A parting thought on Boing Boing Blue

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Comments

[Brad Berens]

Sarno's article in today's print edition is a good account of the blogosphere's need for transparency and how Jardin has potentially violated that, but he misses a big economic point about Google Juice, and in so doing makes Jardin look like a tweaked cliche (hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned) rather than a shrewd businesswoman thinking that she doesn't need to help the cause of a now-former ally.

When Jardin removes BoingBoing links to Blue's work she isn't simply saying, "nah nah, we're not friends anymore." BoingBoing is a site with huge traffic, and the way Google's search functionality (its PageRank algorithm) works the more links go to a site the higher it ends up in the search results.

If Blue has any kind of revenue sharing agreement for her San Francisco Chronicle work] where she gets paid more if she gets more traffic, then Jardin's action will hit her in the pocketbook. Similarly, while it's unclear to me if Blue's Tiny Nibbles website has advertisements beyond a Helio sponsorship, Blue's ability to get a replacement sponsor for the soon-to-be-defunct Helio will be constrained if her traffic goes down. Even if there is *no* economic impact (which I find unlikely), if Jardin removes references to Blue's work then Blue's Google-powered fame and influence go down.

In the blogosphere as well as everywhere else, you have to follow the money.

Brad Berens, Ph.D.
Chief Content Officer & Editor at Large
ad:tech & iMedia
www.ad-tech.com
www.imediaconnection.com

blogging at www.mediavorous.com

[sexyrobot]

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

except, of course, that it ISN'T a 'long-standing' rule...Xeni Jardin CHANGED their policy page to read that AFTER this thing blew up in her face. That's why people are freaking out. BoingBoing has since completely devolved into a Stalin-era pit of 'unpublishings', 'disenvowelings', comment deletions, and moderator-hurled insults. BB has turned, in the space of just over a week, in the hands of Xeni Jardin and Teresa Neilsen Hayden, from one of few remaining voices of reason into simply 'the least ethical blog on the internet'.

[DensityDuck]

What's that? A self-organized clique of nerds has suddenly turned viciously political? Gosh, how NOT surprising. Happened on just about any site ever; Slashdot and Wikipedia are two big examples.

I guess it's just human nature. People are monkeys; monkeys live in tribes, and the biggest monkey runs the show. People presented with an unorganized situation will invent an organization just so they can have a tribe to join; and they'll give that organization a heirarchy so that there can be a Biggest Monkey at the top. Even if they themselves aren't the biggest monkey. It's just so comforting to be part of a tribe.