On June 18, the Arizona Daily Star switched its online comment feature to an exclusive Facebook format. Now, you have to be logged into a Facebook account in order to post a comment. One of the primary reasons given for this move was the elimination of anonymity, portrayed as the root of incivility in Star editor Debbie Kornmiller’s blog announcing the change.
Well, here’s a comment that would no doubt earn an ejection from the Star: What a load of horseshit. It’s true the Star comment lines were polluted by trolls posting hateful, intolerant and outright racist nonsense, especially since Barack Obama’s election. But the Star has no one but itself to blame, since it failed to moderate the comments in a meaningful or effective way.
Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon and current executive editor of Grist, skewered the anonymity argument a few years ago. He said that the “barroom brawls” that broke out in so many comment boards resulted from “a failure to understand how online communities work.” He admonished hosts, “Don’t neglect to hire … actual people with a presence in the conversation” rather than just “faceless wielders of the delete button.”
As in real life, you can’t censor every potentially offensive comment—it’s contrary to the fundamental American value of free speech. But, by all means, you need to intervene, early and often, and call people out. And not just moderators—members of the community should share the responsibility for setting standards. The Star lost control of its comment forum because it utterly failed to grasp this concept.
My experience with Star comments bears this out. A few days after Obama’s 2008 victory, someone posted this gem: “Sorry blacks—Hussein is only half black, therefore he does not count as a full black. He is hereby classified as a whack—white + black = whack. Now all the whack churches can rejoice.” It appeared in a long thread of vitriol, some of which equated Obama to Hitler and Stalin.
I countered that mess with sarcasm: “So, let me see if I got this straight. Obama is a socialist Arab baby-killer analogous to Lenin and Hitler who was supported by racist black churchgoers?” My comment was removed by moderators, while the comments I’d paraphrased were left up.
Confounded, I queried Ms. Kornmiller. During an exasperating email exchange in which she mostly ignored my pointed questions, she finally explained that “any reported comment that references Hitler is automatically rejected.” She eventually admitted that the “whack” comment had been reported, but was allowed to stand by a moderator. Stunned, I pressed her further on the logic void of the Star policy in the face of such outcomes, but she imperiously threatened to cut off my comment privileges if I persisted.
I saved those exchanges, and then I began to save all of my comments, in case any more were censored. When a story on UNIDOS—the group that fought to save TUSD’s Mexican American Studies curriculum—prompted an onslaught of hate, I responded with a message of encouragement for the student activists: “Please do not listen to the selfish, bitter haters that dominate these comment threads. They do not accurately represent the people of Tucson.” My comment was removed.
When one of Arizona’s most famous bigots, former state Sen. Russell Pearce, was finally cast out of office by voters, I wrote this: “The best way to address bigotry is to speak out and make clear that it will not be accepted in your community. Justice served, on a democratic platter.” Also removed.
When another commenter posted a long, impassioned refutation of the trolls and a plea for civility, she was censored. I responded with this: “Unfortunately, the ADS comment police follow a mindlessly rigid policy that is decidedly skewed toward allowing all manner of thinly veiled racism, intolerance and hatred, while consigning comments (such as yours) that attempt to call people out for their antisocial ravings into the dumpster of oblivion under the label of ‘personal attacks.’ Go figure.” Instead of backing us up, Star moderators proved my point doubly by removing my post as well.
I also saved many examples of the hate, including vicious comments explicitly advocating for the murder of Mexican migrants in our borderlands. You could get away with all kinds of nasty comments about gays, Mexicans and Muslims, but if you called something out as homophobic or racist, you were silenced.
Facebook, in the absence of moderation, will not solve the problem.
This article appears in Jul 4-10, 2013.
Just as a publication may print letters to the editor without necessarily agreeing with the content, it is responsible for filtering out inappropriate material and making sure the letters are appropriate for public consumption (meaning, in the first place, coherent). The same should hold true for policies regarding online comments, but for some reason online comments have been a virtually unmoderated free-for-all (virtually, not literally; obviously, the Star imposed some idiotic, indefensible standards that promoted personal attacks on public figures but eliminated valid criticism of maniac posters). Back in the early days of StarNet, trolls immediately started taking over the chat forums, which led the Star to abandon those within a couple of years. Right then they should have known that they would need to take a firmer hand with online comments. Has the problem been hypocrisy, or mere laziness? Either way, it’s been inexcusable. (Also, I believe people should take responsibility for their comments, so good riddance to anonymity.)
I agree with Randy Serraglio:
“But the Star has no one but itself to blame, since it failed to moderate the comments in a meaningful or effective way.”
And perhaps this is why the Star gave up and outsourced the job. But, instead of finding a path to more civil comments, it succeeded in reducing the number of comments by, What? 90%?
And I agree with Randy that a civil comment is often the best response to an uncivil comment and that the real issue is not so much the name we choose to use when commenting but the comment. The Star did lose control of its comment forum. Moderating must be a hard job; but the Tucson Weekly seems to be demonstrating that it can be done.
The Star’s commenting section was a disgrace ( I wrote 2 articles on it on Tucson Citizen) that gave the entire city a black eye to any outsider reading it.
However the switch to Facebook commenting HAS made a huge improvement – at least for the moment most of the trolls have taken their marbles and gone home.
I discovered the Facebook only requirement on the Star recently and it will probably result in the cancellation of my paid subscription.
Why? I don’t have a Facebook account. I don’t need or want one. And before folks start calling me a Luddite, I happen to teach computer classes and recognize that data mining and security issues are rampant on many of the social networks.
I was the sole admin for an international car club forum for 16 years. In that time I had to keep folks focused on the topic and put out the fires when they occurred. It takes a firm hand and is almost a 24 hour job to do something like that.
If the local print media doesn’t want to pay local people to manage the responses in an intelligent way, then perhaps they should just give up and not allow any responses at all or in the case of the local daily, just “get out of town” to borrow a phrase.
I don’t like every article or column in the TW either, but at least it appears to be researched and written by real people who have a passion for Tucson.
Gee, finally, a good reason to join Facebook.
The Star can’t tombstone you from Facebook, can they? They can only delete your comment, right?
It appears that the most egregious form of comment, the one that will get deleted quickly is any that appears to diss Frank Antenori or any right-wing, bat-crap crazy republican politician.
Or, as this article shows, any reasonable attempt to calmly call out one of the execrable right-wing trolls dog paddling in the ADS comment cesspool…
The 2nd (and final) time that I was censored and tombstoned from the ADS comments (ironically, soon after one of my LTOEs was published) was when I called Frank a neanderthal — even though I DID include an apology to Neanderthals everywhere…
Having witnessed Frank’s irrational, racist, bigoted, war-mongering act, I was being kind…
I still have the astounding email thread from when I protested the Star’s discriminatory policies from the corporate level on down. That was a previous “editor”. It sounds like Kornmiller’s has taken up where the last one left it…
Aw, on 2nd thought, the ADS is a lost cause and their comment threads are a huge waste of time. The Star sucks on the teats of the developers, university and the ugly, expensive, wasteful war machine just like most of the rest of the “power” in this town. Trying to get any other point of view in that rag other than the letters to the editor is a lost enterprise…
Count me as one who was 86ed from The Star for unknown reasons. Some of the most vitriolic racist anti-muslim comments were being posted about the story of the Phoenix muslim father who “honor killed” his daughter. I simply pointed out the facts of christian mothers who have killed their offspring, and christian web sites devoted to christian men abusing their families.
My comments were NOT removed but my account was frozen. After an email exchange with John Bolton, he directed me to call him to determine if I would be allowed back on. Screw that! No way I’d kiss his wrinkly old ass just to make comments in The Star cesspool that didn’t violate their rules to begin with. That was the last time I posted there and never looked back.
The newspaper published in our sister city to the north went to this requirement some time ago. Certainly it ended the vitriol, but it also ended any meaningful comments. Now there are only a few, either advertising work-at-home schemes, or saying, “Well, I don’t know. I sort of agree, but then I sort of disagree, too.” That, coupled with only ‘like’ to click makes the comments completely uninteresting.
PLEASE, TW, do NOT go the same way!
I participated in many meaningful comment exchanges about ADS articles in the past; however, I have no intention of joining “facebook”, “twitter”, or other unsecure way for hackers and criminals to cause undue harm.
Maybe they can remove this article to, this guy hates the truth plain and simple.
Serraglio is correct, to a point. The ADS comments section was for the most part part poorly moderated; and for those prone to swooning with the vapors after reading intemperate diatribes from those on the extremes, a swamp of excess and incivility. It was also a good place to argue substance and fill in the enormous holes in the reporting of a suspect pool of journalists. But to claim as Patrick O’Neill would have it, the Comments section is hugely improved, is strange. It is like suggesting a bowl of lukewarm pablum is an improvement over a bowl of well prepared chili. The few comments seeping in from Facebook, are colorless and insubstantial; this was to be expected.
I posted with some regularity. In the end my challenge to the the liberal/progressives who rightly took issue with the theatrics and idiocy in the state legislature was simple enough. I will as the lawyers would have it, stipulate the Republicans running the state are bizarre and childish. But, in self-proclaimed Baja, AZ we witness with mind-numbing regularity, the abject failure of the liberal/progressive Democrats in the City of Tucson and the County of Pima, to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars and have, at the end, something to show for it; a return on the promises. Rio Nuevo, of course, is just one example among many where these folks have distinguished themselves as, at best, incompetent and at worst corrupt, venal criminals.
So maybe here, a local liberal or progressive will take the challenge and offer why it is a given that the Republicans running the state are troglodytes but the local Democrat machine in the Baja continues on a path of destruction without comment. I’ve issued this challenge a dozen times on the ADS boards without a response and would be happy to hear from someone here who believes the local Democrats are worthy of praise or even forbearance.
Randy, having read your comments in the Arizona Daily Star and seeing you speak before the public on many occasions, I never thought that I would ever agree with you on anything. But in this case, I think you are correct. The Arizona Daily Star lost control of the forums it used to allow citizens like you and me to comment on important issues in our community.
However, my comments were seldom removed by the Arizona Daily Star’s censors because they were made in a courteous and respectful manner. However, many of the other individuals in these forums would repeatedly report me, for no other reason than to censor my comments. As you may know, this is one of the ways the system was abused.
Oh well, the good old days of discussing Rosemont Copper in the Arizona Daily Star are gone. With Rosemont Copper nearing the successful completion of the permitting process and commencing construction at the site in the near future, there would not be very many opportunities to continue these discussions anyway.
Chris J. Horquilla
I was both a participant and a lurker on the old ADS comment site. I enjoyed anonymous posting as I put in my comments from work computer and needed privacy. I enjoyed reading the vigorous exchanges on political topics about which I wasn’t particularly opinionated or knowledgeable (Benghazi, Fast&Furious, Obamacare, immigration, etc.) and putting my two cents worth on a few topics I do know well. I learned a lot about the constitutional and election issues from posters like Langer and Harry Red Dog, gun rights/gun control issues from Wayne B. (Rain) and Harperman, enviro comments from folks like Skinnyman, SilverTones, Jerrod Sandhill, and Horquilla, and the super clever posts by Rat T. The information provided by the posters supplemented the many times thin or biased story lines written by ADS. Heck half the time, the fellow posters provided the links we needed to do something about what we learned or to fuller stories in other papers. I miss the rapid-fire conversations. The conversations now on the threads are slow, insipid, and boring, but hey, the folks all seem to agree with each other! Dissenters and provacateurs on the left, middle, and right have split.
ChetDude refers to “right wing trolls” on ADS boards. Why stop with right-wing? To be fair, left-wing serial posters like Benjamin Long and Autumn, Malcolm (Tripod) did their share of trolling.
Like Wise-Guy I was banished from the ADS comments for using a forbidden word. In my case the word was “Teabagger”. I wasn’t aware of the sexual connotation of the word (really!) and I sent an e-mail to John Bolton trying to explain. He told me he’d have to talk with his associates to see if I could be forgiven.
I cancelled my subscription to the ADS forthwith, and I don’t ever plan to return, although I’m frequently receiving solicitations to “come back”. I wonder how John Bolton developed such a virginal sense of propriety, certainly it could not have come from being a moderator on the old ADS comments.