I realize that many folks out there are not going back to school at all– that is, they’re as “in school” now as they ever are. But I always associate the beginning of the school year that is rapidly upon us as the true start of the year; January 1 is for civilians.
What I wanted to include here was a scene from one of my favorite bad movies on the topic of college, Rodney Dangerfield’s classic Back to School because, at the end of the day, I am a child of the 80s. But I couldn’t find a good clip on YouTube I liked, so I thought I’d share this scene from Billy Madison that I think sums up the return to school glow:
In other EMUTalk.org news:
I’m going to leave the moderate comments toggle on for a while simply because some of the back-channel communication I have had lately suggests that there are still a lot of upset folks about the whole email/ICT/TEC support thing. I think it best to wait for folks to calm down a bit more.
Update: Eh, I changed my mind. Let the comments fall where they may, though I will say that one of my goals this weekend is to contemplate the long-term wisdom of how comments ought to be or not be approved.
Seems to me, sitedad, that having the Recent Comments pane up correlates with increased site usage. It certainly has contributed to ease of use.
Regarding “how comments ought to be or not be approved” question. It’s a lot easier, I think, if the moderator is able to position himself as a beneficent and somewhat remote, minor god. Since you’re interested and engaged in questions and debate, you have a more difficult problem. . . . Good luck on that.
Who are the folks you’ve heard through backchannels to be upset still? I don’t want names, just an idea of the concerns they have, if it has to do with this site, or with the email debacle, etc.
That info would help to guide discussion, methinks.
As a hothead who once (and never will again) nuked some comments, I will say that….It’s the last German Park tomorrow!
Let’s look to the future, eh?
Well, that’s a good point. And I certainly was interested/engaged in the email failure, no doubt about it. There are some other issues, though. For example:
* Should there be some basic screening process for regular commentators? WordPress does allow me to set it up so that in order for a comment to be approved, the commentator has to have had a previous comment approved. This would significantly decrease the random spout-off that sometimes cause troubles.
* What sort of recourse do people have if someone makes a comment they don’t like? How am I– me, the organizer of the blog– responsible? Is it a situation where I have to let all comments go, or can I exercise reasonable judgment about these things?
* To what extent do I have to spell out for people what I mean by things like racist, homophobic, sexist, and other offensive comments?
* Are my only options here to have to approve everything or let everything fly? Do I have to automatically, as you put it Susan, remain a sort of minor god and not participate in the discussions?
And so forth.
Anyway, all things to think about, and all things that make me think it’s time to write up a bit more detailed version of “Da Rules.” I might try to start drafting some language on this over the weekend, and if I do, I’ll post them here for some input/ideas from the commmunity.
What’s interesting and I guess positive about all this to me is that all of this is that it is part of the growing process of the site. You know, this month (since July 23), EMUTalk.org has had over 50,000 pageviews and there have been about 850 comments. Granted, that’s not boing boing numbers, but when I started EMUTalk.org in September 2006, if I had said that a year into the site it’d be getting this much attention, people would have said I was nuts. And rightfully so.
The things that I’m wondering about then– both as the host of this party and also as a scholar on blogs– is how does the sheer scale of a blog necessitate some codified rules of the sort one would never have for a personal or small-scale blog. And that’s part of what I’m thinking about trying to write down this weekend.
I think moderating comments directly is WAY too much like work and shouldn’t be dumped upon anyone.
I’ve seen sites where comments can be reported with a click that also require a registration process – and a waiting period. If sitedad approves a person to comment, good enough for me.
It *would* be nice if a person making a comment had the ability to edit it – just for the sake of fumblefingers.
Barring that, I think the track record here is pretty good. Most of the time most (nearly all, in fact) of the people do the right thing.
Sitedad,
One feature I like about slashcode (which runs slashdot.org, etc), is the moderation system. Obviously, slashdot gets a lot more hits than emutalk (or probably even emich.edu), and requires slashcode, MySQL, and a perl module to tie them together. There exist hosted slash-solutions, I believe, but if you have your own machine, it can be configured and hosted on said machine (in theory–I quit my job for other reasons before managing to get it all configured and tested).
That’s my two cents on a late Friday afternoon.
Sitedad,
I’ve been wondering how you were going to be able to moderate all the comments when school started back up. That must be a lot of (probably tedious) work.
Also, I think that if you became some sort of “minor god” and didn’t participate in the discussions, the discussions would not be as interesting. You bring a lot to the debate and we would be lacking without you, in my opinion.
Seems to me that by and large, unrestricted comments is best, at least in theory. People should bear responsibility for what they post here, just as they are responsible for what they say in other relams. Of course, if lots of people join a conversation and just scream obscenities and enage in personal attacks and are unable to focus on any conflicted ideas, then the conversation is destroyed or at least harmed as a means of learning for those who wish to learn and debate…..
Pointed debate and criticism, yes; personal insults and attacks, no. Attack the ideas, or policies, or budgetarty priorities, but not the person(s) advocating them: That’s what i try to do. A good critique is not personalized, but it is pointed.
I’ve not seen the stuff you may have screened out during the couple of “moderation” on periods, but my impression is that it was pretty bad. Blantantly homophobic, sexist, racist comments? I’ve no problem with deleting them, but i recognize it’s a judgment call when something is in that territory….and when the dialog is most heated, or bizzare folks start posting, it could be a full time gig to moderate those comments. If the blog turns into a site for flame works and personal smears, that’d be a real loss for constructive dialog. And, I think, a real loss for EMU.
I do object to the orchestrated smears by anonymous individuals of named EMU community members that have taken place once or twice (and which I was targeted for once), but free debate seems to take care of that. Few readers put faith in personal smears made by anonymous posters pretending to be what they are not….
The reduction of reasoned exchanges of opinion and assertions of “fact” to mere personal insult and sophmoric faux humorous put downs is also objectionable, as it degrades the quality of discourse and makes the blog less appealing.
EMUTalk at its best is both fun to read and informative.
So if some kind of policy of “one comment approved, then your comments get on automatically” would help with those problems, then I’m for that policy.
And whatever you do, Steve, don’t remove yourself as a participant in the debates over EMU’s present and future! We need your perspectives, and I thank you for running the EMUTalk.org, “where all well informed members of the EMU commuity go for vigorous debate and quick information!” Well, that’s not the snappiest tag line, but it’s an accurate description…
The best thing of campus wide importance that has happened at EMU in the last year – or one of them at least – is the advent and growth of EMUTalk.org.
It’s really too bad that WordPress doesn’t seem to have a ‘Flag Comment as Inappropriate’ feature. Even the low-tech Craigslist has it! Perhaps a suggestion to the developers is in order – I can’t imagine that it would be difficult to implement…
The issue is not so much about software– WordPress works fine. It has more to do with policies in terms of screening the content of comments and posts and trying to come up with some guidelines for it.
But there are a number of resources out there for writing such policies, so it might not be that hard to do….
Back to School has been on Comedy Central almost every day for the past two weeks, and I’ve caught enough segments of it to be able to say that I’ve seen it.
Phew, am I glad that we don’t register for classes in a big gym waiting in lines! No respect!