I’ve been struggling for a while with issues of free speech in the community of commenters over on OrangePolitics.org. Over the life of the site, there has been a small group of people who are generally screwing it up for the rest of us. Instead of informing and getting to know each other, the site devolves into nasty bickering which no-one wants to read except maybe the 5 people involved in it. I know I don’t want to read it, and that’s not just because half of it seems to be based on the premise that I am an evil dictator who is trying to control your life and ruin your neighborhood.
I often hear from folks who have varying success at ignoring the negative elements and usually just stop reading the site. I try to remind people that you can just read the posts and skip the comments (especially via RSS), but most OP readers don’t value that distinction very much. Lately the tension has gotten worse and some commenters have become increasingly toxic.
So as we are approaching the second major platform change to OP (from WordPress to Drupal), I’m starting to think about how to help the readers feed back into the system and have some collective say about what words and what behavior is or is not valued. It’s already going to be a great improvement that trusted users can have their own blogs on the site. I’m especially interested in Drupal modules that might help with rating content (both posts and comments), although I also accept that some manual moderation will probably be needed, especially in determining what goes on the front page.
Brian says that allowing the community to vote will encourage gaming of the system, and I think he fears that this could put the difficult people even more in charge. While this is certainly possible, I have more confidence in the commenters and especially the (silent) readers to balance this out and result in the right outcome most of time. This isn’t so much a wisdom of the crowd thing as it is a Buddhist thing, at least for me. I need to believe that everyone is essentially good. Otherwise I wouldn’t be working to amplify their voices, help them vote, help them make media, etc.
Continue reading “OP becomes its own worst enemy” →
Tomorrow a large coalition of activists is organizing a series of events in Second Life to raise awareness about preventing a war with Iran. I’m really excited about it and I will be there most of the day helping out as a media contact. This event also inspired me to add some Iran info to the virtual office for my organization the Fellowship of Reconciliation (seen at left).
