Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social Not Working? forum: topic
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Moderation or censorship? Or: keeping a civil diversity of outlooks
Heather Etchevers
Friday, 13 March 2009 08:06 UTC
This seems like a good forum to bring up the topic of moderation. As one of the NN bloggers, I recently discovered that I benefit from the capacity to remove comments on my posts without a trace. In the forum discussions, removing comments does leave a trace, and occasionally leads to very disjointed threads.
The reasons behind removing comments range from blatant, bot-powered advertisements for undesirable pharmaceuticals or services to a more grey area of user-powered advertisements for services or products that become undesirable through frequency of repetition as well as comments that can be personally hurtful or offensive. Controversial threads do not automatically invite egregious moderation of comments: for example, this one.
The current set-up allows anyone to flag a comment they deem inappropriate to the moderator, with a required box for the reason. The moderator then chooses whether or not to forward, possibly after rewording, that reason to the person whose comment is to be removed.
If you were or are a forum moderator on Nature Network, what would your policy be?
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Comrade PhysioProf is amused by the obsession with “swear words”.
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Frank, I like it.
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Comrade PhysioProf: no obsession with swear words, as far as I can tell. Actually a constructive discussion this time around, methinks, which would not gain much by peppering it with such.
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I think much of the issue revolves around the sort of environment you want to create. On blogs, this can partly be done by the tone of the blogger – compare PZed to John Wilkins for example. Of course, that’s not enough: the comments on PZed’s posts are much more lively than his posts, and he lets his commenters do that (for better or worse).
The comments steffi pointed to show another way of moderating: the other commenters leapt on the person who had overstepped the mark. That was obvious, but sometimes it subtler, e.g. a “steady on”, or putting up a photo of a furry animal.
You talking about me, eh?Sometimes a blogger or moderator will have to step in – I was moderated only yesterday after I got into an argument on a blog with a racist. That, I think, was right: it stopped the unpleasantness and got the focus back to the blog post. This can be seen in teh same light. the blogger wanted to create an atmosphere where ideas can be discussed without people abusing each other.
I think it’s more difficult for forum moderators, because they can’t control the environment by writing lots of blog posts, and their role is perhaps not seen as one of setting the tone, but of administration. Hence, they may be less likely to be proactive, and instead have to respond when things start going in the wrong direction. Hence they may have to be more heavy-handed when they do have to act, particularly with people who haven’t worked out the social rules in the forum, and hence who feel that they are being treated unfairly.
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I definitely agree that there are no easy answers to how best to moderate discussion. I suddenly have an image of the UK House of Commons and the Speaker saying “ORDER! ORDER!” in a vain attempt to quell the uproar.
In an ideal world moderation isn’t needed. If all commenters stuck to basic rules of respecting the people they are engaging with then we wouldn’t need moderation. Disagreements and strong positions are fine, but not ad hominem abuse.
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I’m musing upon the notion of swear words having a total of 4 characters (“four letter words”), and am reminded of this celebrated case (taken from “good old Wikipedia”, in regard of a long playing record from a beat-combo known as the Sex Pistols):
Never Mind the Bollocks was met by a hail of controversy in the UK upon its release. The first documented legal problems involved the allegedly ‘obscene’ name of the album, and the prosecution (under Section 28 of the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, since replaced by the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981) of the manager of the Nottingham Virgin record shop (and label owner Richard Branson) for having displayed it in a window. However, at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on 24 November 1977, defending Queen’s Counsel John Mortimer produced expert witnesses who were able to demonstrate that the word “bollocks” was actually a legitimate Old English term originally used to refer to a priest, and which, in the context of the title, meant “nonsense”.
The chairman of the hearing was forced to conclude: Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.
So, I think “bollocks” is OK – as in, I think that is a load of old bollocks.
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Dear Heather,
great topic! I would not like to be a moderator (I am almost a moderator in one very long thread though) here and have expressed my criticism of the software that is used here a few times already.
If the software would allow what most softwares allow that would be different. E.g. a post could be moved elsewhere. That will keep a thread clean, still the poster will not have to face the eradication of his post, which is sometimes a shock to people. The post could be moved in a special section of the forum.
Yours friendly
Hans -
There have been some very interesting contributions – thanks, one and all. I believe it was Ian who had elsewhere pointed in the direction of Dr. Robin Barrow’s “On the Duty of Not Taking Offense”, which was a talk given at the first John Wilson Memorial Lecture in Oxford in April, 2005, and subsequently published in the Journal of Moral Education in September of that year. Dr. Barrow has kindly sent a copy my way by regular mail, and I am awaiting it to write a bit on that theme.
Meanwhile, though, Dr. Graham Haydon has sent me a PDF copy of his response to that essay, from the same journal in March, 2006. “On the duty of educating respect: a response to Robin Barrow.” Among its many thought-provoking statements, I cite (and apologize for formatting issues beyond my control):
In teaching and nurturing respect, we need to keep in mind at least the following points.
- Respect for persons does not require that one agrees with all their opinions or that one considers all beliefs and values to be equally valid.
- It does require that one make some effort to see how things appear from another person’s point of view (this being at least part of what is involved in giving recognition to others).
- Respect for others is not shown only when the others are directly addressed. Offensive remarks about others are disrespectful to those others even when they do not hear read? the remarks, and therefore cannot directly be offended by them.
- Unlike (arguably) affection among close kin, respect for strangers does not come naturally. If we can treat it as a virtue, it will be one of those that Hume called an artificial rather than a natural virtue. The forms of respect – what counts as disrespectful or as showing respect – do vary with time and place, and need to be learned. Modern cultures still have to learn what is involved in an egalitarian rather than hierarchical respect for others.
….We all have many opportunities to contribute to our own and each others’ education in respect. Since respect sometimes demands that we do take offence, on behalf of others if not for our own sake, there cannot be an unqualified duty not to take offence. It is harder to see any qualification on our duty to educate respect.
On the other hand, I’d also draw attention to this essay by Wendy Kimener in The Atlantic: “We tend to forget that criticism sometimes expresses greater respect than praise. It is surely more of an honor than flattery.” And:
Communities are exalted, as if the typical community were composed solely of people who shared and cared about one another and never engaged in conflict. In fact, communities are built on compromise, and compromise presupposes disagreement. Tolerance presupposes the existence of people and ideas you don’t like. It prevails upon you to forswear censoring others but not yourself. One test of tolerance is provocation.
Thoughts?
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As a kind of place marker, it might be interesting to go back and look at Corie’s post, ensuing comments and their links on What is fair play in the blogo/commentosphere?.
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Heather, those are interesting links and quotes – thanks. However, I still don’t think they address what we’ve gotten hung up on: at which point exactly does a heated discussion or conflict tip over to disrespect? What is allowable in such a discussion and what isn’t?
In some way, the ‘rules of the game’ of online discussion and social interactions are still being established. I have a feeling that some of you who have done this for a while think the rules are clear and intuitive, and should be obvious for everyone: they’re not. So it’s that much more important that we work this out if we want social networking to do some good for a very large number of people…
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