The Internet is a fantastic place. It can also be an angry place. Lib Dem Voice has a high quality of passionate-but-reasoned debate in our comment threads, with many of our 30,000+ readers contributing their thoughts and enjoying LDV’s role as “Our place to talk”.
However … it’s not unknown for debate on LDV to get heated, for commenters sometimes to get personal with the authors of articles, or with each other. The editorial collective has generally adopted a laissez faire moderating policy: save a handful of exceptional circumstances, comments are left untouched.
Partly this policy has been driven of necessity: all of us who edit the site are volunteers, none of us can promise to oversee the site the whole time. Partly it has been driven by the liberal belief in freedom of expression: authors and commenters are responsible for what they write.
But – for an initial and experimental period of one month – LDV is changing its comments editorial policy. Because though we reckon this site is better than most political blogs in offering a space where all can feel free to debate with mutual respect, it doesn’t always happen. And those few occasions when LDV’s comments become overly personal and abusive (and invariably testosterone-charged) can deter others from ever daring to join in.
So for the next month – leading up to Valentine’s Day, appropriately enough – LDV is going to try and ‘love up’ our comments threads. Debate and disagreement is, of course, still welcome, but we are going to apply the following five criteria in moderating comments:
- We welcome comments from all our readers, including those who are supporters of other parties, or none at all;
- We will not allow comments which are at all personally abusive to be directed at the authors of our articles, or other commenters. Comments which the editors judge to be in any way abusive will be removed as soon as possible. In ‘grey area’ cases, we may ask you to re-write your comment before we will publish it;
- We will remove off-topic comments, especially if a commenter continually raises the same point on different comment threads. We probably already have a post on that topic anyway, and you are welcome to leave a comment there instead;
- We will continue to moderate comments where the same person is commenting under different names in order to generate a false picture of the level of support for their views; or where someone is pretending to be someone or something that they are not (eg, claiming to be a Lib Dem member when they are in fact an activist from another party);
- We will usually allow comments to appear straight away. However, we reserve the right to auto-moderate, or apply a permanent comment ban, to those who ignore our policy. We have several spam filters in place, if you believe your comments are getting trapped please let us know.
These, then, are LDV’s new comments rules for the next month. Though we’ll do our best as site editors actively to moderate comments, if you spot something you think goes against the grain of the new policy, please do email us with the web-address of the comment. Please do also let us know what you think of the policy – whether you agree or disagree – as we’ll be keeping it under review for the next month before deciding whether to make it permanent.
And please remember: LDV genuinely wants to promote debate and discussion on any and all issues. We hope all our readers will feel able to join in the comments threads in the full knowledge that this really is Our place to talk.
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48 Comments
Any chance of reinstating the ability to subscribe to comments on a topic? Or an explanation of why that facility has been withdrawn?
Does this mean I can’t call people stupid for appending labels to other commenters which have little to do with their actual position any more?
Adam: I suppose you could call them “chronologically awareness-impaired”, instead?
“We will remove off-topic comments, especially if a commenter continually raises the same point on different comment threads.”
Whatever happened to Laurence Boyce? A gap has opened in my life without him.
By the way, this sounds a bit illiberal to me, but let’s see what happens. I’d love to see the comments you take out!
Interesting experiment – let’s see how it works
Is there a word missing in the title? Cr@p editorial team … 😉
It’s something of a matter of opinion, but I wouldn’t say that ‘liberalism’ extends to the right to play loud music on a crowded train – which is roughly comparable to what a handful of people have been doing.
Exactly how well this works out is going to depend on the details of how it’s implemented. As such, it’s not really practical to agree or disagree with the policy per se – and it’s difficult for us to judge how well it’s being implemented when we can’t see what actions are being taken. Perhaps it would be beneficial to post a log, somewhere out of the way, along with the comments that get removed? Accountability tends to promote reasonable behaviour, after all.
Hmm. Let’s just hope that abuse in support of the Blessed Nicholas is duly recognised as abuse!
I would just like to mention an alternative model that some blogs use which you may have considered.
One advantage of this model is the fact that warnings and transparency are present.
The model is to explicitly allow the moderator to post. He can then issue warnings and people can take heed.
For example
Doug:
XXXXX XXX XXX
Moderator:
Please refrain from attacking other posters, Doug
Voter – or, to borrow a line from 2001: “Dave, what are you doing?”
Heh
[more text here to get round minimum limit]
We will not allow comments which are at all personally abusive to be directed at the authors of our articles, or other commenters. Comments which the editors judge to be in any way abusive will be removed as soon as possible. In ‘grey area’ cases, we may ask you to re-write your comment before we will publish it
Excellent idea. If people want to badmouth each other they can go somewhere else – there are plenty of places for that on the web. Personal attacks do discourage other readers from commenting, which is a shame.
By the way, I second Malcolm Todd in asking why we can’t subscribe to comments any more. LDV often posts many times a day so it gets a bit difficult to find and check a post that you’ve left comments on earlier to look for replies. Bring back comment subscription!
The “Subscribe to Comments” was disabled when the site went through some performance issues.
I am going to re-enable the plugin, but I may have to turn it off again if problems return.
Instinctively I don’t like this; criticism makes us sharper and there’s nothing wrong with dissent.
Perhaps a better option would be to follow the likes of Slashdot or Digg and have a comment rating system; if a comment is irrelevant or inappropriately negative people can score it down and it will be part filtered out from the main discussion (though still with the option for people to have all comments shown) – a sort of trial by jury if you’d like?
I like the system Andrew is talking about too. I’m mindful that they do take time to build, but I wonder if you could get volunteer(s) in for it? If you think it’s worth looking into I hereby volunteer Rob Knight 😉
@ Andrew Tennant – to be clear, criticism and dissent remain very much welcome at LDV – all we’re asking is that critical, dissenting comments are expressed in a way that is reasoned and avoids being personal. I don’t think that’s too much to ask – at least for a month!
Personally, I’m not sold on a comment rating system – or a moderator’s warning. I’m sure it’s technically possible (and thanks Alix for volunteering Rob – I’m sure he’s delighted!). But I don’t think its’s too much to ask anyone wanting to contribute to a debate to do so in a way that isn’t in any way aggressive.
Abuse is very rare in LDV’s comments, but even it’s appearance – however lowly rated, or warned against – can deter people from wanting to put forward their own views. That’s a shame, and something we want spend some time putting right.
Respectfully Stephen, I disagree; but let’s look at and debate it?
At the risk of putting myself in the new ‘improved’ system firing line, could it be this issue starkly highlights the instinctive difference between your natural freedom of speech loving, I’ll take the cost, Liberal and your more suppressive, authoritarian, silk glove with an iron fist occasional Labour voter?
Do I really have to quote Franklin?
“I don’t think its’s too much to ask anyone wanting to contribute to a debate to do so in a way that isn’t in any way aggressive.”
Right. Let’s do a cut-and-paste from another thread:
“John Booth
Posted 17th January 2010 at 8:09 am | Permalink
Jo Anglezarke, didn’t you used to support the Lib Dems? So you are, in effect, a turncoat – and now you have returned to fling poo at the party up until recently you would attack others on behalf of? Don’t mind us if we don’t all rush to join the Green Party, which has a paltry 126 councillors out of the 10,000s in England and Wales, 2 MEPs out of the 60 odd in the country, and ZERO MPs. That’s right, you’ve elected ZERO MPs in the 36 years the GP has been around. The Lib Dems aren’t perfect, no party is, but yours is a busted flush – not so much a party as somewhere to go to stick your poo-covered fingers up at the rest of us who are actually achieving something.”
Er, just a little on the aggressive side, wouldn’t you say? But, isn’t that the sort of brilliant rant we need to read?
This example, while aggressive, doesn’t seem to me to be a problem. Whether it falls under the heading of ‘personally abusive’ is a matter of opinion – which highlights what I said earlier, about it being the way the policy is applied that is really important.
On the other side, it wouldn’t take me all that long to find a comment from one of the pseudonymous visitors that was clearly nothing more than a series of fact-free insults. Surely it should be possible to lose those without also taking out the edgy-but-lucid posts that are actually relevant to the discussion.
@ Dave Allen
I don’t think it was abusive actually but more snarky and their is a difference. Jo can fight her own corner too from what I’ve seen on this site.
And though it p*sses me off that she comes here ALWAYS slagging the party and we’re all entitled to our opionions, it would be nice in an ideal world if the ‘haters’ could try and give some really interesting constructive criticisms but hey ho..as is life.
What I think would be good and I’ve seen in American websites, is the ability to be able to answer directly to the person you want to i.e in respond to the comment….
@Andrew Tennant: I’d agree there is a trade-off, but in a different place from the one you mention.
Imagine a group of us meeting in a room and there’s one person sat in a corner who shouts “That’s a load of rubbish. You’re an idiot, get out of the room now” whenever anyone else talks.
They’re expressing their freedom of speech, so no problem right? Well no, I think there is a problem – such as if that behaviour is putting other people off from joining in the discussion because they don’t like being on the receiving end of such behaviour.
You could take the view, “Tough, that’s your choice if you stay silent” but not only is that unduly harsh but also everyone loses out if some people are put off contributing.
That shouldn’t be used as an excuse to stop people disagreeing or making clear the vehemence of their views – but it means there is a balance to be struck between these two. It’s not suppressive or authoritarian to want to encourage more people to contribute or to respect their different attitudes; in fact, I’d say it’s pretty much the opposite!
I have a suggestion. Compile a list of all the posts you take out over the period of this trial, and at the end of this trial post them. Allow posters to determine if they’re really something we need to take out, by means of a vote on the whole batch.
As long as you are thinking of making changes, Mr Tall, has LDV come to a decision whether people can contribute articles under their pen names?
You wrote an article “Why not write for Lib Dem Voice?” in April 2009 and Oranjepan asked this question which was never answered in the comments (perhaps it was addressed elsewhere?)
Hi Voter – apologies if it went unreplied to. There is a section on our policy re pseudonyms in the ‘Write for us’ page:
Thanks for the response.
It seems that you are willing to publish articles from me as “Voter” and keep my name confidential.
How would I go about introducing myself? What is the procedure? Should I telephone someone?
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/lib+dem+candidate+resigns+over+racist+email/3508037
Possibly locking the stable door.. ?
Voter: just drop us an email at [email protected]
As requested in two emails now – please take the original nasty comment off your website and the one shown here quoted by David Allen. I have never made personal comments on this site towards anyone and if they have they have always been provoked. All my comments are about politics.
As these comments are personally motivated please remove them.
Jo,
In fairness, you did save your most unpleasant comments for your blog…
But I am confused by one thing. You clearly don’t love us any more, and are quite entitled not to. But you do send out some contradictory messages by repeatedly returning here to make snarky comments that don’t really add much. It’s almost as though you want us to make nice to you as a means to persuade you to come back.
Ironically, by making snarky comments, we’re less likely to want to try. Sorry about that…
@ Jo, here is the email reply I’ve sent:
Personally, btw, I think John’s comment falls within our ‘grey area’ if it were to be submitted now. I don’t think it’s personally abusive, but it makes his point very graphically.
Just an idea, but when you come to do your awards for best LibDem blog and such like at Conference why not have an award for best poster of comments in the previous year. I know it would have to be pretty subjective because of the volume of comments there are over that period, but presumably the editorial team read everything and could come to a consensus. If the criteria were being constructive, respectful of other posters, interesting and witty it might make a very small contribution to improving the overall standard of debate on LDV.
How do you intend to tell if someone is a Lib Dem activist or member given all you’re going on is IP address and unverified e-mail address?
I presume there are wordpress plugins that do voted & threaded comments (ie like reddit.com). You’d need to have the ability to register and log on though else could be the victim of spamming the votes…
Actually thats interesting, how on earth is LDV not covered in spam with no captcha and no logging in?
An interesting essay about how to disagree on the web from a famous American software engineer and internet entrepreneur: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
If we’re all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages…
Another interesting example of how things can go wrong when you do not have proper regulation.
In my experience, being nice usually leads to tubleweed and being ignored. Unless your niceness is channeled into challenging nasty behaviour that is.
Good luck with the experiment though, I appreciate the sentiment of it.
Ooo, how many good constructive ideas in on one comment thread!
Starting with Rankersbo, I agree that too many high-minded, balanced and ‘politically correct’ posts can be slightly less than engaging, and that they don’t work to stimulate the open expression of alternative perspectives, so the occasional polemic rant would make a refreshing change (provided it isn’t written in a way which steps over the line into sweary abuse).
Returning to the topic of pseudonymity/anonymity mentioned by Voter I note that ‘the voice’ and ‘newshound’ are still regular contributing authors to the site, so I feel justified in calling for more consistent application of the policy. Perhaps pseudonymous posts could be accompanied by a strapline providing an indication of where the author comes from geographically (ie branch membership) and philosophically.
The main thing must be to encourage communication between potential contributors and the editorial team as a way to give us an outlet for members energies which naturally leads to higher levels of activity and involvement in the processes. Convincing the public to become members is so much more difficult if we can’t offer more ways to support the talents and ideas of individuals and allow them/us to develop naturally into more productive activists.
I also think the permanent deletion of moderated comments undermines the principles of openness and accountability, so I vote for a ‘hall of shame’ too. This would be helpful as it can function as a feedback forum on the policy and shed a bit of light on the state of opposition expressed against us.
Hmm, reading that through I’m struck by how there is something oppressive about the weight of opinion – so I’d like to see a bit more detailed statistical geekery and relevant data as a way to open eyes – if ‘newshound’ and ‘the voice’ are going to continue would it be possible to find a willing ‘statto’ to write a ‘stat of the day’ (or similar) post too?
Statistic of the day? Ooh, so tempting, the crinkle of the wrapper on a brand new number…
Oranjepan: The Voice and Newshound posts are, unless otherwise indicated, written by a member of the LDV team. Wasn’t sure from your comment it that wasn’t clear? (If it wasn’t clear, then perhaps we need to make it clearer.)
Sorry, you’re right, I should’ve been clearer.
It is obvious to more regular readers (and for closer followers to guess their real identities too), but doesn’t that merely reinforce the the point that publically pseudonymous posters cannot be wholly excluded on that basis alone.
If the condition is that the identity of an author must be capable of being vouched for by the editorial team, surely that does open up the appeal for submissions to a slightly wider pool. Therefore, if, for example, Voter or anyone else, can satisfy that condition via email (or however is deemed acceptable) then they should not feel discouraged in any way.
BTW I should add to that list the ever-enjoyable Millenium Elephant – whose style does provide a good counterbalance and should be held up as an example to follow or be inspired by.
Ah, thanks Oranjepan. Stephen’s updated the About Us page to make The Voice / Newshound clearer just to be on the safe side. On the more general point, yes – we do accept pseudonymous posts where we know who the actual person is and where there is a decent reason for the post not being published under their own name.
I’ve just re-joined the labour party after a decade away directly because of the duplicitous and ignominious “new politics” of your party. No longer do we have conviction politics, no longer can we even pretend to believe what politicians of the centre and right say, as they retract it all and do u-turns as soon as they sniff power. You are now in cahoots with Tebitt and Cash, with a group of Euro-phobes, and homophobes. I hope your party suffers the electoral consequences of such venal self-interest.
If any non British (inc EU) citizen commits any criminal offence, they should immediately be deported together with their dependants, rather than the country incurring costs to keep them in prison and pay benefits to the dependants.
Its about time that the NHS was given a kick up the back-side. It takes for ever to get anything done at our local NHS hospital and it takes for ever to get an appointment to see a specialist or anything else.
The NHS tells you that you will get an appointment but some times you never get one, I have been waiting for nearly 3 years for an appointment.
My local hospital has a good rating but I cannot understand how it go it as I have not got a good word for it and I know many other people who will say the same.
I was sent by my GP to my local hospital with suspect appendix, I waited 6 hours to be seen and whilst I was waiting about five other were just sent home and told to came bach the following day, So its about time something was done about the NHS (No Hospital Service)
I have worked as consultants’ secretaries in the NHS since 1954 – I’m retired now and thank heaven for it.
We need less managers (paper-pushers terrified of losing their well-paid jobs who seem to succumb to any computer company’s or other reps that feed them dinners or holidays abroad).
We must have ward cleaners who have at least 3 days in-hospital training on ward, patient and personal hygiene before they are even set free with mops and dusters.
We need more doctors who speak our language (we can always find translators if necessary).
We need one auxilliary, probationer, nurse on the ward who look after the patients’ welfare, comfort and helping with feeding seeing that they are as comfortable as can be expected as follows:
For example, I have been visiting in a ward where patients’ food is dumped onto their bed tables at the end of their beds and if they are in bed because of physical disabilities they have been unable to reach the food. Eventually their untouched trays have been removed without questions asked. It should have been obvious to a one-eyed one-armed person that if the food was still on the bed table at the end of the bed that there must be a reason. Not one person questions why the patient did not eat their food, there is so little money to provide nurses that there is no longer time any more for niceties like that. I don’t expect it was even put down in the notes that the patient had not eaten their food.
Most of the hospitals’ money is spent on useless managers who make sure out that they are doing important jobs by repeat e-mailing unnecessary information or, in the 50s-80s pushing useless bits of paper round to each others’ offices.
The money we waste on the incompetent hospital managers, if we got rid of them, could help tremendously with the hospitals’ budget problems. If you check wages of the real workers in the hospitals you will a huge discrepancy which should not exist. Hospital pay should equal the hard work that the real workers do and not be frittered away on unnecessary bureaucracy.
Also patients dumped into their armchairs are not checked to see if they are cold or need some water and I have witnessed a couple of very distressing incidents like that.
it is insulting to tell those of us who are shocked at what has happened to our votes to “get real”. I made the fundamental mistake of believing Clegg when he talked about the danger of immdeiate deep cuts. That was a mistake that many of us will not make again. And AV means that we will never know who we are voting for, so my vote is lost on that too. There is also the issue of when Clegg changed his mind, if he actually did. He is being found out as a liar and a cheat. What amazes me is the number of lib dems who have also gone back on everything they ever said. I work with the vulnerable in society and we are now preparing to slash services for the homeless, elderly, women escaping domestic abuse, the elderly, people with learning disabilities etc etc etc. It hasnt started yet, wait till the next financial year. This list of victims of the Lib Dem coalition will come back to haunt you. The NHS fiasco alone is a resigning matter. Nobody ever agreed to the wholesale privitisation of the NHS. And believe me that is exactly what is happening.
Many lib dems are good people. How can you do this??????????????????????????????????
We must have ward cleaners who have at least 3 days in-hospital training on ward, patient and personal hygiene before they are even set free with mops and dusters.
Property Solicitors