WaPo-gate (and PLOrk premier)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at the storm around the Washington Post's new "no comment" policy. Not to mention world premier of PLOrk, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra...

You know how we humans love to jump to conclusions when we don't have all the facts. If you only read the blog from Jim Brady, you'd think he is taking a reasonable stand "At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues ... we knew ... part of that discussion would be the news and opinion coming from the pages of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com ... a lot of that discussion would be critical in nature ... we were fine with that. Great journalism companies need feedback from readers to stay sharp ... we would not allow ... personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech ... folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being ... Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about."

Jim later added to his post: "We're getting a ton of e-mail on this ... I'll address the two main points being made, that 1) we're afraid of being criticized and, 2) that were no personal attacks, profanity or hate speech in any of the comments ... washingtonpost.com has done an awful lot to be as transparent as possible ... started a ton of blogs, we've linked out to bloggers who are writing (often negatively) about Post content and we've made journalists from The Post and post.com available to answer questions ... People were not routinely seeing the problematic posts I mentioned  ... we were trying to remove them as fast as we could in order to preserve the reasoned arguments many others were making. We removed hundreds of these posts over the past few days, and it was becoming a significant burden on us ...  So we eventually chose to turn off comments until we can come up with a better way to handle situations like this." [Of course there are two sides to every story...]

» Krysten42 has an opposing view: "The WaPo Scandal if you like ... WaPo published something that was wrong. Readers wanted a correction. WaPo ignored the readers. Readers got annoyed, more people commented (at this stage, most comments were still civil and simply asking for clarification). WaPo said & did nothing. More comments appeared, getting annoyed now. WaPo decided to try to post lame excuses. People got more annoyed. Comments dissapeared. WaPo said it was an accident. Many disbelieve WaPo. Comments return. More silence from WaPo. Readers get more annoyed! WaPo closes blog. Readers move to other News outlets and blogs and are angry at WaPo. Why? Because WaPo SAID it wanted to hear from it's readers, and when the readers commented, WaPo basically told them to get lost."

» Jon Lebkowsky implies The Post was naive: "High-volume comment areas, like forums, generally need skilled moderators, or at least experienced monitors (monitors, unlike moderators, do little to drive conversation but remove posts that include trolls or personal attacks). It's economically difficult, though, for a newspaper to staff up with 24/7 moderators, who generally get $30/hour or more for their work. Hopefully the Post will find a solution; the interactivity is vital."

» Jay Rosen takes a balanced approach: "When Jim Brady decides to shut down the comments at post.blog to prevent even bigger problems we're going backwards in our ability to have a conversation with the Washington Post. That isn't good ... the costs of participating in the new openness are judged to be too high, that is a loss for everyone. (For background, see the AP story) ... I understand why people were angry at Deborah Howell. She seems to have taken the concept of balance to new lengths, where not only news accounts and ombudsman columns need to be balanced ... Her both-sides-fed-at-the-trough statements have been called inaccurate, outrageous, unfortunate, less-than artful ... But I also understand why Brady did what he did. If washingtonpost.com lets stand extreme charges aimed to maximize rage at Howell, and some of the charges contain ugly personal insults, then Brady's position becomes impossible ... The only good thing about his decision is the room he left for practical suggestions."

» Carol Platt Liebau: "The Post did the right thing in shutting down the site. There are some kinds of comments that have little inherent value, and the Post isn't obligated to provide a forum for written abuse and slurs. But what's interesting that The Washington Post had to shut down its site over tirades that -- judging from those quoted in the linked piece -- are pretty mild compared to the comments and emails I receive when I post over at the Huffington Post."

» Rod Hyndman finishes this off nicely: "I'm a fan of anonymity - in most contexts - but sometimes I wonder whether the freedom to be your worst in front of the entire world is necessarily a good thing ... from David Pogue of the NYT, who wrote about life as a product reviewer, and his experiences with critics who use anonymity to (often, mistakenly) drop bombs on him and then run for cover ... And of course these articles follow the LA Times Wikitorial fiasco by only a few months ... Anyone who’s ever had an unpleasant experience with someone else’s road rage understands what anonymity does to the public behaviour of otherwise (presumably) sensible people. I think it’s more a question of developing the thicker skin required for the livelier and more intense level of discourse in the new public market of ideas. But, in addition to creating toxicity online, the growing volume of this useless background chatter is now also making it more difficult to find relevant information online. We need search technologies that will filter it more effectively - perhaps the time is right for a 'no flamewar' or 'no angry young men' setting on Google."

Buffer overflow:

• Richi Jennings:  How LinkedIn limits spammy invites
• George P. Alexander: ADO.Net 2.0 in 5 minutes
• Eric Bangeman: HD DVD and Blu-ray content to be degraded for analog displays
• The Inside Dope:  Sound advice on dealing with trolls
• B2Day: The Problem With Local Search
• Brian Krebs: Kama Sutra Worm Gets Nasty
• Susan Crawford: The self-owned internet (II)
• Doc Searls: Google to BellSouth: Go Tier Yourse! lf a New One
• Scoble, R.: I’m pushing for more transparency, here’s why
• Douglas Schweitzer: Worried about your privacy? Read on.
• Martin MC Brown: Computer recovery with Knoppix
• Martin MC Brown: The sound of one hard drive dying
• Alex Scoble: It's certified EAL4+, is Exchange secure now?
• Alex Scoble: Now that you have your geek, how do you deal with them?
• Alex Scoble: Unable to send messages with Blackberry after Exchange hotfix?
• Frank Hayes: Say what? Earthquakes, raised floors and nothing new
• Mitch Betts: What CEOs worry about -- and how IT can help
• Robert L. Mitchell: The PC as portal
• Surviving A Bad Boss: 'Our new boss is in over her head'
• Surviving A Bad Boss: 'I have a new boss who just doesn't seem to like me'
• Eric Ogren: Security 2006
• Martin McKeay: Google defending their data
• Shark Tank: Because the boss is always...
• Douglas Schweitzer: Keeping Portable Storage devices under control

And finally... if you missed the world premier of PLOrk, take a look here instead

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Also contributing to today's post: Judi Dey, our very own Antipodean.