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You can't beat this for timing. Just yesterday I wrote about my Classical Studies education - that one of my main takeaways was that despite the changing times and differing technology, human nature remains constant. I tend to believe that people are generally good and honest, but I'm not so naive to think that character flaws such as vanity, greed, deceit, envy - and all those other vices - won't rear their ugly heads from time to time.

Case in point: what's going on in one realm of the blogosphere right now. I'll use two examples to make my point.

Last night on Twitter, I learned that prominent blogger Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has received death threats on her blog. Vile and horrible things were written by members of a site called MeanKids.org - things that are totally inappropriate to write in blog comments, not to mention that they are in violation of federal law. Kathy has canceled all of her speaking engagements and is now afraid to even leave her house.

And Shel Israel over at Global Neighbourhoods has banned two readers from his site, going so far as to call one an insufferable a**hole. A war of blogs has ignited. You have to wonder how this affects the reputation of the individuals involved, not to mention that of their agencies / businesses.

I'm speechless. To think that this tightly-knit community is getting ripped apart - by itself, no less - is...well...I was going to say is unbelievable, but actually: it's human nature.

Second Life = Second Helping of Human Behavior

I witnessed similar happenings in Second Life:

• A friend was roaming around and saw another avatar try to steal belongings from a house
• At a group gathering, individuals were advised to leave their knives and guns outside
  

What are we coming to? We create this world of alternate reality and suddenly, it mirrors our most base and anti-societal instincts. Guns, knives, gambling and sex trade in Second Life? Because, what, we think we won't be caught? When it becomes necessary for an alternate reality site to form some sort of police force or security division, you know human nature is at work.

What to Do About Off-Color Comments

One of the tenets of social media is transparency, which manifests itself in bloggers turning on the comment function and comments being left by readers. But in some platforms, readers are given the opportunity to post anonymously; this is supposed to encourage participation. This leads me to ask: if transparency is required for bloggers, shouldn't it also be required for commenters? In seems only fair.

I seem to constantly have the debate with clients regarding the requirement of registration for things like white papers. They typically want to require registration - and a lengthy one at that - in order to know who's downloading their material. They sometimes miss the point that readership will rise if they lift the registration process. The same could be applied to blog comments.

So, what's the answer here? Robert Scoble has stopped blogging for a week and PSFK chides him for doing so. Brian Oberkirch is feisty about it. Aside from giving up and laying down the keyboard, what actions can be taken? Certainly the perpetrators can be tracked down by their ISP (although if they're really professional, they can probably find a way to mask it). But beyond that, are these bloggers supposed to shut down comments or require a more stringent monitoring and approval process? It takes some of the spontaneity out of the equation.

While it may create a little more bureaucracy than necessary, this is probably a good opportunity for a group (the Social Media Club? Blogger/WordPress/Typepad/VOX?) to join forces and create a comment policy that prohibits such lewd and disgusting behavior. Maybe one already exists, I don't know.

Is the price we pay for being so connected? We wanted to listen in on the conversation. We wanted to take part in it. While there's no excuse for some of the trash that's spewed out there, we probably shouldn't be all that surprised.

After all, it's human nature. Some people are just jerks.

Labels: blogs, ethics, social media, Twitter

 Comments

 LINKS TO THIS POST

At 3/28/2007 11:22 AM,  Agricola said...

Scott:

Nice post.

I'm not sure what the answer is to the blog comment conundrum, but anonymity is a bane -- it permits the cowardly to act stupidly.

While living in NYC lots of folks used to rave about the Village Halloween Parade . . . "I love it!" "It's so much fun!" Yeah, a bunch of drunk, stoned and messed up folks in masks -- that's a real laugh-riot.

In the blogoshpere, and on the web in general, as in the non-web-world, we think anonymity affords us licence to do things we wouldn't do were we known. A general rule is that if you'd only do something if you couldn't be identified, then don't do it.

 

At 3/29/2007 9:21 PM,  Chris Heuer said...

I wish I could drop everything I am doing to properly address these sorts of things. In this case, however, it is a core part of what we are trying to do, so we are definitely interested in being a part of this solution. Part of this will be built into "The Pledge of Authenticity", which is one of many pledges we are going to ask members to make - part of the opt-in program we are going to launch to encourage ethical behaviour, towards a more civil web.

Hopefully we will get enough cash flow rolling with our soon to be announced workshops that we will be able to hire someone to start rolling out these programs. If not, I am going to seek some volunteers to help with this important function. More to come after our new site launch next month....

 

Social Media and Human Nature

You can't beat this for timing. Just yesterday I wrote about my Classical Studies education - that one of my main takeaways was that despite the changing times and differing technology, human nature remains constant. I tend to believe that people are generally good and honest, but I'm not so naive to think that character flaws such as vanity, greed, deceit, envy - and all those other vices - won't rear their ugly heads from time to time.

Case in point: what's going on in one realm of the blogosphere right now. I'll use two examples to make my point.

Last night on Twitter, I learned that prominent blogger Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has received death threats on her blog. Vile and horrible things were written by members of a site called MeanKids.org - things that are totally inappropriate to write in blog comments, not to mention that they are in violation of federal law. Kathy has canceled all of her speaking engagements and is now afraid to even leave her house.

And Shel Israel over at Global Neighbourhoods has banned two readers from his site, going so far as to call one an insufferable a**hole. A war of blogs has ignited. You have to wonder how this affects the reputation of the individuals involved, not to mention that of their agencies / businesses.

I'm speechless. To think that this tightly-knit community is getting ripped apart - by itself, no less - is...well...I was going to say is unbelievable, but actually: it's human nature.

Second Life = Second Helping of Human Behavior

I witnessed similar happenings in Second Life:

• A friend was roaming around and saw another avatar try to steal belongings from a house
• At a group gathering, individuals were advised to leave their knives and guns outside
  

What are we coming to? We create this world of alternate reality and suddenly, it mirrors our most base and anti-societal instincts. Guns, knives, gambling and sex trade in Second Life? Because, what, we think we won't be caught? When it becomes necessary for an alternate reality site to form some sort of police force or security division, you know human nature is at work.

What to Do About Off-Color Comments

One of the tenets of social media is transparency, which manifests itself in bloggers turning on the comment function and comments being left by readers. But in some platforms, readers are given the opportunity to post anonymously; this is supposed to encourage participation. This leads me to ask: if transparency is required for bloggers, shouldn't it also be required for commenters? In seems only fair.

I seem to constantly have the debate with clients regarding the requirement of registration for things like white papers. They typically want to require registration - and a lengthy one at that - in order to know who's downloading their material. They sometimes miss the point that readership will rise if they lift the registration process. The same could be applied to blog comments.

So, what's the answer here? Robert Scoble has stopped blogging for a week and PSFK chides him for doing so. Brian Oberkirch is feisty about it. Aside from giving up and laying down the keyboard, what actions can be taken? Certainly the perpetrators can be tracked down by their ISP (although if they're really professional, they can probably find a way to mask it). But beyond that, are these bloggers supposed to shut down comments or require a more stringent monitoring and approval process? It takes some of the spontaneity out of the equation.

While it may create a little more bureaucracy than necessary, this is probably a good opportunity for a group (the Social Media Club? Blogger/WordPress/Typepad/VOX?) to join forces and create a comment policy that prohibits such lewd and disgusting behavior. Maybe one already exists, I don't know.

Is the price we pay for being so connected? We wanted to listen in on the conversation. We wanted to take part in it. While there's no excuse for some of the trash that's spewed out there, we probably shouldn't be all that surprised.

After all, it's human nature. Some people are just jerks.

Labels: blogs, ethics, social media, Twitter

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