Anil Dash has a really good semi-ranty piece out called “If Your Website’s Full of Assholes It’s Your Fault” which really is a must-read, I think. We moderate comments here pretty strongly–you can read our comment policy here if you like–but the reasons we do it are pretty well outlined in Dash’s piece. We got to the same place he did on our own, and there’s a little flexibility in what we let through because we have a bunch of different people who have the power to approve or trash comments. Sometimes we don’t agree, in other words. Judging assholery is more an art than a science, after all. But that’s why we do it. We want conversations, not shouting matches.
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Oh, and I do appreciate “moderation” – I don’t go to the web to listen to people pick fights, or rant stupidly, or even intelligently, at one another. I’m a New Yorker and get plenty of that without any effort. I’m not interested in competitions, only conversations.
Great, and the only possible objections will come from people who have no idea what the First Amendment actually protects. Dash’s post is like a 2011 updating of Julian Dibbell’s “A Rape in Cyberspace,” which, while technologically outdated, is still a really haunting read, making the case for speech as action in an online community.
Dash has all the right moves.
But, I’d like to add one thing to it. As a commenter, don’t throw around the whole “freedom of speech” thing, because it really does make you look ignorant.
Websites, even though on public space, are private entities and the people who own/manage/moderate them have a job to do. If part of that job is to toss out or reprimand someone who doesn’t follow the rules and regulations, so be it.
They are not infringing on anyone’s freedom of speech when they do so.
And just as you have a right to state your opinion on a subject, someone else has the right to refute that opinion. Both just need to adhere to whatever rules that particular site has laid down.
Beth–I’ve heard really good things about “A Rape in Cyberspace”, but I’ve refused to read it because I juts don’t think it’s appropriate to utilize the word “rape” in that context. It always disappoints me when someone flippantly and callously uses something as heinous as rape to exemplify being “done wrong”.
Hey Michelle, Dibbell’s not being flippant at all. The essay is about exactly that — a rape in cyberspace, and the potency/agency of language in the online realm is precisely what’s at stake. He’s addressing how a character in an online roleplaying community wrote a program through which he could rape female characters, the women’s confusion about the sense of violation that resulted “IRL,” and the way the community defined itself in response to that event. Whether the word “rape” applies is very much at the heart of the conversation. It’s hard to describe, but please give it a chance.
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