Following the mysterious and as of yet unexplained removal/disappearance of some benign commentary on my blog, which followed closely on the heels of someone else's post about posts being categorically deleted, I have grown concerned over whether ProgressiveU's censorship in the name of non-offensive, non-progressive content really lives up to its name.
I could be totally mistaken-- that perhaps the comments were accidentally deleted, or because it's a private organization ProgressiveU can delete whoever/whatever it wants-- but what happened to free speech on a progressive website?
Bloggers here write things that sometimes I don't want to read, that I find offensive and/or ignorant, but the fact that those comments or posts exist shows that we have a long way to go before we can call ourselves progressive. Simply deleting these posts eliminates the possibility of learning from that poster's mistake, and that isn't very progressive at all. Maybe those individuals who write offensive posts will eventually understand that they're being offensive because their posts or comments keep getting deleted, but sweeping those people under the rug doesn't stop others from proliferating offensive commentary, because they'll never see the errors of other people's ways. It's like erasing history or reinventing the wheel.
There are probably greater issues at stake here that I'm not privy to, and I'm sure there are copyright or intellectual property issues (is blogging intellectual property? Should it be?) involved in how and why people must be censored, but at the point where those issues override the progressive intent of this website, some things should probably be reconsidered.
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I suppose it would depend on what the comments were that were deleted. Comments that contain spam, name calling, plagairism and copyright infringement are against the ProU user policy and are routinely deleted by ProU moderators as per ProU user policy. Without any further information as to what the comments contained, I couldn't begin to tell you why they were deleted. But no, it's not policy to delete comments just because we feel like it or because we can.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -Huxley
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." -Gandhi
On a recent book review I wrote, someone commented "oh, nice."
I responded quizzically, because I had no idea in what context the comment was posted, and this morning both the initial comment and my response had been deleted.
I don't see anything offensive-- be it through name calling, spam, plagiarism or copyright infringement-- in those comments, but since I didn't save them I have no way of assuring you of their totally neutral nature.
Yeah, I understand ProU has a user policy, which is the site's legal right to do whatever it wants, and as long as it's written down in a policy we agree to because we had to to use the site, that makes it okay. I'm just suggesting that, in my instance, I saw absolutely no reason for the commentary to be deleted.
In the larger principled layer of this post, it's an issue of, as I said earlier, erasing history. Deleting something removes it from public domain, and removes the context for references to it or citations of it. If anyone wants to talk about how offensive some people are for talking about x in that way, they can't cite the offensive content itself, etc.
This applies to stories I've read about countries censoring children's history textbooks to reflect a more positive image of that country (I think China and North Korea were the ones mentioned, but this article was like, two years ago, so I can't recall exactly), and belief that truth comes from a transparent and open forum of participation.
I have no idea why those particular comments would have been deleted. I will ask and see if anyone knows.
And I understand where you are coming from; my user policy comment was just a reminder that we routinely delete things in violation of said policy, but generally not just for the hell of it.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -Huxley
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." -Gandhi
Totally understood.
And no worries about the comments; I was less concerned about the commentary itself, because frankly it wasn't important, but it was the principle of the thing.
I would have to say any comments or posts that are rude, contain excessive profanity, or something of that sort should definitely be deleted. The others that just plain suck should be set as an example of what NOT to do(good idea kfed!). The rating system of 5 stars can also help people see how their writing is being accepted by others. If they continuously get terrible ratings (or maybe none at all) they will learn to fix whatever they've done wrong. IF they care, that is.
The problem with the rating system is that not everyone votes (kind of like democracy?), so there's little way of knowing whether the rating system is an accurate measure of effectiveness as a blogger. Case in point: I don't often vote, and you haven't voted here yet, either. It could just be someone purposefully rating someone lower or higher to manipulate ratings, or that only two people voted at a neutral 3.
I think people should use common sense in writing posts that are respectful, but common sense is a lot different from artistic expression and there are many who have different concepts of common sense.
I choose my words very carefully, because I believe my writing represents my personality and my opinions. I try my best to make my capitalization, punctuation, and content true to my intentions, but I don't know that everyone else feels the same way. I see writing, especially here, as both an art and a social movement. Not everyone else does.
Someone famous and probably dead said something to the effect of, "I may hate what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it," and I think this applies pretty well here.
I'm not necessarily advocating we burn people at the stake as an example, but I'm saying that transparency in the process makes participation truly progressive. What we write here when we hit "post" is history, and to delete it is a step backward.
I may have deleted it, but I honestly don't remember deleting any on your blog. I usually delete multiple comments, and I've deleted a few that are like 'this comment has no point', when not referring to any specific comment. I know I didn't delete it if you had already responded to it.
We're working on ways to warn users instead of deleting stuff. If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them here.
~C
Visit my blog.
No worries; thanks for letting me know (and Fallon, too!).
I suppose I based this post on a poor example, now that things have been clarified, but whether or not I think ProU is the perpetrator of regressive censorship no longer matters so much as my readers understand my revised point:
Censoring the content we don't like to hear because it's offensive doesn't solve the problem of the existence of offensive content-- why is it offensive?
Most of the time, I find things that are offensive are either offensive because the offended is unreasonably sensitive/misunderstood or because the offender is ignorant (either ignorant about the content itself or ignorant about common sense and basic tact). In both cases, if both parties had been more understanding and had thought through things, there wouldn't have been a problem. Nevertheless, we need that 'offensive' commentary in order to learn things like the limits of tact and learn about how wrong we are because of someone else's reactions.