from Kevin E. Ford
Regarding editorial policy, I do think that it is an important discussion because it is one of the most crucial factors to consider when deciding what type of media site you want to be. I believe that the reason why the Cafe’s policies appear to be going back and forth is because to some extent they are as the owners receive different advice on what their editorial policy should be. At the end of the day one important thing for a media outlet’s credibility is the notification, constancy and consistent application of the editorial policy.
To this end, this is the best advice I can give living in the industry is to consider the mission and vision for the site in three particular areas; 1) what type of content do you want (logical discussion, free for all, political debate, educational issues, family memories, this doesn’t mean they have to be mutually exclusive but some items may be), 2) who and how many do you want contributing content (creators and critics) and 3) who and how many do you want reading the content (spectators). It is important to realize that for the second and third questions it is unrealistic to just say everyone because no matter what editorial policy you choose, including no editorial policy, you will be attracting and repelling different groups.
Once a mission and vision is articulated, including those three areas, you can design an editorial policy. The editorial policy should, of course, be designed to directly support that mission and vision. Luckily the Café doesn’t have a profit component so makes this much easier to consider as an entire set of stakeholders is gone. I’ll list out a few of the areas of contention on the Café’s editorial policy as of late and how they impact those three things I mentioned.
Profanity. I mention this because there has been a fair amount of it introduced to the Café recently. This goes back to the questions of whom do you want to contribute and who to you want to read the site. The profanity question is very important to the later. Do you want parents to read this site and just as importantly be comfortable allowing their children to? The decision to allow profanity will have a real impact on who will be reading the content. There is a technological component to this as well as parents increasingly are utilizing filtering tools to protect their children; there is a very real possibility this site might end up blocked by those tools if it contains profanity.
Personal Insults. This really ties into all three. Abusive debate attracts certain people as contributors and repels others. It also helps determine what type of content will be created in the first place. A poster had mentioned that anyone is free to just skip such posts but there is a different result in practical application. What actually tends to happen in practice is that individuals do not decide to read or not read certain posts on a case by case basis, they eventually move on or off the media site as a whole. Human nature is what it is.
Pseudonyms. As many have pointed out the use of pseudonyms can help broaden the number of people who contribute content and protect against real world retaliation. However, there are other aspects to consider as well in what type of content is created. For example is it ok to switch pseudonyms? Is it ok for a single person to use multiple pseudonyms to make it appear that multiple people support his or her position? Multiple pseudonym switching is a favorite tactic of trolls and evil clowns who are willing to post the most horrific things if they think it will never be traced back to their real public persona, is this the type of content you want created? Some might think, “who cares if this content is being created?”, but it is important. As I have been alluding to, the type of content that is created goes a long way to determining the who and the how many create content and are reading the site. They are tied together.
Unrestricted Free Speech. This ties into the other items I’ve been bringing up. The practical application is that you will be letting your content contributors decide on your editorial policy and controlling who contributes to a reads your site. If your contributors move to profanity, it has the impacts I mentioned above. If they veer into heavy personal insults than people who do not like that type of thing will shy away from the site as a whole and certain others will be attracted to it. Unrestricted free speech tends to end up being dominated by those with extremely strong personalities as others are driven off by the prolonged negative postings by certain individuals. But if you are targeting certain content, contributors and readership, this may all be good.
I don’t mean to make this sound simple. The other aspect to consider here is that controversy drives readership (how many do you want) so if you pull all controversy off of the site then you are making a decision on the size (how many) of your pool of creators and spectators. It isn’t as easy as just stating we’re going to have unrestricted free speech, or were going to ban such and such. Each decision has an impact on the direction of the content, who will in turn create new content and who will be reading the site’s content. As I stated the my best advice to the Café is to answer those three questions and then try as best as you can to design an editorial policy that will support those things, communicate that policy and apply it consistently. No matter what editorial policy that is choosen there will be those that disagree, even in the consistent enforcement of a stated policy.
It’s an important decision that should be carefully considered.
Thanks,
Kevin
This post represents my personal opinions and in no way should be considered an official act of the BoE or that I am speaking on behalf of the BoE in any way.
Thanks, Kevin, for putting so much thought into this.
The reality of handling such a diverse set of issues is not simple from our point of view although we would like to have simple solutions to all of them. Becki and I discuss a lot of these issues on a weekly basis and sometimes disagree on how to handle them. There are two issues that I can address quickly.
I abhor the use of profanity even though we’ve posted WVG’s profane remarks recently. In fact throughout my life I have only rarely used profanity in the heat of the moment- like that time I destroyed the family car. The reason for posting everything that WVG said was to expose this person for who he is while at the same time permitting his more substantive remarks. It’s either to post all or not to post anything.
Believe it or not there have been only two who have been shut down. Both of these people are surprisingly alike. One has just reincarnated himself in ‘Independent’. The other started his own website to launch his attacks. We have received the threat of a lawsuit from a third, but to our knowledge she has not chosen to speak at the Cafe. These twisted individuals don’t just act up at the Cafe; they do other things behind the scenes that we have to deal with.
I do not like it when one person uses multiple pseudonyms. I don’t mind it if after a long while one decides to change his or her pseudonym. Use of multiple pseudonyms has been a problem with only one individual and we have tried to persuade this individual to not do this. Lately this has not been a problem. We’ve stated over and over again our policy on this subject.
I’ll put some thought into the other areas you bring up. We are constantly learning and evolving.
We don’t want to alienate people but we find that whatever we do, there are some who aren’t pleased. We have no ambitions as far as the number of followers and this is probably why we have survived this long. The demise of CTLocal Politics (in my opinion, the leading blog in the state) must have been gut-wrenching for Chris Bigelow because he could not match up to his ambition.
I’ll try to follow up after hearing what others have to say.
This … removed by Admin …essay.
I think people should be allowed to say anything they want without censorship. I also think people should be required to use their real names but John and Becki insist on allowing anonymous posting. Many large newspapers that allow anonymous posting are seriously considering changing that policy to requiring those who comment on articles to use their REAL NAMES.
Thanks Kevin, for putting my thoughts into an eloquent and readable format.
John, the best part of this forum is your manner of managing it.
Perhaps Joe Breen, if he is reading this, can explain why when making his often very good points he used, or uses, multiple screen names?
WVG - We do allow anonymous postings for reasons that have been explained many times over our four plus years here. We do not, however, REQUIRE postings to be anonymous. If the anonymity is a problem for you, by all means, feel free to use your own name as you have in the past. - Becki
I’ve said it before when this has come up and I’ll say it again now. I think a compromise is in order here. Have a separate section of the webpage for the troll fights. Or better still, introduce some method of highlighting particular articles (like change the color of the title font of an article to red instead of black). This will serve to alert readers to an article that contains profanity in the article itself and/or the comments section. That way, contributors who are having a heated debate complete with personal attacks and profanity can keep at it if they like, but a red title will alert readers who are sensitive to profanity to skip over that article. Likewise, those readers who enjoy the ringside vantage point of personal attacks and profane language will be alerted to the articles with the “red” meat that attracts them.
Kevin, I think you are a very nice person but either you are way too smart for me or you just think too much. Your above comments make my brain hurt. We’re overthinking this whole issue and making it way more complicated than it needs to be. Are we seriously discussing 1st Amendment and freedom of speech implications, and the banning of commentary because one contributor called another a crude name? I know it’s unpleasant to be on the receiving end of such (am I allowed to say ‘crap’?) and personal attacks are worse. Lying about someone’s reputation is horrendous but I have yet to see an instance at the Cafe where someone’s reputation has been maligned and not one other contributor jumped in to call out the offender or back up the maligned individual in some way.
We are still adults here for the most part, right? So if someone doesn’t want to play nice in the sandbox, let’s not run to the teacher and tattle or put them in time out. Just designate a list of what language is acceptable (ex. Admin decides that low level profanity like the words “hell” and damn are OK, but the f-bomb is not; using profanity that is not on the low level/acceptable list, whether aimed directly at a contributor or not is unacceptable and cause for an article to be flagged/highlighted - whatever). Admin can even take the extra step of stating why an article has been highlighted underneath its title if they so choose. Heck, why not just adapt the rating system for movies and video games - ya know, rated “E” for everyone. OK, so that could be getting carried away, but you get my point…
This way, we have the best of both worlds. Free speech, anything-goes types are happy because nothing is censored out. Puritanical church ladies (which reminds me, welcome back, ‘Independent’!!) who blush and think saying “frig” is exactly the same as saying “f**K” are forewarned to proceed at their own discretion.
Simple.
Thanks Newcomer. I like what you have said but there is no easy way for me to change the Cafe template. I think Admin will have to use its judgement … although our judgement can be influenced by Cafers. I’m going to predict that ‘Independent’ will come in tonight to complain about our judgement - but consider his judgement too.
Instead of profanity our primary concern is liability, a term that sometimes is used loosely. We have edited some of what WVG said today. He won’t like it and I’m sure Con will not favor that. But we are the target, not them if things get out of hand. So we will use our own judgement. I’m also predicting that WVG or some other nitpicker will not like the way I’ve spelled “judgement”. You can’t please …
I’m probably overthinking it for this situation. But if this were a commercial operation what I describe is exactly the type of things you need to think about and I far simplified it. Throw advertisers into the mix and even the design of a page becomes an exercise in analytics.
Thanks,
Kevin
This post represents my personal opinions and in no way should be considered an official act of the BoE or that I am speaking on behalf of the BoE in any way.
John,
You’ll have to please excuse my ignorance. I will NEVER claim to be any sort of techie. I have no understanding of what a template is or why it is so difficult to change one. I picked a different font color as an idea because I figured that is easy to change. You’ve mentioned before about this changing the template business. If it isn’t easy to change a color, I’ll just take your word for it because you’re speaking a different language to me with this stuff.
I tend to believe that WVG is just trying to drag the cafe down to a level that lowers the credibility of posts. I read the comments that accompany Norwich Bulitin articles. I shake my head in incredulity, and rarely comment there. The unfiltered ire and and lack of rational thought that comprise many posts on the NB site have convinced me that there’s not much to be gained by posting there.
I would imagine (or at least hope) that there are many others who take the time to consider both sides of any issue and realize that people who submit angry, insulting, and unsupported posts have an unwavering agenda, and are not subject to the laws of reason.
Perhaps it is WVG’s goal to make this site as irrational as the comment interface on the NB.
Newc, The template is the structure behind the website design that houses the software programming that determines the appearance of the Cafe theme. We use a WordPress theme that was designed some time ago by a website designer. The programming is HTML gobbledy gook that I would have to go into to change fonts and color schemes. It’s scary for me to try to make changes in that programming as I am not experienced in programming. The other thing is that I don’t want to be rating everything we post. We do rate to some degree by making the decision to post as an article or leave a post as a comment. Most posting takes place in the short time we have in the early morning or early evening with the exception of quick checks during the course of the day.
John, I don’t know why you removed my one small paragraph. My valid point was that Kevin used over 1000 words to not really say a whole lot. He’s all over the map and changes his mind/point throughout his whole essay. I pretty much said the same thing newcomer said, he’s over thinking the issue (which I’m not even sure there was ever an issue to begin with) and going off on many different tangents. I found that the whole article really didn’t accomplish too much. I think the other comment I made that they deleted was something like it seems some of the participants here seem to think it’s okay to be rude, belittling and insulting BUT if someone tosses a swear word out there, oh my God, stop the presses, do a pile on and BAN the SOB. Way too much intolerance around here, that’s for sure.
My two cents for what they are worth is that if a post is nothing but namecalling, it should not be posted. It adds nothing to the discussion and just creates a new thread of meaningless back and forth. This has become more of the case with the appearance of WVG.
Also, profanity should not be allowed. Children do read this and frankly there are enough words in the english language that someone should be able to describe their thoughts without profanity. Typically it is only used for namecalling which is a waste of time.
WVG, people become rude and belittling to you when you start with a blast of namecalling and wild comments. When you have a rational post, I hope that you notice that the response is better, but you will be challenged. It seems that you are intolerent of that.
I’ve recommended before that readers look at as many similar examples from other Blogs, newspapers, etc. they can find, review their rules … (see Con’s new article. Admin).
Yawn