's where moderation comes into play. Set rules, keep them simple, and ENFORCE them.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Speech, Freedom, and the Internet
If you haven't noticed, the Standard Times has put their web comments on hold. I understand their reasoning and concerns, and I hope they thoroughly analyze the situation and bring the comments section back in a much improved manner. Reading the column today, though, doesn't leave me with a feeling of confidence.
First off I have to admit I have been dealing with electronic forums since before the internet was public. I was on the dial up computer bulletin boards back when a 300 baud modem was state of the art. I was on Compuserve (anyone else remember them) when they were about a year old. I have watched (and sometimes participated) in flame wars. The comments on the Standard times comments have gotten extreme sometimes, but if you really want to see how it's done you need to look at usenet (easily accessible through Groups.Google.com) and pay close attention to alt.flame and the various subgroups. I won't get in to the gritty details, but one of the groups has a subtitle "looking for the ultimate flame in return", so you can use your imagination. The interesting thing is that most usenet groups and other online forums are basically civil and manage to spread information and opinion and keep the flames, spam and other annoyances and hazards to an acceptable level. And they have done it while allowing anonymous free speech.
The key to a successful forum is a process called moderation. In its simplest definition moderation is just enforcing the rules. Moderation of forums is an ongoing process. It requires diligence and the ability to enforce rules. If you want a nice, civil, forum you have to be willing to strictly enforce the rules. You have to be willing to kill comments that break the rules, and you have to ban posters who break the rules. I normally use a 2 strikes rule. First time you break the rule, you get a warning. Next time you're banned. There are a number of tools that can be used to keep the unwanted away. Blocking emails, IP addresses, and lots of other tools can be used to keep a forum under control. You'll never get it perfect but you can make it great.
If we look at the Standard Times, and its forums, they really didn't do moderation well for quite a while. Since the comments feature came on line, there have been comments that were left on that should have been pulled. There were personal attacks, inappropriate language, and off topic posts that had nothing to do with the story that were let slide up until about half way through the last chiefs campaign. They finally started pulling some comments, and they still banned very few posters. By the time the FLDS news hit the paper, the comments were completely out of control. The genie was out of the bottle. Then, in the middle of all this, there was a poorly explained problem with their website that for about a day that disclosed the given name as well as the screen name of all of those posting comments. I still don't understand how a so called system wide change to the 19 Scripps websites only seems to have caused this problem to the Standard Times, especially when all the different websites seem to have different settings on how comments are handled. The reality is that it is time for the paper to close comments until new procedures and strategies can be put into place. They need some serious introspection.
Reading todays column over, I have a number of concerns with their approach. There have been many complaints similar to that made by aj432 long before May 22nd. Why did it take so long to react? Why have responses up until now so been ineffective? Why is it that the rest of the Scripps family of websites aren't having this many problems?
I am also very concerned that "anonymous" posting might disappear. As was shown not too long ago, the Standard times doesn't have truly anonymous posting. They still maintain a given name and an email address along with a posting history. Their current policy of keeping the given name private does give a certain amount of discreet privacy, while allowing the Standard Times to contact the poster in case of problems. If they keep the current registration procedure, they really have no way to ensure that the name the poster gave while registering is his true name. I wonder how many posters named GW Bush, M Mouse, J Davis, T Vasquez, etc. are currently signed up. There are also some much more fundamental reasons that at least some degree of anonymity should be available to the posters.
We must remember that this country has a long and proud history of anonymous commentary, especially political. Before and during the Revolution, there were numerous pamphleteers publishing articles on the injustices they saw at the time. Anonymity was important. If their identity had become known, they would have been lucky to just be hanged. Many writers in the abolitionist movement wrote anonymously for the same reasons. They were putting their life on the line to state their beliefs. Speaking out can still be dangerous today. Jobs, property, and lives can still be at stake no matter if the comments are true or not.
Then we have the history of the adoption of the constitution, with the federalist and anti-federalist papers. One of the reasons they were written under pseudonyms was so the ideas would be able to stand on their own merits, not on the reputation of the writers. Granted, many insiders knew who Publius was, but most of the audience read the papers before they knew who the author was, which gave the articles a chance at a somewhat unbiased read. This is still a meaningful goal today. There are times when an activist, official, or just well known person needs to present an idea that stands on its own merits, not on the public perception of its presenter. Anonymous speech is necessary for truly free speech and a healthy community dialog.
That doesn't mean there is little the standard times can or should do. There are some basic procedures they can implement to get their comments section back on track and still have a dynamic, healthy website.
First, limit the number of posts a day a person can do. You are already doing that in the print edition by limiting letters to the editor to one every 30 days. Between using email addresses, IP addresses, and cookies for tracking, there are ways to keep people from going overboard on the number of posts. Limit each poster to 1 post per day per topic, and 5 posts per day total, and a lot of the problems will disappear. Far too many of the current posters are using the comments section as little more than a public chat room. Some don't have a life, so are posting or responding twenty or more times a day. Limit them to one good post a day, with a response being unavailable until the next day, and the quality of the postings will improve, and the amount of vitriol will diminish significantly.
Next, enlist the web community in policing of the comments. Set the software up so that you can have posters that can moderate certain sections, and then get volunteers you can trust to help moderate the comments. Set it up so that all of their decisions can be reviewed and undone by staff if need be, but there should be plenty of people willing to help.
If you can't get help in moderating a section, set a limit on the numbers of posts per day that will be allowed. 25 to 50 might be a good starting point but flexibility will be needed to get it right.
Additionally, have staff respond to posts that are getting close to the edge within the comments section from time to time. Public explanations of how a post failed to meet the rules helps motivate all posters to play by the rules better. Remind them that free speech is not unfettered, unrestricted speech. It's your soap box and you get to decide the rules.
As I stated earlier, I have been participating in online forums for over 30 years. I know that you can run a successful forum and still have anonymous, intense, active discussions. I realize that the comments are the Standard Times soap box, and that they are a business, and they have the right to take their soap box away if they so choose, but I also know that they do want a open, healthy dialog on the issues. It contributes greatly to a healthy environment and community. I hope they consider this post and my suggestions carefully. In the mean time, we at conchoinfo will be maintaining our policy of allowing anonymous posts. It takes work, but is worth the effort. We may change how we do moderation, but anonymous speech is too important a part of free speech to be eliminated without exhausting other options.
First off I have to admit I have been dealing with electronic forums since before the internet was public. I was on the dial up computer bulletin boards back when a 300 baud modem was state of the art. I was on Compuserve (anyone else remember them) when they were about a year old. I have watched (and sometimes participated) in flame wars. The comments on the Standard times comments have gotten extreme sometimes, but if you really want to see how it's done you need to look at usenet (easily accessible through Groups.Google.com) and pay close attention to alt.flame and the various subgroups. I won't get in to the gritty details, but one of the groups has a subtitle "looking for the ultimate flame in return", so you can use your imagination. The interesting thing is that most usenet groups and other online forums are basically civil and manage to spread information and opinion and keep the flames, spam and other annoyances and hazards to an acceptable level. And they have done it while allowing anonymous free speech.
The key to a successful forum is a process called moderation. In its simplest definition moderation is just enforcing the rules. Moderation of forums is an ongoing process. It requires diligence and the ability to enforce rules. If you want a nice, civil, forum you have to be willing to strictly enforce the rules. You have to be willing to kill comments that break the rules, and you have to ban posters who break the rules. I normally use a 2 strikes rule. First time you break the rule, you get a warning. Next time you're banned. There are a number of tools that can be used to keep the unwanted away. Blocking emails, IP addresses, and lots of other tools can be used to keep a forum under control. You'll never get it perfect but you can make it great.
If we look at the Standard Times, and its forums, they really didn't do moderation well for quite a while. Since the comments feature came on line, there have been comments that were left on that should have been pulled. There were personal attacks, inappropriate language, and off topic posts that had nothing to do with the story that were let slide up until about half way through the last chiefs campaign. They finally started pulling some comments, and they still banned very few posters. By the time the FLDS news hit the paper, the comments were completely out of control. The genie was out of the bottle. Then, in the middle of all this, there was a poorly explained problem with their website that for about a day that disclosed the given name as well as the screen name of all of those posting comments. I still don't understand how a so called system wide change to the 19 Scripps websites only seems to have caused this problem to the Standard Times, especially when all the different websites seem to have different settings on how comments are handled. The reality is that it is time for the paper to close comments until new procedures and strategies can be put into place. They need some serious introspection.
Reading todays column over, I have a number of concerns with their approach. There have been many complaints similar to that made by aj432 long before May 22nd. Why did it take so long to react? Why have responses up until now so been ineffective? Why is it that the rest of the Scripps family of websites aren't having this many problems?
I am also very concerned that "anonymous" posting might disappear. As was shown not too long ago, the Standard times doesn't have truly anonymous posting. They still maintain a given name and an email address along with a posting history. Their current policy of keeping the given name private does give a certain amount of discreet privacy, while allowing the Standard Times to contact the poster in case of problems. If they keep the current registration procedure, they really have no way to ensure that the name the poster gave while registering is his true name. I wonder how many posters named GW Bush, M Mouse, J Davis, T Vasquez, etc. are currently signed up. There are also some much more fundamental reasons that at least some degree of anonymity should be available to the posters.
We must remember that this country has a long and proud history of anonymous commentary, especially political. Before and during the Revolution, there were numerous pamphleteers publishing articles on the injustices they saw at the time. Anonymity was important. If their identity had become known, they would have been lucky to just be hanged. Many writers in the abolitionist movement wrote anonymously for the same reasons. They were putting their life on the line to state their beliefs. Speaking out can still be dangerous today. Jobs, property, and lives can still be at stake no matter if the comments are true or not.
Then we have the history of the adoption of the constitution, with the federalist and anti-federalist papers. One of the reasons they were written under pseudonyms was so the ideas would be able to stand on their own merits, not on the reputation of the writers. Granted, many insiders knew who Publius was, but most of the audience read the papers before they knew who the author was, which gave the articles a chance at a somewhat unbiased read. This is still a meaningful goal today. There are times when an activist, official, or just well known person needs to present an idea that stands on its own merits, not on the public perception of its presenter. Anonymous speech is necessary for truly free speech and a healthy community dialog.
That doesn't mean there is little the standard times can or should do. There are some basic procedures they can implement to get their comments section back on track and still have a dynamic, healthy website.
First, limit the number of posts a day a person can do. You are already doing that in the print edition by limiting letters to the editor to one every 30 days. Between using email addresses, IP addresses, and cookies for tracking, there are ways to keep people from going overboard on the number of posts. Limit each poster to 1 post per day per topic, and 5 posts per day total, and a lot of the problems will disappear. Far too many of the current posters are using the comments section as little more than a public chat room. Some don't have a life, so are posting or responding twenty or more times a day. Limit them to one good post a day, with a response being unavailable until the next day, and the quality of the postings will improve, and the amount of vitriol will diminish significantly.
Next, enlist the web community in policing of the comments. Set the software up so that you can have posters that can moderate certain sections, and then get volunteers you can trust to help moderate the comments. Set it up so that all of their decisions can be reviewed and undone by staff if need be, but there should be plenty of people willing to help.
If you can't get help in moderating a section, set a limit on the numbers of posts per day that will be allowed. 25 to 50 might be a good starting point but flexibility will be needed to get it right.
Additionally, have staff respond to posts that are getting close to the edge within the comments section from time to time. Public explanations of how a post failed to meet the rules helps motivate all posters to play by the rules better. Remind them that free speech is not unfettered, unrestricted speech. It's your soap box and you get to decide the rules.
As I stated earlier, I have been participating in online forums for over 30 years. I know that you can run a successful forum and still have anonymous, intense, active discussions. I realize that the comments are the Standard Times soap box, and that they are a business, and they have the right to take their soap box away if they so choose, but I also know that they do want a open, healthy dialog on the issues. It contributes greatly to a healthy environment and community. I hope they consider this post and my suggestions carefully. In the mean time, we at conchoinfo will be maintaining our policy of allowing anonymous posts. It takes work, but is worth the effort. We may change how we do moderation, but anonymous speech is too important a part of free speech to be eliminated without exhausting other options.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
NAACP Chiefs Forum Last Questions Part 2
Answers to the second and last group of questions at the NAACP forum, March 1st. This is split into two videos to meet time and size restrictions.
This second clip contains answers from candidates Cunningham, Burkett, and Vasquez.
This second clip contains answers from candidates Cunningham, Burkett, and Vasquez.
NAACP Chiefs Forum Last Questions Part 1
Answers to the second and last group of questions at the NAACP forum, March 1st. This is split into two videos to meet time and size restrictions.
This first clip contains answers from candidates Kading, Davis, and Mida.
This first clip contains answers from candidates Kading, Davis, and Mida.
NAACP Chiefs Forum First Questions part 2
Answers to the first group of questions at the NAACP Chief Candidates Forum, March 1st. This is split into two videos to meet time and size restrictions.
This second clip contains answers from candidates Davis, Cunningham and Burkett.
This second clip contains answers from candidates Davis, Cunningham and Burkett.
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