When Should a Website Edit Its Users? 159
rw2 asks: "Can a weblog edit users comments without opening itself up to liability in case of a slander suit? I run a political weblog and have a policy similar to slashdots in terms of the comments posted belonging to their owners. I'm worried about instituting something like lameness filters as it seems like as soon as you start regulating what your users post you have agreed to edit them for other reasons as well. Can someone point me to a good resource on issues like this. Those of us who aren't owned by publically traded companies are better off avoiding potential problems rather than hire lawyers to help us wiggle out later." Honestly, this greatly depends on the type of weblog you run and the community behind it. I don't think a one-answer-suits-all-sites solution exists, particularly for the reason that what may be inappropriate for one site may be more than appropriate for others. What say you?
Freedom Of Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
If I write a book, I'd probably have to go through dozens of publishers before being accepted. Certainly they're not forced to publish your work. Why should any other medium be any different?
Consider yourself as a publisher (Score:3, Insightful)
No editting, filtering OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Filtering out whole posts based on some ranking (think /. moderation) is just as alright as it's a method of ranking entire posts and not within a particular post.
However, if you are in the habit of editting or posting snippets of postings, then you are exerting editorial control and perhaps are liable.
Usually, as long as the posting mechanism is automated without passing thru a human being, you can claim to being a common carrier. Newspapers and dead tree editions dont have this benefit as they pick and choose which stories they carry as they have limited print space. An online forum doesnt do this, and acccepts everything.
Once again, IANAL, so take all of this with a pinch of salt.
Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that sounds overly simplistic but anything that falls outside the scope of protecting yourself legally you can decide what goes and what stays. Whether that means letting people stray into OT conversations via moderation or lack thereof is up to you. If you feel you have a legal issue to deal with, consult a lawyer that specializes in libel and slander.
Again concerning the non-legal issues... If you feel strongly enough about something that bothers you on your BBS (note I didnt say something you disagree with) wield your authority. If you do your best to be fair, people will appreciate that and anyone who doesnt like it can be reminded that another discussion board just like yours is only a google search away.
Editing posts is rude and possibly libelous (Score:4, Insightful)
Editing someone else's words without their express permission will highly annoy a significant fraction of those who get edited.
It also could open you up to a civil suit on libel charges if the edited post changes the sense of the post in a way that defames or injures the reputation of the poster.
Newspapers do edit letters and opinions before publishing them without express consent but they (1) use professional editors (2) have lawyers (3) have limited page space. Even so, they often annoy opinion writers and risk lawsuits by changing the writers' original statements.
If you are running a bulletin board your best practice is to let people speak for themselves.
Re:Some honest tips from a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot has not been ruined. If you think it's been ruined, you must be reading with your score set to zero. Don't do that. Read with a minimum of one. A comment from an Anonymous Coward is almost *never* worth reading.
-russ
Re:When Should Website Moderates Its Users? (Score:4, Insightful)
We do mod comments, yes, but we're fair about it.
I can say this with some certainty because, like all moderations, ours get metamoderated -- so if we start unfairly modding people up or down, we get email a couple of days later letting us know we screwed up!
I can't speak for the other Slashdot editors, but as for me -- of all my mods in the last several months, only two have gotten Unfair judgements. Both were trolls that had posted links that looked like they went somewhere informative but didn't. Apparently the metamoderators didn't bother to check the links, oh well. So I stand by my record of massive Fairness.
Basically I spend mod points where I see that I can save our regular moderators some time. Slashdot gets a lot of crap posted anonymously that is obvious trolling, flamebaiting, or offtopickism, and it would get itself modded down to -1 anyway if we flooded the system with mod points. My taking care of it lets our users focus a little more on picking out what they consider to be the good stuff to mod up, rather than just having a troll cost them a point (and the opportunity to participate in the discussion).
In short, I do a little bit of grunt-work, so that our users can be more choosy and careful, genuinely improving the quality and controlling the tenor of the site. And the built-in feedback of our M2 system will let me know if I ever stray too far from how the users think the site should be run.
Also, for the record, "bitchslap" refers to a specific script [slashcode.com] in the codebase which retroactively sets all of a user's comments to score:-1. Important point: it's only ever been used on user accounts that posted using scripts. And it hasn't been used in months, AFAIK, since the existing moderation/metamod system has been working so well.
Re:Freedom Of Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
In particular, I'd worry about, say, harrassment law (maintaining a "hostile environment" -- remember that if an employer fails to act on the idiotic actions of his employees, the employer itself may be held liable).
Other ramifications (Score:3, Insightful)
Your community is not about you; it's about your subject first, then about all the people who find your subject interesting, and about getting them together to communicate. This is important to remember. A lot of community owners find themselves so entranced by their status as benevolent dictator that they quit being benevolent. It's usually an ego-related thing. This is the worst-case scenario. Avoid it.
If you delete posts that people generally expect to be deleted, you'll find your community happy and rewarding. This includes spam, obvious mistake posts with no content, personal information that shouldn't have been communicated, and cases where someone set out to purposefully cause trouble with the system or the community.
If you delete posts that even one person finds useful, you'll find yourself in the middle of a controversy. Think about it from the user's point of view. A user may spend hours developing a post, even days contemplating what to say in a situation. Maybe they didn't take hours to write the post that you edited or deleted, but users don't want to even think about the possibility that their words may disappear. Delete a few posts without warning, even in a site that announces that it's heavily moderated, and you may find the community goes quiet for a few days. This sort of thing happens all the time.
This goes triply for editing posts instead of removing them. I would never participate in a system where my own, attributed words could be changed around as the site owner sees fit. Would you? Why would you? Why would anyone?
Also remember that a good, strong community will police itself to a degree. This sort of thing is not possible on someplace like
For a long time, newsgroups were the only net community going, and they were so prone to abuse that the communities in them had to develop a combination of thick skin and newbie-flaming. In fact, many people wrote that the flame was an important, necessary tool for the survival of these communities; if people wrote things that the community didn't like, they flamed, and this was their only defense mechanism. And for a while, it worked, until the net grew all out of proportion...
The point is, you may feel that you desperately need to take action as the site owner and moderator, but your best action may well be to leave well-enough alone and let your community take care of it.
There is no issue here (Score:4, Insightful)
As a participant in a forum or message board, if you see something "offensive" - IGNORE IT - DO NOT REPLY. If you are the owner of a message board and you are not willing to accept posts that you don't like, then DO NOT RUN A PUBLICLY ACCESABLE MESSAGE BOARD.
It's that simple. Period.
If your ego is so big that you really MUST be in control of what people say, then draw up a bunch of rules and institute a registration process requiring a valid e-mail address. Then, when someone says something you don't like, or violates one of your silly rules, you can play dictator and revoke their posting ability.
The real problem here is ego. Trolls, flamers, assholes, etc. post crap in order to get a reaction and get attention. 99% of them do not have the patience and/or attention spam to conduct a long term campaign. Ignore them and they will go away. IGNORE THEM AND THEY WILL GO AWAY. Unfortunately, too many people are unable/unwilling to follow this simple advice.
I've seen it a million times in usenet newsgroups and various message boards. As soon as people see an "offensive" post their ego immediately kicks into high gear and they launch a retaliatory attack. The whole place becomes mired in attacks and responses to attacks. In the end, the "regulars" blame the trolls and flamers and cite this as another good reason for moderation, conveniently ignoring the fact that all they had to do was ignore the idiots and they would go away.
consistency and tolerance (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all, let us not act like angry monkeys throwing our feces at each other. Let us not fall into the trap of hostile hypocricy that only hurts us and our 'causes' more than anything else.
That said, I believe that self filtering/censoring is up to each individual. Some use the phrase, "if you don't like what is posted, dont read it". This is a good if simplistic representation of the entire issue. However, it is used by those who are frankly nothing but parrots who repeat words without understanding either the words' meanings or the collective meaning behind the phrase, thus relegating it quickly to the knee-jerk cliche trash heap.
I see many situations where this phrase comes in handy. After all, it does no good to get all worked up because of some flamer that is just pathetically attempting to get a rise out of people. But before the rhetoric spouters begin their little crusades of mentioning how "if you don't like what is posted, then don't read it", let us look at what is ruffling the feathers first.
If I have a forum site that polices topics in specific threads, and perhaps even has a 'general thread' for offtopic posts, is it then bad to filter out offtopic posts relative to the section posted in? What if I have only one topic and the stated rules about 'appropriate behavior' clearly let everyone know to keep on subject due to the very nature of the board?
Now, let us say that I police content that is considered uncivilized, like personal attacks, slandering, cussing, etc. Is this bad? If in this situation, it is easy to see how many defending it would say, "If you don't like it then you don't have to be a part of the forum" See how that sounds so similar? Wouldn't someone who is trully 'tolerant' extend that tolerance towards those that he views as intolerant? Am I to claim enlightenment and tolerance by letting any subject be posted regardless of the topic at hand, or how negatively or positively it is posted, yet ONLY if I agree with said posts? Guess what, that is NOT TOLERANT? No matter how many fancy words, quotes, etc I throw at it, it is intolerant due to my very own definition. It is the worst sort individual that can not even stand the judgement of his own criteria that he applies so readily towards others.
If you want an open board, then good for you. If you believe that is morally and ethically superior, then continue to do so confident in that knowledge. Let education and your actions inspire others to do the same. If however, you attack others (and I will expand that below) in an attempt to free them, then by your own definition (and that of histories) you are a tyrant. Attacks consist of direct attacks such as slander, malicious statements, etc. but also very much include actions that attempt to shut others down (If you choose, good for you, if you 'organize' others to sheepishly follow you through fancy words and hateful rhetoric, that is much different). Also included is an inconsistent application of ethics or morals. You must be better than those you attack and must police yourselves first before you jump on any bandwagons to burn, rape and pillage others.
I am curious how many here have ever defended someone who they do not agree with, but did not wish to see an opponents rational addition of opinions and ideas be trampled under the draconian boots of some intollerant moderators. I also wonder how many would support laws, people, ideas (ATTACKS) that would take away the choices of forum maintainers and creators to filter their boards for what they themselves believe is important. I then wonder how many of these people that support the above, would then ironically do so under the banner of tolerance and being open minded. How many would admit that they simply wish to get rid of those they do not like or agree with. (it would be more respectful in that case).
This can be applied to so many other aspects of life too. I remember a time before the draconian laws restricting smoking in many private domains where gaining in popularity. I remember many smokers saying that not only were such laws bad, but the 'constitution' protected smokers from being "oppressed" in private restaraunts and the like. Oppressed for them meant that I as a shop/restaraunt owner could not restrict anyone from smoking. So, once again it became a lawyers game between two bands of zealots whom when looked upon with even the slightest scrutiny where seen for what they where... two different shades of brown from the same pile of manure.
Message from a metamoderator (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the following two comments, which lets say I found listed as "Flamebait":
Comment #1
Linux is no good. Microsoft is much better.
-That would be flamebait because it has no qualification - it is just to make people angry.
Comment #2
Linux is no good because there are no browsers that do as much as IE. Microsoft is much better.
-That would be valid - I would metamoderate a flamebait rating as "unfair."
Hopefully, I'm not alone in using criteria other than my opinion to moderate and metamoderate. But you know...I've been moderated down before despite adhering to my "make a qualification" policy.
Re:When Should Website Moderates Its Users? (Score:4, Insightful)
Jamie, my former colleague, you may be most sincere, but there is a logical flaw in your argument. To wit: I doubt there is anyone who would ever post:
This is the classic "Who watches the watchers?" question. In one's own mind, almost certainly, everything one does is fair. This is not to criticize you personally. However, I think you miss the fact that your statement doesn't establish anything objectively.Again, the logical flaw is that, suppose you didn't care what those e-mails said? Supposed you believed you were RIGHT, and any email simply failed to recognize your obvious correctness?
"For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men,"(Marcus Antonius meant that sarcastically, the idea being that even if Jamie, err, Brutus, was an honorable man, it didn't necessarily mean that the other editors, err, Romans, were honorable men).
Suppose a skeptical person doubted your philosopher-king status? For example, we know that Michael Sims had a very different view of the "fairness" of his actions with regard to slamming down comments about his destruction of the censorware.org website [google.com]. He would undoubtably argue that all his actions where justified, that every comment he slammed as a troll was a troll, and so on. This is the essence of the conflict of interest. I know some of the anti-spam activist have doubts about comments of theirs criticizing your coverage, which got marked down. Can you blame them for their doubts? (even if you are in fact an honorable man).
Y'know, you may not realize it, but Slashdot looks a lot different from "down here". Especially when one thinks an editor is abusive about an issue which affects one personally.
I have suggested that editorial moderations be clearly marked [slashdot.org]. And I agree with other (anonymous) writers here that the fact that editors have infinite moderation points (of course only use them morally, justly, and with great wisdom ...), deserves mention in the FAQ. These changes
would alleviate some understandable distrust.
Well, I've rambled, perhaps way too much here. Too many topic which stirred a chord in me. and perhaps not worth the effort. But definitely, I suggest again making clear where editorial moderations have been done.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]