The recent discussion of RSS profiles and an optional default namespace hosted by Sam Ruby that forked into a heated discussion as to the rights of weblog comments and moderation has brought mind a keynote Clay Shirky gave at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference just over a month ago. I took notes on Clay's keynote as he was speaking and posted to a weblog. Here are some select passages from those notes that I thought where relevent to this situation.
Too much open access and too much freedom caused an early online community (Commitree) to collapse because it could not defend themselves from an onslaught on teen age boys that overran the group with obscenities and fart jokes.
The increasing need for structure grows as the group attempts to defend itself from the group.
The core group have rights that trumps the whole group. Absolute citizenship is a harmful pattern. A contenious group can derail anything otherwise.
All groups of any integrty have a constitution. The formal way is in the code. The informal part are the social interations(?) There will always be both parts.
I won't rehash how this conversation diverged and derailed. You can read the comments on Sam's weblog and Shelley Powers.
I have to say that I'm taken aback by Shelley's reaction and see it as being exccessive. I also find it ironic that Shelley is so outraged by group structure and its defense that she just began as a guest contributor to the social software weblog.
It would have been nice had Sam given advanced warning before modifying comments. At the same time there was precious little time to attempt tp protect what was a productive conversation from going astray. Sam, being that it was his weblog (I don't think anyone is surprised by that), reacted to protect the group from itself. Unfortunately, depsite his attempts, it would seem this overreaction threw cold water on that conversation. I hope it recovers, but now I'm not sure.
I got one of my comments marked up so I think it's fair for me to comment – especially since this is my weblog. I didn't even think twice about the practice Sam started – I actually thought it was a good idea. Sam has my utmost respect and I trust his judgement when he marks something as flamebait.
I will take that into consideration next time I comment. I am thankful that he didn't just delete any of the comments in question – especially since some good thoughts where interlaced with the inflammatory statements and smack downs.
On an aside, Scott Andrew nails it when he writes Of course, there's irony here in that Sam's clever approach to handling comment flames has all but upstaged the dialogue on RSS within the blogosphere. Which may indicate, some might suggest, that further debate on RSS is futile and unnecessary. And while we're at it, let's throw FOAF and RDF on the pyre too, since no one cares about the former or comprehends the latter.
Perhaps marshall law imposed by a few with power is the only way to ever establish order.
