Is this what we're afraid of?

For the first time ever, this weekend I reported a blog comment to a moderator. It was one of 805 comments relating to a post on The Guardian's travel site.

I found the original piece by chance on a list of 'most read' articles. Posted on February 14th, it was the start of a new weekly blog by a guy called Max. 19, about to travel around India and Thailand for two months and planning to blog about his experiences.

I read the post and didn't think too much about it .... but then found myself far more interested in the comments.  There were LOADS. 475 in fact - posted between 11am (an hour after the original article was posted) and the end of the day, when the Guardian closed down the thread.

I started off being fascinated by how much more interesting the conversation going off in the comments was than the article itself. (Thinks 'ah - good old social media - this is what it's about - creating dialogue, giving people a voice!').

But as I read further, I started getting quite sickened by the comments being posted. Someone had googled the guy's name and found a Guardian article from some years ago written by someone with the same surname. So then everyone assumed person has only been given his blog because his dad works at the Guardian. Series of comments folllowed about nepotism, terrible writing, awful concept in the first place, 'posh people' foisting their views on us, The Guardian losing touch with its readership ... Some really acidic, personal comments directed at Max, a fair few removed or edited by moderators.

The next day, the Guardian's travel editor wrote a post in response.  (It turns out Max's dad wasn't a Guardian employee at all - just a freelancer who writes the odd article for them) 330 comments later, the debate was stopped. That was after several people had called for the editor's resignation, lambasted Max's dad -who dropped into comment - for his terrible error of judgment in allowing his son to write the blog and had a go at the moderator who broke the news that comments were being closed at 7pm because they didn't have enough moderators to cope on the evening shift.

It was like watching a fire spreading out of control. Maybe the blog wasn't a great idea and mistakes were made, but I coudn't believe the vitrolic, personal comments it provoked, the harshness of the response (fire the travel editor? Really? Because of one blog entry?) and the way rumours turned into 'facts' and were then very hard to undo. Somebody started a Facebook group. Someone else set up a spoof blog. It was picked up on various message boards and forums. It seems word spread virally as people started sending the link to the article around. Apparently someone even listed it on wikipedia as an example of nepotism at one point - although I've had a look and I can't see it now.

Two of the biggest concerns I hear in our Black Belt social media debates are around a) the loss of control and b) what happens if people say things we'd rather they didn't?  So, some questions:

1. Is this an example of the nightmare scenario we're afraid of?
2. Is there something about an on line environment that allows fires to be stoked very quickly and lead comments to get harsh/personal?
3. What was it about this that lit the blue touch paper and started the fire spreading, and could/should the Guardian have done anything differently?

Sue

Comments

[Indy]

Hi Sue, some quick thoughts:

1) As a "veteran" of a number of online communities, I have to say, in part, this is something to be afraid of. A community where the moderators are overwhelmed is a community where the "noise" exceeds the "signal" and the evidence is that once this occurs, "the good people" (the signal providers) start to withdraw from the community.

Social media technologies which may have less control and moderation are potentially more vulnerable to this process.

2) I don't know if you're a Guardian reader, in particular a Guardian blog reader, yourself but there are some background issues which are worth noting:

a) Historically, the Guardian has had the most functional set of web boards and blogs of all the major UK newspapers (this may be beginning to change, but the last time I looked it was only changing slowly.)

As a result, it has a large pool of commenters from across the political spectrum. Many of those to the right however, seem to resent the existence of the Guardian and spend a lot of time in many threads attacking issues of "journalistic integrity" and "lefty bias" etc. The vector of "posh journos putting their views on us, from a nepotistic bubble" is also a common feature of these attacks, probably because it taps into a wider feeling of frustration on the web about the power and income disparities between the "real media" and many of the rest of us.

Likewise, I have to add that there's an existing infrastructure of right of centre political blogs who spend a lot of time amplifying complaints about The Guardian and various columnists (Toynbee and Bunting in particular) which probably were instrumental in fanning the flames, esp. with Facebook, wiki, etc. I'm almost inclined to say that this just wasn't quite as "viral" as it appeared, rather the issue travelled a well trodden pathway.

b) I've been in some nasty situations in online communities over the years, but I do think the status of "national newspaper" does bring in a lot more bile than many other situations.

3) Having said all this about context, it could certainly happen to an unpopular corporate blog, although more likely an external one than an internal one (unless there is a lot of internal unrest in the company.) So, the questions still remain:

a) Is online contact more prone to vitriol? In short, yes. Plain text, tapped quickly into a blog comment is horribly devoid of extra signals. Humour in particular can go very wrong, bald statements that would be softened by a shrug of the shoulders or a tight, cynical smile instead can be a spark landing on tinder.

What to do? You need to develop serious moderation resources. Not necessarily full time, because most of the time they won't be needed, but you do need an ability to react to a flood of posts, ideally with the pre-announced policies for cooling off periods and in cases of people who need to work together, conflict resolution resources.

b) I think I've rambled enough about the blue touch paper aspects I see in this situation. Could The Guardian have done much differently?

IMO, not easily. A newspaper treads a much thinner line over free speech than a corporate publication. They could have maybe cut comments off sooner, they should have stated the inaccuracy of assertions more strongly. Updated the main article, posted more in the comments.

But, as a newspaper, suppressing posts could have been as likely to fan the flames as douse them. So, to a degree I can't think of a lot they should definitely have done differently. It's more about weathering the storm and putting your point of view out strongly than anything.

And, experience shows that as fast as these things blow up, they do tend to die out pretty quickly too. So, in a way, the most important thing is to let it do so.

Finally, in writing this, I realise that it does highlight a deep-seated mistrust and resentment of the community of journalists amongst the commenters. That might be something to work on in the longer term.

The analogy for corporate social media is that all the moderation functions etc. have to work hard to earn the trust of users, else they won't have the social capital to put out emotional fires.

[Mark Mazza]

Great post Sue and enjoyed your thoughts Indy - the positive flip side to blogging!!

I once read that the number of active participants as a percentage of internet users is around 2%. For a single blog to suddenly get a surge of comments it needs to have good exposure to people who wouldn’t normally seek it out and, as Indy commented, could be part of an orchestrated campaign.

Even for emotive issues you’re likely to have a variety of posts resulting in comments being spread more thinly across blogs.

So why the amount of personal attacks for this one? I’m about to dip into some amateur psychology here…

Our society increasingly only accepts the success or fortitude of other people if it has taken hard work or they have suffered in the process. There appears to be widespread insecurity and jealously if people achieve or are doing what we would have liked to do had we had the same luck (or should that be courage!).

Blogging (and also texting in to papers such as The Metro) gives a release for these feelings with the security of no come back. I often wonder what the profile is of these angry posters and texters – what makes them so riled about seemingly innocuous issues that they make the effort to comment? Is it that it’s so easy? Do they comment and then move on not realising the impact their comments may have?

But… how much does it matter? If you start to read comments that are personal and ill thought out do you normally continue to read past the first few? Does it alter your own opinion? I think this is why the reasonable posters tend to then back off as they have better things to do with their time than engage with the online ‘pub bore’ – and not forgetting WUMs (Wind Up Merchants), I kid you not, that is an official discussion board TLA!

In an internal corporate context I don’t think we need to be too concerned as long as users identify themselves. We do this automatically, they have no choice. It makes people responsible for what they say and encourages adult to adult conversations. Our side of the bargain is to respond as adults and not fob off genuine comments with corporate spin – even if we don’t like what they have to say. This is where the big culture shift lies, in convincing the people responsible for the company line to be honest and transparent (or explain if they can’t comment fully).

I have an internal corporate blog and took a long time convincing myself to do it. My first post was about why anyone would want to blog and the reasons for and against. You do put yourself out there. I likened it to going into a meeting where you didn’t know anything about anyone and were the only one to talk. But the flip side is that it gives you opportunities to fully shape your thinking and understanding by engaging with colleagues you wouldn’t normally have had the chance to. As long as you don’t brag and give the impression your job and life is fantastic ;-)

And on that note I shall depart the stage…

Cheers

Mark

[Alex Manchester]

To add to the excellent points above, this example demonstrates the ability to be equally appalled and enthralled by the quality of online discussion, especially on a public site and even more so on a newspaper site.

People are very quick to fire off their opinions with no fear of a comeback, are often very uneducated on the whole subject of discussion (no harm there unless, of course, they do think they know everything...), conclusions are jumped to and things can get heated and rapidly spiral out of control. Quite often the level of intelligence or venom can leave you stunned at how pathetic society can be.

I'd agree with Indy and Mark that the moderators at the Guardian were clearly in quite a tough situation, and the quality of conversation (in responses to blog posts and stories like this) is usually not worth reading after a certain amount of posts, because it does degenerate into a slanging match.

In an internal, corporate environment there are a few ways of looking at this. Some organizations make all user (employee) comments attributable. Some have allowed anonymous comments because of a particular situation. I wrote about this a while back and believe it really has to be looked at on a case-by-case, company-by-company basis - there's no one-size fits all approach. In some cases it may be a story-by-story approach depending on the sensitivity of the content, although doing this would throw up a different set of problems.

I expect, Sue, that now you've seen one case, you'll notice a lot more. They seem to happen in waves.

[Indy]

Hi Sue, I ended up rambling a bit more about this
on my blog.

[Sue]

Thanks for the comments, which I really enjoyed reading - a lot of food for thought.

It seems I really did accidently come across quite a blogging storm - I now find it was even reported on breakfast TV. I've just run a search on Technorati and there are pages of blog postings about it. I thought I'd pick up on two that might be relevant for us.

Badger Gravling at The Way of the Web http://thewayoftheweb.blogspot.com/2008/02/max-gogarty-and-guardian-from-mistake.html has these things to say, amongst others:

"It went viral because someone decided to close comments... If you want to discuss something strongly, and a website won't let you, you go elsewhere.

"It got complaints because it wasn't honest and open ... I'm still amazed it proves so difficult for corporate or company-approved bloggers to understand that hiding things are pointless. You should be honest to the point of stating why you can't discuss certain topics.

"It got complaints because the only response was to close the comments. In later stories, you saw responses from someone claiming to be Max's dad, and also Emily Bell... you can already see that the nature of the comments changes slightly when there is someone listening and responding.

And interestingly he balks at a later Guardian piece, which acknowledges the value of participation, but then refers to 'shepherding refinement into this new partnership.' As he says, ""Why would we want or need refinement? Do we want shepherds herding us aroud like sheep? Or do we just want to feel like our comments matter?"

The other piece of many I'll pick out is from Adam Tinworth at One Man and his Blog http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2008/02/after_max_gogarty_rethinking_m.html

Adam says Max missed the point of blogging, and basically tried to put together a clever, structured piece of writing that he may have got away with if it had been a straight article."What he's not doing is talking TO the audience, he's talking AT them...he's not blogging, he's writing. And therein lies the problem. It's the classic old media mistake of pushing an old media concept into a new media format without really understanding it."

His parting shot is that "we need to stop 'cargo cult blogging' and start genuinely joining in the conversation." Tracking back to one of his earlier post, it transpires that 'cargo cult blogging' what he describes as "knowing the form of what blogging should look like, and attempting to recreate it without understanding how it actually works."

And that, he says, "is exactly what's happening in many businesses right now".

Interesting, don't you think? I could spend far too much of my day reading blogs like these. What a stack of valuable insight and advice. If I were in the internal comms team in one of those businesses where loads of employees have blogs, you'd have to prise me away from reading them. Gold dust.

[Mark Mazza]

Hi Sue

That final point you made is why some of our business leaders are very twitchy about internal blogs and fear too much time will be wasted creating and reading them.

If we want to truly embrace the social media concept we can't, as you've outlined above, attempt to control this media. But if we don't have some form of control and guidance can we effectively manage the risk:value ratio?

You could argue, and I have done so, that it is a line manager's responsibility to ensure their people deliver the results and objectives they've been set. If someone spends too much time blogging or reading at the expense of their performance it should get picked up. This argument doesn't sit comfortably within the controlled communication environment we're used to operating in.

[Kieron Shaw]

Hmmmm. I have to say a slight yes and a big no to this one.

I too saw the story and, while you're right that the vitriol that was unleashed was worrying, unfair, and totally disproportionate, I think this was a totally unique situation.

Indy outlines most of the reasons excellently - the particular features of The Guardian "Comment is Free" section and its regular readers/commenters.

But the most important point for me, and Indy only touches on this, was what could clearly be read between the lines of all that enraged spleen-venting: ENVY.

Basically, what they were all saying about this particular blog was: "Typical! I come on The Guardian website every day to register my views in response to pieces. This is because I am a brilliant writer. I have my own private blog, although few people seem to read it to see the depth of my purple prose. I would LOVE to be a regular paid writer for The Guardian, but I have never had the chance. Harrumph. It’s unfair, but there are many brilliant bloggers like me – we never get the chance. But wait! Here is some jumped-up TEENAGER doing precisely I would LOVE to do – and he’s just writing a TRAVEL BLOG, something I’ve often done on my own blog when I’ve gone abroad, and no Guardian editor has asked ME to publish them. How did HE get this gig? How? How? HOW? Since I have never had this opportunity, it must have been through nepotism (although I have no evidence). Resentment and jealousy therefore now dictate that I must tear them limb from limb. It’s just so unfair.”

So I think the situation is unlikely to be replicated as-is within an organisation, because there is little envy for those who get “the chance” to write internal corporate blogs, in my experience.