Interesting Thoughts, Few Solutions In Post Forum

It was pretty clear what to expect from the Washingtonpost.com's online forum on "the evolving nature of Internet commentary and ethics." After all, the views of those invited to participate are hardly foreign to most of those who pay any attention to this debate (or blogs themselves). The group was made up of Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis, Pressthink's Jay Rosen and Jane Hamsher from firedoglake. But, hopefully many of those who tune in to read the conversation haven't been exposed to all of this before and there were some interesting points made, so let's dive in. (This was set up in response to last week's blowup on a post.blog where comments to the site were closed after a flood of criticism. If you're not up to speed on this story, see here).

In today's forum, there was a lot of chatter about the difficulties involved in opening a site up to outside comments and the gist was: Registration systems help and the discussion usually takes place on a higher plane of civility when identities are attached to comments in some way. The downside to that approach is that it limits participation. Interactivity is important, especially for major media organizations and the Web is a pretty unrestrained place but those who own and operate sites have the right to do what they feel is right with comments. A few of the more interesting highlights follow:

Rosen, on "civility":

"It makes sense for the Post to have rules, and it is their right to decide what they should be. Hate speech has to be beyond the pale. Personal attacks with no substance should be. But rules without an enforcement system aren't rules; they're guidelines. I don't think 'civility' is an especially good guideline. Jim shouldn't ask people to be civil, but to be real, to say what they think, to obey some minimal rules. Sometimes there's a lot to discern in an angry, uncivil response, but if you're worried about civility you're not going to be very discerning."

Reynolds explained why he doesn't have comments on his blog:

"I've never had comments. I get about 1000 emails a day, and I don't have time to look at those, post on my blog, AND moderate comments. And unmoderated comments raise a risk of the kind of thing I mention above, as well as possible libel and copyright issues. I've actually considered bringing someone in to do that, but that seems too impersonal."

"How does one defuse hate? By facing the bully eye-to-eye, eh?
Nine times out of 10, when someone has come spitting bile at me in my comments, I find that if I bother to address them directly and call them on their behavior toward me, they back off and we end up in a decent conversation."

"The Post can say it 'only' took four days for Howell to acknowledge something amiss, but it only takes four minutes to realize that she was wrong in what she stated as fact about Abramoff and the Democrats. Moreover, she was wrong in a way that 'tracked' with Republican spin, which makes it different from a garden-variety miscue. And on top of that her first statement was begrudging in tone. This created the storm conditions that 'stunned' Howell, and lit up the comment board."

"A lot of the uproar came as we waited for that to happen. The last time I looked no correction has been appended to her original column.

This is the ombudsman, it's her job to respond to reader criticism. They set up a system where readers could respond to her column instantaneously and she refused to address those concerns.

That she continues to play the victim only throws fuel on the fire."

Washington, D.C.: "For The Post to continue discussing only the question of public comments without discussing what brought them on in the first place is like talking about the levees and ignoring the hurricane that topped them. I think The Post needs to invite public discussion of the role of its ombudsman, the current ombudsman, and the future of its reporting and accountability to the public."

Jay Rosen: "It would be far better for this discussion if the ombudsman, Deborah Howell, were participating; I would gladly give up my slot. I'd like to know how she sees her job in an interactive age. Also: Who does she represent? I also believe that Jim Brady and Washingtonpost.com should consider having a public editor for the site, not to do what the Post ombudsman does but to make the Post.com more responsive and two-way."

Jane Hamsher: "The post.com should be thrilled by the passion and intelligence and civility exhibited by the vast, vast majority of commenters.

Over at Kos, someone compared an archived version of the original comments on the "Maryland Moment" blog with the ones that were restored and found only ten that were deemed so "offensive" that they had to be deleted. That's a 99% civility rate. I think most people who run a public board would think that was remarkable.

That's quite different than the description Brady gave to Hugh Hewitt, where he said there were "hundreds and hundreds of comments about her column, and they were very, very nasty, using words that I didn't even know existed."

Even conservative blogger Michelle Malkin said of the posts deleted from the Howell blog that "the comments seemed comparatively tame."

I think people would really like to know why the Post deleted comments that were really intelligent, appropriate and completely non-profane, and continues to characterize these readers as scruffy barbarians."

Jim Brady: "I have made this point countless times, but to no avail. The cached posts you see don't include any of the posts we removed. Simple as that. When we saw them, we took them down, which means they weren't live and thus not on that cached page. So analyzing that page and drawing conclusions is faulty."

"I don't know the exact number, but I can assure you it was more than dozen. I removed about 50 myself.

And, Jane, since you obviously don't want to discuss the topic at hand and would instead prefer to play Columbo, let me pose a question to you: I looked at your blog last night in preparation for this, and in addition to all the nice things you had to say about me, I noticed that you often link to 'WaPo' articles that are critical of the Bush Administration and give them your implied endorsement. But then when we publish something that doesn't fit into your worldview, we're called 'shills of the GOP.' Which is it? You can't have it both ways, but you seem to want to."

"Since I've shown my willingness to play by Brady's rules, I challenge him to engage in a dialogue in a neutral playing field. One-on-one, back and forth, no 'background noise,' no place to hide. We can do it in an email exchange, we can do it in a live chat, we do it over at the Huffington Post or any mutually agreeable place where the ground rules are equitable to both parties.

I've done my part. Let's see exactly how brave and committed to "transparency" he really is."