Saturday, March 31, 2007

Well, I *meant* to say that...

Weighing in on the Kathy Sierra blog-crisis is one of my regular reads, Dave from Groudhog Day:
"...it is the network itself that made this incident possible, and the network itself that made Kathy's response to it into such a seemingly "significant" event.

But the response to date seems to have focused exclusively on individuals in the usual rush to assign blame and demand "accountability." Secondary to that has been some legitimate criticism and discussion of issues of misogyny in our society, and the problem of anonymity on the 'net. But I've read no discussion of the network itself, and its role in enabling this incident. Given how enamored we are of networks and our own cleverness with technology, this is unsurprising.

I'm not so sanguine. I think the network, while it is an impressive achievement, is not an intrinsically good thing. I think it empowers our weaknesses as much as our strengths; and flawed creatures that we are, we seem to have many more weaknesses than we do strengths.

While I may not agree with Dave's assessment of the ratio of good to bad, strengths to weaknesses within humans (either individually or as a group) that is, in fact, similar to what I was trying to say in this post:
"It makes me sad. Not just for Kathy, but for those of us who believe in the positive potential of the blogosphere and the Internet in general. What a blow to optimism and to passion to see the dark side of the Internet in such stark relief.

I fear that the online world makes it easier and more untraceable for sickos to go after the prominent people that catch their anti-fancy for whatever reason they do. Death threats have been arriving in the mailboxes of women leaders and actors and politicians and news anchors for a very long time (and men too, I should hasten to add) and just as the Internet allows us to distribute our views across time and space in a way that simply wasn't possible in the past, so too does the Internet enable hate to be the message that is thus widely and rapidly distributed.
"

The internet, the blogosphere...they are tools, and they have been used for great good, world-changing good, even. but in this case, and in cases dating back to the very birth of the technologies in question, they have been used for the nasty, the cruel, for the vicious, for the criminal, for the just plain mean, for the hateful.

What ratio of good to bad do you think is out there?

Friday, March 30, 2007

March 30: Cleaning up your blogging house

There has been some ugly stuff going on in the blogosphere this week. Today has been a day that some bloggers are hoping we will all use to address the issues raised: cyberbullying, cyberstalking, cyberabuse, cyber-hate-speech.

Some people are not blogging at all today in response. I'd rather blog some resources and say this:
I don't believe we can institute an enforceable blogger code of conduct that is applied to all bloggers across all subject matters. I don't believe we should even try.

I do believe that each blogger and site owner should set policies and practices in place that refuse to accommodate or tolerate cyberabuse. I believe each blog or site owner is entitled to draw their own lines and enforce them. It's your web site, you can delete crap if you want to.

I personally believe we should always draw the line at hate speech, sexual harassment and threatening speech. Even if we don't think the troll will actually act on those threats. The potential for action is not the point.

I also believe that we should do our damnedest to not conflate disagreement with abuse. But again, I do believe people will draw line sin different places. And in their own online spaces, it's their right. If you don't like where a blogger draws her line, don't read her.

If you think something crosses a line into a legal issue, then contact law enforcement and find out if you're right. Or contact a lawyer. Learn your rights and protect them.

If we've been laissez-faire until now (and we all probably have been at times), then now's the time to take it more seriously and stop the blogosphere from devolving into a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, just-plain-hateful space.

If you'd like to catch up on this issue, here are some links:
Original Kathy Sierra post about receiving death threats

Lisa Stone's response on behalf of BlogHer

Lisa Stone's original post on What do you do when you're cyberstalked, taunted or abused online?

My blogging about the issue on Worker Bees: First post, including further resource liinks, , and two additional posts with additional thoughts.

Margalit with a great list of actions.

BlogHer posts about today being Stop CyberBullying Day: Elana Centor, Marianne Richmond, Beth Kanter

Where do you draw the line?

Thursday, March 29, 2007

BBC Radio appearance: World, Have Your Say

I'm going to be appearing (in about an hour, actually) on BBC World Radio as part of their popular call-in show, World, Have Your Say. The subject: Trolls in the Blogosphere.

I'll try to offer the following points:

1. This is not about the culture of the blogosphere or the Internet. Technology isn't to blame, people are to blame. Ever heard the term GIGO? (I will concede that the Internet can lend a cloak of anonymity the makes people feel more comfortable sharing their inappropriate, unpleasant or even evil thoughts...but don't think they don't have those thoughts when they're sitting next to you on the subway too.)

2. Harassment and threats are illegal, regardless of the delivery mechanism.

3. Women and men can be viciously attacked online, but it is more common for attacks on women to have a sexual element. Bottom line: saying "your mother is a whore" to a man is offensive. Saying "you're a whore" to a woman is more personal, more threatening...just more.

4. The response to the Kathy Sierra incident indicates once again that even when discussing attacks on a woman, all women do not think or feel the same. We've seen in the content and the comments on this post and this post at BlogHer, that women can have very different attitudes. Differing opinions aren't bad. Personal attacks...bad.

5. I am not leaping to support the idea of a blogger code of conduct, but I do think every blogger and site gets to set its rules. BlogHer's editorial guidelines are a very important part of our community and its tone. You can do the same, even for your individual blog or site.

Those are my thoughts now, with less than an hour to go. If you want to listen I think you can listen online.

Oh, and fellow BlogHer Beth Kanter will be on the show too...she knows quite a bit about international threats to online women, so I'm sure she'll have a lot to say.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

BusinessWeek.com article

Hmm. So, I was quoted on BusinessWeek.com, which is good I suppose. As with any interview you're always wondering why they picked this or that quote instead of the utter brilliance you uttered a mere seconds before or after, but that neither here nor there.

I hope you don't think I'm being way too anal, but I do want to clarify one little thing.

Here's the segment of the article:
Other women bloggers say they, too, have noticed a difference between the way women and men are discussed on the Web. Elisa Camahort, co-founder of BlogHer, a community for women bloggers, says body parts and sexuality are more frequently included in criticisms aimed at women, particularly prominent women, on the Web. "I think a woman is subject to certain kinds of comments that men wouldn't get," says Camahort.

Still, Camahort says the blogosphere is no more misogynistic than the real world. It's just that the anonymity makes people feel slightly freer, in some forums, to say what they only whisper in real life. "It hasn't been eliminated in the online world, and I don't think it has been eliminated in the offline world either."

Chris Locke, an author and blogger who created a group comment site where a user posted an image of and disparaging comments about Sierra, says that he also doesn't think the blogosphere and online message boards suffer from an overall misogynistic tone. "There is a problem with misogyny in the real world and online, and it really sucks," says Locke. However, he also thinks some may overreact to comments made about women. "I don't think we should be walking on eggshells when we want to say something to a woman that is negative."

It's nit-picky, but I have to point out that saying "Chris Locke, an author and blogger who created a group comment site where a user posted an image of and disparaging comments about Sierra, says that he also doesn't think the blogosphere and online message boards suffer from an overall misogynistic tone." implies that that's what I just said (that the blogosphere and online message boards don't suffer from an overall misogynistic tone.) What I in fact said is that I don't think they are more misogynistic than the real world.

I think the blogosphere and Internet in general are made up of people. And there is a segment of the population who are definitely sexist and even misogynistic. it is not the technology that makes people sexist or misogynistic. It is not the culture of the blogosphere or Internet to be sexist or misogynistic.

But the technology certainly makes it easy to spread and distribute your sexist, misogynistic thoughts, should you have them.

OK, I'm anal, but I did want to point that out.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Update: The BlogHer post on Kathy Sierra and a question...

Would like to point to the post Lisa has published on BlogHer, which constitutes a more "official" Blogher response to the abuse that Kathy Sierra has experienced.

As you can see, after much discussion and some research Lisa has a cooler head than I, although she is no less passionate on the subject of women's online safety. Let's just say she doesn't devolve into profanity, asterices or no.

I have a question I'd like to ask to:

Can all you people writing about this situation please stop using the disturbing images of Kathy that scare and offend her as an image in your post?????

Am I high, or is that sort of compounding the problem?

I understand it's shocking and helps illustrate exactly what kind of disgusting situation Kathy found herself in, but do y;all realize how Google works? If enough of you keep showing that picture and associating it with Kathy's name, won't it end up getting higher in the ranks when doing an image search?

Gee, that'll get her back to the blogosphere quicker, right?

My personal opinion is that is she wants to link to those images to make a point, that's her choice, but everyone else should stop linking to them. Frankly it feels like you're exploiting her misfortune get a little higher bump in attention than just words would do.

Again, I ask: am I off the mark here?

Monday, March 26, 2007

Stalking? Death threats? Hey, people, that's not free speech!

I have nothing brilliant to add to the burgeoning discussion about the cyberstalking and abuse that Kathy Sierra is experiencing.

It's gross and appalling and truly incomprehensible. It makes me sad. Not just for Kathy, but for those of us who believe in the positive potential of the blogosphere and the Internet in general. What a blow to optimism and to passion to see the dark side of the Internet in such stark relief.

I fear that the online world makes it easier and more untraceable for sickos to go after the prominent people that catch their anti-fancy for whatever reason they do. Death threats have been arriving in the mailboxes of women leaders and actors and politicians and news anchors for a very long time (and men too, I should hasten to add) and just as the Internet allows us to distribute our views across time and space in a way that simply wasn't possible in the past, so too does the Internet enable hate to be the message that is thus widely and rapidly distributed.

Only not really. There are some things that cross legal lines.

Kathy has done the right thing by taking legal action, I have no doubt about it.

And I want to thank Robert Scoble for being a very prominent male blogger who is willing to connect the dots between the smaller indignities that women experience in our world and the clearly-over-the-line abuse that Kathy has experienced. Women have been saying it for quite some time, and I may not like it that those statements have not been enough, but if it will help, then I will take every male supporter we can find.

If we operated in an industry where it was not tolerated for conference backchannels and blog comments to regularly discuss women's body parts and said body parts having some relationship to brains, then perhaps it would begin to address some of the issues I regularly talk about here regarding women at conferences, and in tech in general.

Would it stop the truly sick f*cks by whom Kathy has been unfairly set upon? Sadly, I doubt it. There will always be truly sick f*cks, and they need to be found and dealt with as criminals.

But maybe it might make plain old jerks and a-holes think twice.

Sorry, but I think sometimes profanity is appropriate, and I think this is one of those times.

Sad day in the blogosphere.

And you can be sure that violence against women makes every day a sad day somewhere in this world.

Resources:

U.S. Government Domestic Violence Awareness Handbook

U.S. Government Office on Violence Against Women

Amnesty International's Stop Violence Against Women program

Working to Halt Online Abuse's compilation of cyber-stalking laws

Online Harassmen/Cyberstalking statistics

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Of Twitter and Men

I don't buy Jason Calacanis' argument that

a) there is no A-List
but
b) if there is an A-List it's easy to get yourself on it

It's contradictory right from the get-go.

But when he says that some of the old-timer A-list geek and business bloggers work pretty hard at their blogs, I do indeed believe it. I have been known to curl my lip at pure aggregator blogs...folks who point you to cool things, but add little of their own insight or value to the post. But I have respect even for anyone who does that regularly, because no matter how often I say that is what I'm going to do during busy times (like this entire month) it takes more effort than you would expect to keep on bookmarking the cool stuff and pointing to it.

Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion is indeed a hard-working blogger. He posts so consistently and so actively I cannot imagine how he does it. And now he's Twitter-addicted too, so honestly I think he's a cyborg who doesn't actually sleep. This week alone he has pointed me to a couple of interesting things, including the fact that you can subscribe to Techmeme via Twitter. Is this better than subscribing via a feed reader? I'm not sure. I'm experimenting with it to see.

Steve is also so consistent about posting links to market research that I often do a search on Micropersuasion, rather than Google, to find data.

But Steve loses me on all this Twitter stuff when he discusses whether Twitter will replace blogging. (Some of the discussion is here and here.)

You can only even ask that question if you think of blogging as only about quick sound bites and recommended links. Or about sharing the mundane details of your daily life.

Twitter, with its 140 character entries, is more likely to replace chat, I suppose, or IRC backchannels at conferences. But why on Earth would someone dump an RSS feed to someone's blog in favor of tracking them via twitter, unless that blogger was a pretty trivial blogger to begin with?

This goes back to the basis of all those arguments over the Technorati approach to blogging (that it is links and links alone that determines authority, popularity, influence...and therefore, importance.) You can measure yourself by how many followers you have, and how many times you update per day, but it ignores an entire thriving, vibrant part of the blogosphere: the part that is about expression and community and conversation and debate and persuasion.

Twitter is cute. (Although, I don't know how long it will be before we all tire of it in an ADD kind of way, looking for the next cute application.)

But it doesn't cry out "blogging alternate" to me. It's not food for my brain or soul...even if it has the potential to occasionally improve the company I keep when I'm out getting food for my stomach :)

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Sandy rocks the conference diversity topic...

In short, but sweet fashion, and just full of the link love. Check it out here.

Walled Wurstgarden?

Oh my!

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

This month's Silicon Veggie

I publish a restaurant review for the first time in a long time. But of course I can't be that simple about it. I also have to discuss this new trend of "mindful eating" at the same time. If you live in San Jose you might particularly want to know all about the reviewed restaurant: Tanglewood in Santana Row.

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