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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This has been a most interesting post/discussion for me (if last week hadn’t been Spring Break [I actually spent it outside:)], I might have joined in sooner). Having recently been moderated, I wished not so much that the comment itself hadn’t been removed, but to understand why/at what point it became too provocative to remain public. The need for this understanding gets at Steffi’s point that the social rules are not yet clear, that there is a learning curve, and that like good fences, explicit rules make for better conversation. Answering her question of at what point a heated discussion tips into disrespect, the first “rule” should probably be “no attacks upon the person” — this is suggested elsewhere in this thread and seems a good starting point. Certainly it’s the prime directive of academic discussion where you may call an idea stupid but would not call the speaker that. Swear words directed intelligently at an idea can be effective (and yes, I come from a group of people that enjoys swear words — gotta watch this around the kids, though it’s more fun to teach them the appropriate occasion then simply tell them they can’t say the words!); they indicate emotional response as opposed to intellectual, and in an intellectual forum, that’s useful stuff to know. I especially appreciated Bora’s comments on how he approaches his blog — it was an interesting piece of self-oriented sociolinguistic analysis that offered a smart solution (with a lot less alliteration): consciously model what you’re after. I also think the “three strikes and you’re out” policy is clever, but maybe not workable for a public space.
Something else I’d like to understand here at NN is at what point does a thread get “off topic”? I’ve seen quite a few comments from moderators regarding that. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but does change the flow of communication. (In fact, it could be argued that my asking the question is off topic and should be the subject of its own post! The policy makes for efficient tagging, but not for naturally flowing conversation.)
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I wrote to the moderator relative to the last “comment” which is, again, an automatically generated post to the same commercial link unrelated to science whatsoever.
Back to the trickier part: where is that boundary? I know it was here somewhere…
Mickey made a telling comment, one that reflects how I try to channel my kid’s squabbling actually! “You may call an idea stupid but would not call the speaker that.”
I think any sensitivity we have to moderation stems from this distinction.
Can we all read a comment along the lines of, “that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard in my life! You are absolutely wrong and here’s why:…” with perfect equanimity? And let’s imagine something later in the thread along the lines of “and Heather came up with this f**ked up approach…” or mildly sarcastic like “in her infinite wisdom, Heather imparted this flawed concept.” After a few of these, especially if I care about my idea, I might well feel badgered and as if judgement were being passed on me.
My take is that comments like these should be left in a public forum discussion. They may well offend me. Perhaps on my personal blog, I might be tempted to moderate them away as disrespectful. But isn’t any offense I take a personal, not a public, offense? After all, if my idea had attracted other defenders, and the contending opinion continued along the lines it had started, it would be quite clear that the idea, not the person who came up with it, is the real target.
Steffi, do you agree with the distinction that Bora made between a semi-private space stamped with the personality of its “creator”, and a semi-public one sponsored by a (presumably) faceless organization? If so, perhaps said sponsor could enumerate its own guidelines, which can be recalled to users at the same time as any given comment has been flagged as inappropriate?1
And what do you think about Chris’ suggestion to flag (and perhaps individually mask, though like Maya I don’t see the point of it) a public forum post/comment as personally offensive, with perhaps a threshold at which eg. after two or three such flags the moderators might like to consider the post/comment as publicly offensive?
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1 I really do like this guide to netiquette and think it could easily be adapted to the NN as an accompanying justification for moderation. This would be my less pithy derivation thereof.
- The person reading your mail or posting is, indeed, a person, with feelings that can be hurt. Intentionally hurting their feelings is bad manners, and you may not mail or post anything you wouldn’t say to their face.
- Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life with respect to ethics or the law.
- Lurk before you leap. What is appropriate in some online situations is not in others.
- Respect other people’s time and bandwidth. It’s OK to think that what you’re doing at the moment is the most important thing in the universe, but don’t expect anyone else to agree with you. (General insults proffered about no response to a protocol problem, for example, would fall under this category.)
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I use the guide to netiquette that Heather mentioned with my students — it’s a good one. One thing that I’d amend it with is that people do vary in what they are willing to say out loud to someone’s face. I’ve been to conferences with extraordinarily ugly exchanges because a presenter was stomping on grounds sacred to some audience member. Whether that person is always that fractious or just feeling particularly passionate because of the topic isn’t easy to tell. But communicating in a public forum means developing a thicker skin. There are still a few blogs I follow where the writers use monikers instead of real names — this protects the writer a bit. Also, we do as readers assign personality attributes to writers/responders, and after a while, will tune out strident voices despite the words being there.
And you’re right Heather, that someone saying “that is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard” about one of my ideas would be rather irksome, and that eventually I’d probably retaliate…but still leave the thread public. I also think in a personal blog (which I do not have), I’d probably insist on non-anonymous comments. Since I am of the group that comes from academia (per Bora’s description “A lot depends on one’s prior experiences. If one comes to science blogging out of academia with its highly formalized and ritualized kabuki dance of language-use, extremely polite on the surface, yet often very vicious in the subtext, then one sees blogs as very uncourteous and unpleasant – the things that are supposed to be hidden between the lines and now said openly” beginning his comment in Corie’s post), I don’t need blatant nastiness to feel that it’s there — I know the lingo. There also may be discipline-specific variation in this area — in linguistics (my field), you are allowed to say pretty bluntly “an idea is wrong” (even in publication) so long as you can support your opinion. Years of working with bio-scientist types has made me more sensitive as their criticisms are more carefully hedged.
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Heather, sorry for answering your question so late.
Yes, I think there is a clear distinction between a ‘public’ forum and a personal blog – however, it is absolutely essential that the rules are spelled out very clearly in each case.
Bora, I am pretty sure you have your house rules spelled out somewhere, but I just spent too much time (about 15 or 20 very impatient seconds) looking for them and couldn’t find them. Never mind whether I’m slow or not looking in the right place today: especially if the rules are drastic, I think they have to be spelled out much clearer and be made more obvious, especially if the blogger is hoping to attract new people.
Same goes for public forums, as Heather alludes to.
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Maybe one distinction between a personal blog and a public, moderated discussion forum is that the “lurk before you leap” injunction is even more relevant to the former than the latter.
A lurker would see what sort of comments are tolerated and which are removed in either place. However, in a public forum such as this, there are many moderators, each with their own idea of what is too unpleasant to be productive, so the lurker is unlikely to glean a consistent idea of what sort of discussion or words will be tolerated. So a more explicit code of conduct for the fora (“forums” just bothers me as a plural), would be possible to establish. Perhaps upon signing up, since NN doesn’t take anonymous participation.
Because it’s not a comment if I haven’t put a link into it, some might find amusement and instruction in this one.
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Upon a post this week on The Hive Overview, welcoming a new pair of (veteran) bloggers to the Discover platform, comments rapidly devolved into a debate as to what is an appropriate compliment to make to a scientist. Phil left the offensive comments up, as well as responses to them, with this justification:
Some people have taken me to task on other blogs for not deleting these comments, but I prefer they stay up. When people make mistakes, the best thing to do is air them out, not suppress them.
Further discussion by the targeted Sheril of that and other offensive attitudes can be found here , complete with exemplary wacko and minority opinion comments that she also let get debated (or slapped down, depending on your perspective) by her readers.
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