Musings & Meanderings

That’s it.

(I decided to make my 100th post one sentence for everyone who actually reads my long posts.)

What do you have a ‘thing’ for?

The recent conversation on comments grew last week, weighed in on (in the order I read them) by Joel Spolsky, Dave Winer, and Clay Shirky.

Next I came upon Brad Feld’s The Dark Matter of the Blogosphere. (It led me to Fred Wilson’s post, where all the friendly comments put a smile on my face.) Brad’s post also linked to various ongoing projects working to bring comments up into the light of day. I went from this, serendipitously, to Read/Write Web post, where SezWho, a feature for comment rating, reputation, and filtering, has just been installed.

Richard MacManus’s post, and the comments thereon, left me focused on the primary issue that remains foremost in my thinking on this in terms of my own online community experience and planning. Anonymity.

As long as people post comments anonymously, they will continue saying things that Joel described as “a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words” (bolding is mine). The assertion made by Clay that “the sites that suffer most from anonymous postings and drivel are the ones operating at large scale” is undoubtedly true, but I believe that it is also true that smaller traffic blogs published by anonymous writers suffer from the same problem. We just don’t view it as often, possibly because the smaller traffic individual has more time to immediately delete a smaller amount of rubbish.

SezWho, the new comment rating app on Read/Write Web, actually makes me even more reluctant to comment, since any reader can now ‘rate’ my comment. As it says on their FAQ page, a reader benefit is “Ability to influence content without directly creating it.” I’m not so sure this is a good thing.

The rating process itself might be a deterrent as well, since it is a simple Yes or No response the question, “Was this comment useful?”. Most blogs with great commentary will include the occasional simple statement of encouragement or support. I wouldn’t think that such statements would qualify as ‘useful’ to other readers. Further, a related musing, which can be interesting and spark more creative thought, wouldn’t always qualify as ‘useful’.

It also says that SezWho’s “scoring algorithm, …mimics the way reputations are transacted in the real world.” In the real world that I’ve been living in for a long time, reputation is not primarily made, or broken, by strangers, and especially not by anonymous ones. In fact, reputations are sometimes damaged, intentionally and maliciously in the real world by people when they believe that they can get away with it without consequences, but that is not the primary method of building or erosion of reputation.

Using a ’scoring process which mimics the real world’ is logical, but the core absence of responsibility and accountability matters. A lot.

It isn’t my primary intention to pick on SezWho here. I think that creating a way to make comments more relevant and findable is a very positive thing, and will be interested to see how well it works and evolves. I also applaud Read/Write Web for taking an initiative toward improving comment quality and integration.

Blog comments are a very different form of communication from blog posts themselves. The best seem to be engendered by both the type of content and the tone the authors set. Like forums and all other conversational formats, they can work well or poorly.

Many to Many is an example of a group weblog where the comments often add to the content. Many to Many occasionally has an academic bent, yet the content is very accessible as well as substantive. The percentage of anonymous posters is small. The posters read, and often respond directly to, the commentary. That is part of what makes a conversation and also raises the quality of comments in general.

My opinion is that indexing comments, tied to a user profile that can be coordinated across many platforms, is a great idea. Voting on and rating comments without context or accountability? Not so much.

What is Your opinion?

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added July 24th, 2007

In an excellent post today on Web 2.0.com (trackback below) which is titled “Socrates on books and blogs… and the way forward”, Nick Smith says,

“And what about comments? At the moment a comment is a cul-de-sac. There’s no way to get to know a commenter a little better, to see what other things they’ve commented on, or find interesting on other sites. It’s hard to extend the conversation.”

Some of that is being achieved by not allowing anonymous comments. Now I do understand that anonymity is important and even essential to a very few individuals who might otherwise risk their livlihood or even their life by speaking out. Even for most of those, however, requiring a verifiable link to their blog or website works.

Thinking out loud here. In the open space between aggregation and formal registration.

Is there already such a thing? Specifically for internet and web publishing, where formal copyright is not appropriate? If not, it can’t go on my future projects list (as that is already too long), but I’d add part time input and/or assistance to get one going.

What I am picturing is a sort of reverse RSS subscription to a public record, where the feed address is listed and the content cached. No anonymous subscriptions. Call it something like ‘For the Record’.

Attribution and copyright issues are important not only to traditional and professional publishers, but also to many freelance and aspiring writers and other content creators. Many a starving writer used to rely on the old standby process of sending his/her work to themselves via registered mail.

There are also internet and web publishers who aren’t professionals, but who still care about whether their words are misused or abused or quoted out of context.

Those who publish on the web for purely personal and social reasons aren’t the subscriber base, but many or most of them are also the readers.

Then there is linkage. I’ve occasionally found links to my own content that never did show up on Technorati, or on search engines. The unseen links area is not something that would be directly addressed by an attribution database, but would be much easier to address based on it.

Speaking of secondary applications, here’s the hidden ’social web’ nugget. The subscriber base would divide naturally into professional publishers, academia including scholars, institutions and students, freelance publishers, and amateur. A bit of further categorization could organize the data into forms that are relationally compilable, whether by topic, date, subscriber category, or whatever else you decided to build into an advanced search. Mind you a simple button widget for all current web posts and conversations on the same topic sounds awfully attractive by itself.

What do you think?

Would this be an ISOC, EFF, Creative Commons type project?

An opensource prototype by someone creative?

A traditional publishing industry initiative?

A combination private enterprise and non-profit paid subscription model? (say $10 per year for amateur publishers and a variety of schedules for businesses, groups, institutions, etc.)

Certainly the potential congruence (depending on how the db is set up) with relational search development is interesting, but the inherent conflict between private competition in search and the objective nature of the ‘record’ is problematic, unless a search developer was only one funder/founder of the primary information depository.

Quite a mix of public and private interests.

Comments? Ideas?

After my post on Wednesday stating that I though CNet should apologize to Wired, several people asked me,

“Why do you care?”.

My initial response to this was simply, “Why don’t you?”, but, after some reflection, I decided that the question deserves a more detailed response. The following is hardly a complete response. The reasons for caring about attribution could easily lead to development of long tracts on morality, philosophy, social responsibility, and more, so here, first, are a few of my personal beliefs on why I care in general.

I care about the world I live in, and believe that every one of my actions combine with everyone else’s to make it either a better or worse place to live.

I know that it is possible to be successful in life and in business while behaving in a moral and ethical manner.

Speaking up for a popular cause is always easy, speaking up for what you believe in sometimes isn’t.

Personal popularity isn’t success, and it also isn’t a measure of trust or loyalty.

Being loyal to yourself and the things you believe in is worth it, even when it is difficult or costly.

Now as to why I care about attribution specifically:

Attribution is something that concerns anyone who has ever published, or thought to publish, anything. Ever more of us derive our livelihood from ‘right-brain’ activities. For reporters and journalists specifically, attribution or the lack thereof is an asset that translates into both reputation and earning power. Despite the major shifts taking place on the publishing landscape, in terms of copyright, ease and accessibility, etc., the basic societal structures of how we organize ourselves around ideas and information haven’t changed substantially.

The FBI spyware story belongs to all of us, and it’s a good thing that there are plenty of postings and conversations about it. It relates to many issues which we should understand better and be more aware of in general, including privacy, security, and law enforcement on the internet.

My post on Wednesday was a statement of my opinion on something I observed that bothered me. It is my way to act, whenever possible, when I see something that appears unjust. In most cases, that action involves private and personal communication. In others, where many lives are affected, there are organizations that I can add my support to, in the form of making a donation of time, influence, or money. (In this case, the actors were speaking in public.)

In the case of the Wired/CNet story, I subscribe to both of their feeds, and do not know either of the specific reporters personally. I initially emailed both of them. Declan McCullagh did not respond. Kevin Poulsen did. After a few more conversations about it, I decided to post my personal opinion here. Even though it wasn’t likely to change anything all those hours later, it is still a statement for the record.

If the CNet story lacked an appropriate attribution to Wired (as I believe), that could have, and still can, be changed at any time. This is a tremendous power to change that we have here. Like any power, it can be used well and it can also be abused.

We’ve seen, since the rise of powerful blogger journalists and the awkwardly growing area called citizen journalism, more than a few stories broken where ’scoops’ were publicly credited to individuals, adding to their reputation and clout. The majority of these individuals is deserving of their reputations, worked hard to build them, and did not do so primarily at the expense of others.

Plagiarism is anathema to any ethical publisher, of news or anything else. This is not, at heart, an issue of monetary value or rights, but rather an issue of ethical behavior and mutual respect, essential components to peaceful human co-existence. The growth of open platforms such as blogging, combined with the growing population online and the lightning speed of the medium, are enabling the dissemination of all published writing at unprecedented speed. Those of us who value the freedom of this medium, in my opinion, should also contribute whatever we can to education and to raising the standards of behavior whenever possible.

The basic definition of plagiarism, though, does not take into account the new concept of people chatting about, commenting on, and passing on ‘news’ in a published form. Telling your friends about something you heard/read isn’t a professional activity, and there is a lot of gray area here that would benefit from more discussion and consideration.

Most people publishing online include a copyright statement, and the most common (based on my own observations only) is one which states that all are free to re-publish, usually in original form, with attribution to the author. In the less formal publishing taking place in social mediums, it is becoming common practice to pass the word around without using or referencing the original form, but still thanking or giving a ‘hat tip’ to the writer’s source. Even non-professional publishers adhere to these basic behavioral codes of civility and respect.

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These are some of the reasons I care. What are some of yours?

Yesterday’s hours all got sucked into the time vacuum that one is presumed to live in when one has need of medical attention in Canada.

Getting to a doctor’s appointment is rather a big production in itself when you can’t stand or sit normally, and cannot walk more than a short distance or without aids. I had thought this all well planned out in advance, until being detoured, directly from the appointment and without my full participation, to a hospital. I finally escaped at about 10 pm last night, more handicapped than when I had arrived.

Oh, how I wish this story could be over.

I’ve thought, on a number of occasions, of doing a blog or three on the subject. One could be simply horrific experiences, another ‘duh’ experiences, and a third more probing and analytic. For now, I just enjoy sites such as Multiple Sclerosis Sucks.

There is, these days, a bit of publishing, both via the internet and more traditionally, of very poignant and literary scraps and stories illustrating the doctor’s point of view. If this interests you, try local author Vincent Lam’s award winning collection called Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures. (I do hope this young man continues writing.).

More difficult to find is the well-written patient point of view, beyond individual experiences and general expostulations of complaint or frustration.

Having been, since 1980, a complex conditions patient and a caregiver for others in the same boat, and also a mom who was in charge of family triage, I know that the overwhelming majority of patients’ stories aren’t fully and coherently told. To a great extent, I believe that this is because dealing with serious medical problems drains so much of our resources that there typically isn’t enough left over for literary creations, activism, etc.

There is, though, a real need for better communication between the medical care providers and the recipients. Maybe we’ll get to that after we get to dealing with how to actually pay for half decent care.

Do please post, or email to me, any examples of robust patient/provider communication on the web that you’re aware of. Although my personal resource allocation doesn’t allow me to contemplate starting or running any large project in this area right now, I still can and do contribute when I can wherever others might benefit.