More equal than others
tima thinking outloud. > A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.
More on the "comments crisis:"
I am increasingly seeing this elitist attitude from the ostensibly useful members of the "core group." The productive, worthwhile group must be defended from those who would seek to "derail" them. Thus editing and, by extension, outright deletion of their comments is justified. This is the only way to avoid the excesses of Usenet and the "cesspool" of Slashdot with all their messy, democratic, inefficient voices. Finally, conversations can be sanitized, marked off as unproductive, tightly controlled. Dissent can be neatly stigmatized and distilled to a CSS selector.
Now we have Mark Pilgrim stating in his new comments "policy" that his sphere of control over comments extends to trackback pings, since they "are remote comments and are subject to these same rules." No flames even on your own weblog, if they ping back to mine. No links for you!
What bothers me about this is the air of predestination about it all. The core group is the core group and that is that. It's a power law distribution - you can't fight that. It's nature. It's as inevitable as science. The core group is naturally deserving, since it arises out of a meritocracy, which is intrinsically unequal.
The strange logical end of all this is that those of us not in the core group become little more than advertisement and link fodder for the core. What is your purpose? Leave "constructive" comments and provide a steady stream of inbound links.
If a weblog is not a democracy, as has been stated in several comments I have seen, then how is it moving us towards the "emergent democracy" its proponents tout so often?
I am troubled by all this.
Comments
What the hell are you talking about?
Posted by: Fishead | June 7, 2003 8:13 AM
I understand "what the hell you are talking about," but in the end I'm not as troubled.
This is an issue of control, pure and simple, but a control which floats off with the tide as the power and believed worth of any "core group" diminishes due to the eventual flood which inundates a technological movement. It will happen, as it does with all movements. Only in this virtualized sea it happens far faster, and if you're patient you can eye the creep of the tidewater. The actions, purposes, motivations of those who prevail in the discourse cause concern to outsiders wishing to contribute, but a big picture view will always show attempts to retain "order" and dominance are like drops in the ocean. Their ripples are not far-reaching, dissipating in the waves of other drops.
The Internet isn't a democracy, but more a 'rule-bound anarchy' (to reuse a Gingrich term...ugh). The only true or inherent rules are the formal, technical ones. Any outside of these may add value, but attempts to codify and enforce them by self-proclaimed standards bodies lead to soap opera (and bad soap opera at that). But to get to the point, Ito's belief the Internet can act as a force for a new emergent democracy may have merit, but the Internet itself as a democratic venue is ludicrous and unsupported by the evidence. Hammers pound nails into walls. They don't pound other hammers.
Or perhaps I didn't understand, after all. That happens a lot.
Posted by: Kafkaesquí | June 11, 2003 12:37 PM