Monday, August 6th, 2007
Let’s get ready to rumble
“Religion causes all wars.” Not my words, but only one of a number of provocative statements in a new series of ads Sky News is running to promote its online discussions. After these ‘fighting words‘, they ask: “Looking for an argument?”
My question to Sky News or any news organisation for that matter: Do you want an online community or fight club? Many online community experts use the pub as a metaphor. In this case, if Sky News was a pub, would they advertise: Come to Pub Sky. It’s a great place to fight.
But this seems to the be the strategy of a number of news organisations. They shout fire in a theatre, and then are strangely surprised and shocked as the audience turns into a mob. As news organisations, we bear some responsibility for the conversations we create. We cannot lay the blame solely at the feet of commenters on our sites when the conversation devolves into a shouting match, when we started the argument in the first place.
I’ve spoken with too many editors and online managers asking for technical solutions for crowd control while they never consider modifying their editorial approach. As I’ve said before, shiny tools won’t save you from the trolls, and they won’t save you from chatroom brawls of your own making.
Now, in the binary world of journalistic arguments, I can hear editors saying that I’m advocating bland conversations. No, no my black-and-white-world friends, there is a huge range of possibility between blandness and the type of simplistic provocation that I see in these adverts and in so many shout-y headlines.
Just think of how you would respond if someone came and shouted in your face. What would your likely response be? Most likely it won’t be a pleasant conversation or interesting debate.
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August 6th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
“I can hear editors saying that I’m advocating bland conversations”
Aargh! Make it stop!
I was having exactly the same argument on Usenet ten years ago*. All that’s changed since then is that the people advocating troll-toleration are actually in charge. I guess some people really aren’t bothered about the difference between signal and noise - to them it’s all good traffic.
*E.g. this post from comp.software.year-2000:
http://tinyurl.com/2pbvp8
August 6th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
When I saw that I had a horrible flashback to AOL’s /discuss campaign (which I was rather familiar with at the time).
August 6th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Martin, didn’t I actually write something for that? No one commented on my post, which I actually took to be a compliment at the time.
I think some folks just go for loads of comments because it’s dead easy. Little investment.
What I don’t get is how editors think that generating loads of traffic with highly corrosive shouting matches makes a good commercial strategy. Traffic good. Yes. But advertisers get very nervous around angry discussions.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
There’s one simple argument to stopping online debates turning into fight club and that’s Real Name Verification. Just check out Amazon. Since they introduced this there’s been a wonderful 2-phase reversal of trollness: 1) contributions are ‘nice’ then 2) people start to become proud of their RNV tag which in turn makes others want to do it.
the down side to RNV? The hideous, horrendous cost of implementing it.
August 9th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Paul,
A couple of things, I think that news organisations generally haven’t accepted their responsibility in setting the tone of the debates and discussions they create. When things go wrong, they externalise and put all of the responsibility onto the ‘users’. They rarely ask themselves if they built a boxing ring for people to fight in.
As for RNV, I think there are other solutions that get most of the benefits of real names in terms of responsibility but forego the costs. There are systems that help build identity and trust online that aren’t necessarily tied to real names. But you’re right, if you help provide people with an online identity that they feel a stake in, it will help curb excessively aggressive behaviour.