Well, yesterday Margaret noted that when Dave pointed to Shelley’s blog and the comments appended thereunto, that he asked David and me to stand up for balance in the turmoil that’s swirled around many of our neighbors. I’d been trying to keep my comments focused as tightly as possible on things that were exactly what I meant, concerning which I hoped there would be fewest hurt feelings — a fond aspiration, not finally viable in the harsh climate of this season. I was on the verge of putting my oar in several times, but the heat diminished right about the time I felt obliged to speak up, and I thought it better to let the embers die than to stir them up again. Again, my folly.
So, summoned to “help get us on track here,” I’ll speak my peace and take my lumps if my words don’t please.
First, I think that weblogs.com users and their readers came out just about exactly right. Users and readers got the benefit of years of hosting, which benefited Userland by contributing to making theirs a visible, attractive, enterprise communication system; now, they’ll have three months of free hosting while Rogers sets up a for-pay hosting proposition. All this sounds like square dealing on all sides — and it’s good business all around, too.
Second, in the aftermath of Dave’s decision suddenly to pull the plug on weblogs.com users and their readers, many people, Dave included, called one another harsh things. I’m still trying to decide whether to work out the fine line that separates those that overstate points the force of which I see, and those that look to me more like naked imprecation; it’s worth doing, in one sense, but it also risks giving the impression (possibly justified, of course) that I’m only trying to rationalize taking sides.
I try to avoid that kind of rhetoric, for which I’ve been scolded once or twice; one could easily fit me into the picture of the writers whom Jeneane challenges as insufficiently passionate. Jeneane gets a rush from the spontaneous outrage, and rises to the occasion; I see casualties on every side, and it damps my willingness to say anything at all.
So my “balanced” response to the flame-war aspects of the occasion runs something such as this: People who want to throw strong language around should be willing to take what comes back at them, and they should try to observe Geneva Conventions about whom they lambast (since not everyone enjoys a good verbal bludgeoning as much as some do).
This last one is hard, since part of the problem involves making a distinction between “inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior” and “answering wrong-headed idiots in the same terms that those jerks used,” and again between “well-grounded inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior” and “fallacious inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior,” and let me tell you, sisters and brothers, no one will be happy with how those get sorted out (especially since weblogs can, of course, be edited retrospectively to alter the appearance of the interchange).
That being said, I think Shelley’s attention to the gender politics of how the controversy played out stands on solid ground, and I wish I’d shown better judgment earlier about my silence when Dave suggested that “The attackers are dispropotionately women” or some anonymous commenter on some other blog called the controversy a “slutfest.” (Dave’s observation that today Shelley closed the comment thread with a “rant about women and weblogs” [my emphasis] touches that exposed nerve, too). The protests against spontaneously shutting down weblogs.com involved many men and a few women; Dave’s sympathizers involved many men and, I expect (though I don’t recall), a few women. I don’t think Dave was right to introduce gender as a factor in the response to his actions, and the anonymous commenter stepped horribly far out of bounds, and I should have had the alertness to speak up right at the moment. Instead, I shrugged off the remarks as ill-informed, thinking that it was pointless to address them head-on — forgetting that if I spoke up, I would at least communicate to others the shoulda-been-obvious point that it wasn’t only women who were upset at Dave’s shutting down weblogs.com, and that at least one guy was willing to stand alongside the women who protested.
Third, the outcry arose not because a bunch of people wanted to pick on Dave, but because Dave took an action that affected a lot of people — not just forty-odd active weblog writers, but all the writers and even more readers — in an unwelcome way, without explanation (at first) or apology. Dave has said that there wouldn’t have been any point in warning about his plan to shut down the promotional hosting at weblogs.com on Scripting News; maybe he’s right about that, but at least he’d have done the right thing in advance. Likewise, Dave has never apologized for his responsibility for what many people believe to have been a mistake (though a week after he shut down weblogs.com, when he and Rogers arranged the interim solution for weblogs.com, he said, “I am sorry for the rough ride, I wish it had been smoother,” which doesn’t quite get to the heart of the matter). A lot of the fuss would have dissipated extremely quickly if early on Dave had said, “I’m sorry; I didn’t expect this would affect you this way. Here’s what I’m doing to set things right.” Even when one is absolutely sure that one’s done the right thing, it’s worth acknowledging others’ dissent; a respectful apology doesn’t cost a mensch anything, and amplifies the central figure’s stature as someone who’s willing to recognize the possibility, even only the mathematically infinitesimal possibility, of having been wrong. Mensches do that all the time. SixApart did something like that, acknowledging Dave who was alluding to Shelley’s comparison of the Trotts to “baby squirrels”!, when Mena came out and said, “We were scared.”)
Dave wants to press forward positively from here; absolutely, by all means, let’s do that. Let’s make explicit the kind of reasonable social contract that many had been taking for granted when they signed on to have weblogs.com host their blogs. And I don’t assume Dave agrees to any of what I wrote here, it’s not binding on him or anyone else in any way; it’s the response I was asked for, that’s all.
I doubt there’s a way to fend off online conflagrations over differences that go deep (in philosophy or theology or politics or personality), but we might diminish them if we worked by a Blogarian transposition of Postel’s Law: Be liberal in what you put up with from others, and conservative in what you say about them.” That would damp down the passion, though, and the passion contributes to some bloggers’ satisfaction with the environment, so no one had better assume that appealing to that [Postel’s Law] premise will solve anything. We’re all new to this environment — even Dave — relative to the length of time it takes to build cultural expectations of behavior, and no geographic barriers separate one subcultural sphere (where we celebrate passion and gutsy writing) from another (where everyone always speaks in evenly-measured tones). For now, at least, when one sphere bumps up against another, balls will get broken.
(Thanks to Shelley for keeping my attention where it ought to be, even when I want to look away, and for sharing the gift of her vision, and for caring about getting things right for everyone’s benefit.
Thanks to Dave for enriching our idiomatic discourse with “people just love to jump up and down,” and with the rubber and glass balls, which I realize he transposed from elsewhere, but which most of us wouldn’t have incorporated into our conversation without him. And of course, thanks for opening the doors that weblogs.com opened.
Thanks to Jeneane for not bottling up her voice, and for transcribing Dave’s audioblogs for those who do read essays but don’t listen to audioblogs.
Thanks for Rogers for brokering the buzzword.com solution.
Thanks to Halley for grabbing my attention, when I had been thinking Tom’s absence was just one of those things. It wasn’t, and now we all see that, even if none of us likes the way it played out.
Thanks to anyone else whom I ought to have thanked, but didn’t because this is already way too long.)
Posted by AKMA at June 27, 2004 03:02 PM | TrackBackThe whole fiasco would make a marvelous case study, but where to publish it? A journal of sociology? Business? Psychiatry? You have poured oil on the waters. Let's see who strikes the first match.
Your post thanking all, makes me think of Pope, in his Imitations of Horace, listening the the advice of a Doctor friend who says, "Shhhh, don't name names except to praise them." Then, Pope, of course breaks into full throated baying, against miscreant after miscreant, by name. The sense one gets reading it, is of great joy, that enconpasses even those satirized, since it makes good fun of what is otherwise savage.
How do we get the moral truth (or our sense of it) adumumbrated, when it is hurtful? Raw indignation, is so easily framed as extreme. Displacing it on another screen, using fictional characters, to enact the Folly and Knavery, seems a more viable and kindly, and effective strategy.
Could we follow your Master and write Parables, as well as Sermons? Whatever moral truths these events contain would best become proverbial. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a Webmaster who....
Posted by: The Happy Tutor at June 27, 2004 03:48 PMYou're a brave man to walk into this AKMA. Fair coverage, and I don't think you'll be flamed.
And thank you for making note of the issues related to gender.
Posted by: Shelley at June 27, 2004 05:49 PMAKMA, like you I refrained from involving myself in the flame war of recent memory, but Since Dave Winer has himself apparently called for further discussion, I offer the following schematic attempt to sort out the issues.
1. DW in his first audio blog makes much of the personal stress that led to the shut down (which was not an "outage").
1.1. Had DW done the right thing in the first place & given a bit of notice to the affected bloggers, he would have experienced much less of the stress he says he was trying to avoid.
1.12. It is axiomatic that ethical shortcuts always lead to more, not less, "stress."
2. Retrospective revisions of language are always ethically revealing, leaving the reviser naked. DW's use of the word "outage" after his shutdown of weblogs.com brought the furies down upon his head is, I think, significant.
2.1. A comparison of the language used in the Notice posted on all the weblogs.com when the shutdown took place with the language DW has used subsequently strongly suggests that DW has not yet taken responsibility for his actions.
3. DW's post-shutdown language has taken two tracks.
3.1. DW has suggested that those who raised a ruckus were doing so in the spirit of personal attack & expressed shock at the use of invective by his critics.
3.12. Such protestations inevitably bring to mind instances of DW's use of invective (often later erased from the record).
3.2. At the same time, DW has called for retribution against his "enemies" in what can only be called a fit of Nixonian paranoia. Posse = Plumbers?
3.21. Such an attitude bodes ill for DW's trustworthiness.
3.22. The sexist tone of this paranoia says much more about DW than it does about his critics.
3.3. At the same time, DW has attempted to rally support around the concepts of community & communication.
4. It is easy to invoke clichés about such matters as "community" & "communication"; it is much more difficult to actually build communities & communicate.
4.1. DW gives little evidence, based on his behavior & his use of language, that he cares much for either community or communication.
4.12. Like the unrepentant malefactor, DW appears sorry only that he got caught.
Posted by: joseph duemer at June 27, 2004 07:51 PMThank you. I am glad you spoke, and although I think it's late, it may actually be just the right time, as the blood in some ears has had sufficient time to make its way back into the circulatory system.
It is interesting that both you here, and David Weinberger by phone, have tagged me with the same label: "spontaneous."
I think I'll have to blog on that, because I only half agree. There are connotations that I don't like in linking spontaneous with writing. A spontaneous writer would be fast, perhaps ill-advised, not careful. Sometimes, okay, if the situation calls for. But not quite. No. You'd be surprised.
As I've said, I say what I think here because 1) I can, 2) someone should, and 3) I have absolutely nothing to lose (i.e., I am neither professionally nor personally padlocked in this space. No one to answer to. No purse strings linked to posts).
Maybe unafraid would be better. Or un-wishy-washy. Or perhaps leave it at passionate.
I don't regret a word of what I wrote, not one, and if I were truly spontaneous (which sounds REALLY fun, by the way), I think I might have more tempered afterthoughts.
THANK YOU for pointing out the strange "gender issues" (or paranoia--you choose your word, I'll choose mine) around this. That element was most fascinating.
Hi Margaret!!
Posted by: jeneane at June 27, 2004 11:08 PMWhen Dave Winer abruptly informed Weblogs users that he could or would no longer support us, he did so in shock mode. We arrived at our sites only to find them gone, replaced by a strange, terse notice. The tone suggested there was more to the story. Why after all would he treat us that way, without prior warning? Either we had somehow deserved this, or there was something destructive at work that was clearly going to do most harm to Dave Winer. It was as if every one of Dave's former weblogs had become a pointer to an act of self harm. It was simply impossible, on the basis of the information given, to sort it out.
There were underlying issues involving the rights, duties, expectations of hosts, bloggers, support services, costs etc. that still need to be addressed.
In retrospect, BloggerCon might have been a good place to explore some of the issues that Dave and probably many others have been dealing with surrounding the burdens of servicing blogs and bloggers. It might have helped us to better understand what lies behind the "ease of use" of self publishing. BloggerCon II included discussion of how bloggers can make money, how they can unionize, etc., while not breathing a word of the actual costs of the labor and infrastructure underlying it all.
Not talking about important things can bring on a crisis. The problem with crises is they spawn a lot of heat with somewhat less light. I still don't feel I fully understand what precipitated the problem, or what would be the best way to resolve it. I still feel that what happened to our blogs would not have happened if blogging had served the communicative function its foremost exponents like to claim for it.
Posted by: tom matrullo at June 28, 2004 07:48 AM"Why after all would he treat us that way, without prior warning? Either we had somehow deserved this..."
Yeah, you deserved it Tom. "There were underlying issues involving the rights, duties, expectations of hosts, bloggers, support services, costs etc. that still need to be addressed."
I can't help but notice that it's being implied the rights belong to the bloggers, and the duties and expectations and support services and costs belong to the hoster... Funny that bloggers, of all people, would actually identify personally with their blog, SEE THEMSELVES AS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, and be personally hurt by the loss of a blog. Can't imagine why.
Also can't imagine a better example of moral relativism, than Full Professor AKMA's post above. Find two extremes and pick a point somewhere in the middle, and call that "fair". Notice that the preponderance of comments that follow are both stupid and against Dave Winer. (Now, "it's left as a exercise for the reader" to determine if that sentence was an attack on a person and/or an idea, which points to the sublimely ridiculous nature of most-a the "talking points" being made above.) Wonder if that has to do with AKMA's prior involvement with his "friends" here, as well as the almost-completely UNfair treatment of the subject matter.
Actually, I don't wonder a-TALL about that.
I don't recall if I was the "anonymous" poster who called this entire charade a slutfest or not, and IF so, what was the exact context... Obviously Males, Females, and both Gays and Lesbians and Others (how-ta categorize the "Happy" Tutor, for example), can engage in a slutfest, and it goes on and on and on...
"Not talking about important things can bring on a crisis." As can talking about unimportant things, also.
Thinking/feeling (as opposed to blogging) "involves making a distinction between ... and again between “well-grounded inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior” and “fallacious inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior,”"
Well, your post is largely of the fallacious-inferences-kind, Dr. AKMA.
Dave's essay is somewhat closer, but still partially fallacious:
"If it wouldn't be politically correct to say that about women, then it isn't PC to say it about men. We're striving for equality here, right?"
Uhhh... Nup.
And funny it was a point Dave made about a couple years ago, surrounding a semi-public discussion he'd had with Jeremy Bowers, that makes the invisible visible. Males in America and the West have been (righteously) stripped of their ability to use physical force to maintain a position of superiority.
But Females, throughout the millenia, have developed verbal skills to do the same. Verbal force being okay, but physical force not..
..and both forces being equally strong, abusive and destructive, more-or-less....
Well, Males are learning to play that "game" too.
:
Btw, anybody that still claims that this was NOT a case of people (the most leaders stirring up things being both men and women, but not in proportion) smelling blood and turning the whole thing into a shark attack...?
Well, it'd be another fallacious inference (another way of saying that people so claiming are just plain stupid and blind, in this respect and others).. but it's a fallacious inference that plays well with others, which I guess is the important point, right?
Ant's Eye View made a very interesting point that the two points of view espoused regarding Dave Winer's initial actions wrt weblogs.com fall along libertarian vs. communitarian values.
I strongly recommend reading it.
FWIW, here are my observations about the gendered nature of the dispute.
There is also one more distinction that you didn't address in your Geneva Convention on rhetoric. That's the bystanders who merely throw around insults with no respect to the issues involved. [Indeed, with no respect whatsoever.] These aren't fallacious inferences, but obscene comments from bystanders. I was certainly subject to my share of those, and I've heard that slashdotters did similarly to Dave.
The key there is to address people who debate the issues on the issues and ignore the potshots. I didn't take the insults that I received as at all seriously reflective of the people I disagreed with. I don't *think* anybody called out a posse of these trolls, so I tried not to let it color my perceptions and attribute it to random idiots.
"I've never given much thought to my gender when I blog. I'm a woman and I'm a blogger, but I rarely think of myself as a "woman blogger." And, idealistically, I like to think that others look on me the same way."
Sounds like that contradicts the very same post:
"Shelly at Burningbird continues this train of thought much more eloquently than I, and I recommend everybody read her post. And Jeneane has also made numerous excellent comments this week. [I suppose I owe DW thanks for introducing me to some other intelligent female bloggers whom I might not otherwise have met!]"
But it's not surprising you are so hypocritical.
"Where do I begin in what's wrong with this statement. How effing sexist and condescending can he get?"
Glad you're supposedly not into throwing around personal insults, Lis, but aren't you and I both bystanders (by your own account in this same post you linked to)...?
Btw, Jason Lefkowitz' reply was more-a the same-old.
Funny you should say that it's all about talking "the issues", like most youngsters like ta claim they are doing! Actually doing so being harder than claiming.
"...so I tried not to let it color my perceptions and attribute it to random idiots."
Likewise, but I would guess my idea of who's being the random idiot would differ.
In case I've been unclear, only a fool would break this whole farce down into "libertarian vs. communitarian" or "male vs. female", only.
(I think Dave is over-playing the male/female angle, but it's a joke to believe there's NONE of that going on here, also. You'd only hafta know the people involved a li'l bit, to glean that there's a fair bit of female-libertationist-sexism rampant in the tech world, both for and against.)
If you're gonna pick one criteria to judge the various statements, and you wanna pick a criteria that is "truthful", ie accurate it would be simply that people's reactions to Dave are, almost without exception, based on their prior impressions of Dave. Almost to the exclusion of anything else. (Your post indicates this well, Lis.) The reactions had essentially nothing to do with the issue, which was people having their sites hosted.
Recalling AKMA's lead (which he later contradicted), "First, I think that weblogs.com users and their readers came out just about exactly right."
That said, a lotta the comments above are amongst the random idiocy that is expressed by intelligent people, right?
"And, as I've said before, the LawMeme article is probably the best objective explanation of the situation;"
And, as I've said before, and above, and posted in comments to the LawMeme article, it is hilarious what people call objective (their own stupid and fallacious inferences), and what people call trolling.
If you, Lis, or anyone else..
..falsely-learned more from the LawMeme troll than this post of mine, I guess that'd make me a troll, right?
J. Toran, why did you post your response to my post here, rather than in a comment to my blog?
Is there anything here that needs to be seen by everybody, rather than just by me?
If not, could we move the conversation to a more appropriate forum, such as the comments on *my* blog, rather than cluttering up Akma's site with a rehash of the old issues?
Thanks.
[FWIW, when I was referring to "idiots" above, I was writing about some of these comments received in my blog addressing my appearance, my sexuality ("ulgy lezbian"), my life, none of which appeared to have any intent other than trying to insult or silence me.]
Posted by: Lis at June 28, 2004 01:23 PMLis,
My comments were not intended for you solely, is why I posted them here. The issue of where, (when and what) to post can be thorny... I also posted here because I "know" Professor/Dr. Adam somewhat more than I "know" you, having never been to your blog before today (iirc). (I use the term "know" a little more strictly than bloggers do.) So I have a better estimate of the chances AKMA would delete my posts, who's gonna happen by to read.. among other things...
:
Interesting, to me, that you would prefer my comments to not "to be seen by everybody", and would prefer them on your own site. Many, if not most, ime (in my experience) have MORE trouble with comments posted "in their face" than if the same comment was made elsewhere. However, it's common for people to get embarrassed by the extent of the embarrassing-whatEVER being widespread, I've noticed. Thaz one reason Dave Winer gets "paranoid", because whatEVER he does generally does get a LOTta widespread-in-the-public-eye attention.
Mainly the bad things, I've noticed... Which is my point.
Back to your questions: People actually view their blogs as a physical space (their "home") in spite of the reality that a blog has some aspects of physicality, but only partial.
I hope that explains why I posted here, and mebbe goes to explain why I posted what I did, maybe a li'l...
Sorry about the job, and some-a the comments (which I only quickly skimmed). However if those kinds-a comments, or any comments of any kind, can keep you from blogging on your own blog..
..well, you get to choose what you write where, afaik...;-D (Iow, people have far more subtle ways of silencing someone, and I'm sure that even I haven't seen 'em all yet, m'self...;-) And you get to choose, as well, whether to allow comments a-tall, which can be a difficult question, I gather.
Btw, I mis-inferred who you meant by idiots, apparently.
As to the question of "appropriate" forums and such.. Well the subject of "appropriate" anything is what almost ALL blogging is about, right? (Iow, "know" time to wrassle around with THAT-un, just now.. other 'n what you see here and above and elsewhere...;-) But the subject of "trust" is intimately involved with the subject of "appropriate", and goes directly to the person as well as the issue(s) being espoused... That much I "know"...;-D
Posted by: J. Toran at June 28, 2004 01:52 PMSounds like that contradicts the very same post ... But it's not surprising you are so hypocritical.
My point was that while I generally do perceive things in a gender-blind manner, sometimes events challenge that opinion. What you were reading was not hypocrisy, but a reconsidering. When writing that, I wanted to show where I was coming from (particularly since I had so many new readers) before explaining why I reached such a result.
only a fool would break this whole farce down into...
I don't believe the *whole* thing breaks down along either binary division, but I do think that such models do provide useful filters for looking at the dispute. I thought Ant provided an interesting point of view, and I felt his descriptions mapped to the predominant arguments I saw (including my own).
I was not saying that's the only way to look at it, but I found it an interesting perspective -- judging neither side as wrong, but pointing out the clash of differing expectations behind the viewpoints. And I wanted to share that POV with others here who may not have seen it.
The fact that issue has been risen for discussion again by Dave himself can be for but one reason, vindication.
It appears that Dave believes that somehow his actions will be viewed differently in hindsight once people 'know all the facts'.
The problem is that this goes against human nature. To quote Joseph Hall, "A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was."
What happened is what happened and each indivdual will have their own take on it and it will leave a different memory on everyone. It is too late to revisit it now. Everyone involved will have to live with the consequences and damage to reputations.
To hope that there will be an 'aha' moment where people suddenly forget their reasoning and passion and have a change of view is wrong. People can forgive, but they rarely can forget.
Posted by: Michael at June 29, 2004 08:23 AM