Good Manners? On the Web?
Good Manners? On the Web?
Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt: Is it too late to bring civility to the Web? The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse. Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a...
Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt:
Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?
The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.
Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.
Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.
A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com).
Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.
Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.
Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself. “If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.
Yes, it's extremely nasty out there. I've been lucky, in my own blogging, to escape the kind of behaviour described in the Times article. But I don't know how effective a "code of conduct" would be. What's your opinion—especially if you live outside North America?
Previewing EyeTrack 07
At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt: A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first...
At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt:
A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first with the distinct focus of comparing print and online news reading.
We've almost finished analyzing the data. Key findings will be released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Washington, D.C., on March 28. The full debut of the findings will take place April 10 to 12 at a Poynter conference in St. Petersburg, Fla.
To give you a little background, this was a test of 600 regular readers of news. That's a large number in the research world, and it was necessary in order to get what we needed. We wanted to look through readers' eyes as they read live publications to see what attracted and held their attention. A second part of the study involved six versions of a prototype and an exit interview, which gave us insight into comprehension, and retention of information.
Using eye-tracking equipment we noted the number of times readers viewed more than 350 specific elements, such as headlines, photos, cutlines, stories, graphics, blogs, listings and ads.
The data totals more than 102,000 "eye-stopping events." That's research speak, but it means we've watched every eye movement of 600 readers over the course of about 9,000 minutes of reading 30 days' worth of news publication.
We conducted the study in four U.S. markets, working with the St. Petersburg Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Minnesota, the Philadelphia Daily News in Pennsylvania and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo. Each subject read the actual publication for 15 minutes, then read a prototype for another five minutes.
You may reserve a copy of the EyeTrack07 report and find more details about the upcoming conference at eyetrack.poynter.org. Go there to get a glimpse of the project in a video as well, while we continue to crunch the data.
A new French-language resource
I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.) This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at...
I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.)
This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at least in part), please get in touch. It's time to do a serious overhaul of the links and resources available here. Non-English sites especially welcome!
Ideagoras
The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt: In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits. In...
The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt:
In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits.
In the process, Mr. Lafley and his managers like Mr. Huston transformed a lumbering consumer products company into a limber innovation machine. In fact, five years after the company's stock collapsed in 2000, P&G has doubled its share price and now boasts a portfolio of 22 billion-dollar brands.
Today P&G is a leader among thousands of companies that participate in what we call "ideagoras" where millions of ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds change hands in something akin to an eBay for innovation.
Companies that move now can leverage a global pool of talent, ideas, and innovations that vastly exceeds what they could ever hope to marshal internally.
P&G figures that for every top-notch scientist inside its labs, there's another 200 outside who are just as good. That's a total of 1.8 million people whose talents it could potentially tap into.
The article is interesting not just for its content (which may be good stuff or routine corporate hyperventilation) but for the Globe's own awkward use of the online medium.
The paragraphing of the online article was identical to that of the print version I read over breakfast. I broke up one over-long paragraph to make it more readable.
The resources mentioned like InnoCentive and NineSigma are given without links to their sites. (Don't get me going about companies still using StudlyCaps.)
The story does offer a link to the Wikinomics home page, and to an earlier article in the series. But like so much material that the print media dump online, this is really just shovelware. Its value online would be far greater if only it had been turned into real hypertext.
That said, I'm posting a link to Wikinomics in Webwriting Resources, and I'd welcome your comments about that site.
Mark Twain, Father of the Internet
The Tyee has published my article Mark Twain, Father of the Internet. Excerpt: Mark Twain died in 1910, a lifetime before the founding of ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet and the web. So that you could read this on The Tyee, hundreds of brilliant scientists and engineers worked for years to get the clanking, room-sized computers of the 1960s to communicate with one another. You've probably never heard of...
The Tyee has published my article Mark Twain, Father of the Internet. Excerpt:
Mark Twain died in 1910, a lifetime before the founding of ARPANET, the precursor of the Internet and the web. So that you could read this on The Tyee, hundreds of brilliant scientists and engineers worked for years to get the clanking, room-sized computers of the 1960s to communicate with one another. You've probably never heard of them: Vinton Cerf, J.C.R. Licklider, Robert Taylor, and Paul Baran, to name just a few. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, was a latecomer.
Yet I contend that Mark Twain (one of the great science-fiction writers of all time) first conceived the Internet. Like the wizards of the 1960s and '70s, his contribution has been forgotten. But like Arthur C. Clarke, who conceived the earth satellite and could have patented it, Twain understood the idea of the Internet before the scientists did. If anything, he leaped beyond the text-based Internet to the just-dawning world of video chat and vlogging (video blogging).
Global Voices
A few weeks ago I discovered: Global Voices Online, and since the site has just had a makeover, this is a good time to introduce it here. The value of the site lies in pulling together blogs and bloggers from all over the world. Ordinarily we're not going to seek out a blog in Nepal or West Africa, but GVO provides a kind of planned serendipity: it makes it easy...
A few weeks ago I discovered: Global Voices Online, and since the site has just had a makeover, this is a good time to introduce it here.
The value of the site lies in pulling together blogs and bloggers from all over the world. Ordinarily we're not going to seek out a blog in Nepal or West Africa, but GVO provides a kind of planned serendipity: it makes it easy to discover sites we might never find otherwise.
Are We Yahoos and Thieves?
Via the Globe and Mail: ‘Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere. Excerpt: Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter. Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and...
Via the Globe and Mail: ‘Amateur' charge infuriates blogosphere. Excerpt:
Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter.
Andrew Keen, a 47-year-old Briton who founded dot-com era music startup Audiocafe, argues that basic notions of expertise are under assault amid a cultural shift in favour of the amateurism of blogs, MySpace and other popularity-driven sites.
"Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," Keen writes in a book published Tuesday.
His views have infuriated bloggers and others, especially in Silicon Valley, who argue he is an elitist intellectual, a conservative pining for a return to old ways, and a writer who cannot keep his facts straight.
The villains in Keen's narrative are a "pajama army" of mostly anonymous writers who spread gossip and scandal, "intellectual kleptomaniacs," who search Google to copy others' work and the "digital thieves" of media content in the post-Napster era.
For a technology industry used to basking in the glow of self-promotion, Keen's work is shocking for its unforgiving view of Silicon Valley's utopian aspirations.
The book "is designed as a grenade," Keen, a native of north London who now lives in California, said at a recent debate with bloggers and journalists in Berkeley. "It is not designed to be particularly fair or balanced."
The title of his polemic, "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture," attacks what he calls the "cut and paste" ethic of Web users, who he says are robbing professionals of their livelihoods.
The Web allows anyone to post their most intimate thoughts, views or even outright lies, without any editing, under the assumption that the crowd will correct any mistakes. Keen calls for efforts to balance out the Web's powers of instant publishing against society's need for accountability.
Here is Keen's own blog. I'll post a link to it in the Web Writers and Editors list.
Bienvenu, Sébastien Bailly!
I've created a link in Web Writers and Editors to Sébastien Bailly, who blogs in French. His site also has a link to the Medieval Tech Support video that was pulled from YouTube....
I've created a link in Web Writers and Editors to Sébastien Bailly, who blogs in French. His site also has a link to the Medieval Tech Support video that was pulled from YouTube.
WordPress 2.1 is Ready
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it. Download WordPress 2.1.
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.
Podcast Recommendation
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!
Commenting on a Commenter's Site
If you visit the Comments list, you'll see that someone going by "Juno 888" recently commented on Rottweilers, a post I made in the early days of this site. (All the other responses date back to 2003, so this really is ancient history. My post even includes a broken link to a 1996 article.) Juno 888 may well be right that my comments were pure drivel. Publish twenty books and...
If you visit the Comments list, you'll see that someone going by "Juno 888" recently commented on Rottweilers, a post I made in the early days of this site. (All the other responses date back to 2003, so this really is ancient history. My post even includes a broken link to a 1996 article.)
Juno 888 may well be right that my comments were pure drivel. Publish twenty books and a thousand articles (plus numberless blog posts), and your drivel content is likely to be fairly high.
But since the commenter had also listed their own URL, I visited it and found it technically interesting. I sent a fairly detailed critique in an email, but my message bounced; Juno888's address "has been disabled or discontinued."
What a shame. Maybe the site isn't even Juno888's. Some folks are eager to share their opinions, but not their names.
But I hate to waste web analysis, so here's what I suggested about the site:
Hi, Juno--
We'll have to agree to disagree about my analysis of The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, but since you provided your URL, it seems only fair that I offer some comments on it...after all, web text and design are one of my specialties. Moreover, I teach communications and marketing to tourism students, so a site like yours is professionally interesting as well.
Overall look of the 1Explore site is super--good mix of blues, attractive but not obtrusive graphics. I like the wavy curves in the banner. The two-column layout works pretty well.
Big recommendation for the home page: Shorten the sentences, shorten the paragraphs (6-7 lines max), and break up the text still more with two or three subheads. A stronger contrast between light-blue background and dark-blue text would also help. (See how the right-column text stands out so well against a white background?)
This is your site's first impression, and it should be an inviting one, attracting readers to find one welcome surprise after another before moving on to the various packages and the other pages. (I realize some people strongly prefer a sans serif font for webtext, and I use sans serif myself on some of my sites, but for relatively long text, serif fonts are more readable.)
As for the other pages--please ditch the "website under construction" graphic. That may be the first such piece of dancing boloney I've seen since the 1990s, and it was hokey even back then. If the site's under construction, it shouldn't be out on the web in the first place--all you're doing is wasting visitors' time and annoying them.
Webwriting really relies on the "you" attitude--putting the reader right in the center of the story. Your home page starts with "We," which tells us we're not the real object of your interest. Consider:
You're going to enjoy the best accommodation in paradise!
It would also help if the home page gave clear instructions on what to do to get into such accommodation.
Put yourself in your visitors' shoes, imagine what they're looking for, and offer it to them. They'll understand that you really want to help them, and they'll respond accordingly.
Hope this helps--best of luck with the enterprise!
Cheers,
Crawford
Can We Still Talk Online?
Dave Beers, my editor at The Tyee, has a thoughtful article today about the famous interactivity of websites: Can We Still Talk Online?. It won't be a surprise to webwriters that responses to their work are often ignorant, abusive, and even threatening. Dave uses The Tyee's experience, and that of other online magazines, to invite still more interaction on the subject. Maybe this is a good time to dig out...
Dave Beers, my editor at The Tyee, has a thoughtful article today about the famous interactivity of websites: Can We Still Talk Online?.
It won't be a surprise to webwriters that responses to their work are often ignorant, abusive, and even threatening. Dave uses The Tyee's experience, and that of other online magazines, to invite still more interaction on the subject.
Maybe this is a good time to dig out a piece I did on the subject about ten years ago: "Time for Flame Wars to Flame Out" was first published in the Vancouver weekly Georgia Straight in the summer of 1997.
An email correspondent once described my views on education as a “Socialist brainwashed, Communist-cliche’d, agit-prop spew of black lies, red herrings, straw men, Marxist-Stalinist Totalitarian, 1984, Brave New World, One World Dictatorship, mooching, felonious, treasonous, cowardly, dangerous, insensitive, [and] anti-human.”
After that he got positively hostile.
Some online veterans would shrug this off as just more proof that any idiot can get on the Net, and most already have. But as many can confirm, this kind of verbal abuse is all too common in cyberspace. The Usenet discussion groups in particular are full of sarcasm, insults, degrading language, and outright obscenity. In the mailing lists, where you have to subscribe to get access to discussions on specialized topics, even college teachers and dog lovers can blow their cool.
Why should this be? Are we just awful people? I don’t think so. But I do think the technology of the Internet has encouraged users with a particular mind-set, and they in turn have largely created an online culture that promotes abuse.
Addicted to Jolts
To do anything on a computer, you have to obey some arbitrary rules and go through certain ritual actions: click the mouse, hit return, type a precise string of keystrokes. This favors a certain kind of obsessive, ritualistic personality. The reward, for such a personality, is to go through the keyboard rituals to get a “jolt” —a psychological reward— just as a laboratory rat will push a button to get a food pellet.
The jolt may be the opening of a window on the computer monitor, or seeing your own name in someone else’s message, or reading an angry, hostile message that rejects every value you hold dear. In any case, it’s an emotional payoff for going through the ritual, and it clearly appeals to a lot of people. Like any other such reward, computer jolts can become dangerously addictive.
Most, however, prefer to limit their jolts to eavesdropping on others’ quarrels. These are the lurkers, the passive Internet users who like to watch other people get into punch-ups. When lurkers do begin posting messages, they often start with a plea for mercy; they know what they’re getting into.
More aggressive types don’t care. Once addicted, they soon need ever-stronger jolts. So they just wade in with all guns blazing, and they thrive on flame wars of mutual recrimination and insult. Flamers may look like mortal enemies, but they’re really like junkies who also deal drugs—they provide jolts for each other.
Smile When You Write That, Stranger
Still another problem is “register.” This means adapting your comments to the person and the circumstances. If a kindergarten teacher talks to you the same way she talks to your child, you’ll be resentful. If you talk too familiarly to your boss, you may soon be looking for another job. Using the wrong register is the basis of most sitcoms, but it’s not often funny online. That’s why many of us use emoticons to try to convey the register we’re trying for.
When you’re sitting at your computer, you’re totally private. But the messages you read and receive are totally public. This really complicates the register you should adopt. You feel private, as if you were sharing pillow talk with your spouse, but the whole world is watching. Your intimate message brays out over the world’s greatest public-address system, and soon you’re getting equally intimate messages that thousands of others can also read.
When I first began to study the flame problem in the early 1990s, I consoled myself that selfish, insensitive, addictively aggressive slobs would not last long. Like barbarous pioneers, they would give way to the schoolmarms and genteel pillars of society. The people who would really flourish in this new medium, I told myself, would be those who could see beyond the computer monitor to the real live person at the other end, and write their messages accordingly.
I was wrong. The slobs have poisoned most of the waterholes, creating no-go zones all over cyberspace. Worse yet, when some folks do try to set up a civilized online community, the slobs barge in and track mud on the floor. Uninterested in grown-up discussion and debate, they try to bring everyone down to their level. Giving insults, taking insults—it’s all jolts to them.
For those of us who really do want to bring civilization to the online wilderness, the options are few. Arguing with the slobs only gives them more jolts. Ignoring them sometimes goads them into even worse flames.
Better to set out clear house rules for acceptable behaviour, and then to turf out anyone who behaves badly—just as we would if someone crashed a party and started insulting our guests.
Marketing Online Writing
I've been happily writing for The Tyee for several years. It's a lively online magazine with a focus on British Columbia but with plenty of attention to the rest of the world. The Tyee is now trying a little viral marketing to attract more readers: Tyee: Join Us! I'd be interested to hear your reactions to this approach. The Tyee has also published a survey of Independent Media: Vibrant and...
I've been happily writing for The Tyee for several years. It's a lively online magazine with a focus on British Columbia but with plenty of attention to the rest of the world. The Tyee is now trying a little viral marketing to attract more readers: Tyee: Join Us! I'd be interested to hear your reactions to this approach.
The Tyee has also published a survey of Independent Media: Vibrant and Growing.
By the way, I've just published a piece on avian flu in The Tyee.
I'd love to hear about other good online magazines, especially in Europe, Asia, and Latin America—in any language.
The Future of Text Online
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?. The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover....
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?.
The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover.
Print Editors and the Web
Jade Walker recently posted some interesting thoughts in the Online Writing List, and she's kindly allowed me to quote them here: I recently attended a conference for copy editors in Miami and whenever conversation turned to the Web, the editors in attendance often fell into two categories: 1) They hate the Web because they believe its mere existence is going to result in profit/job losses. 2) They fear the Web...
Jade Walker recently posted some interesting thoughts in the Online Writing List, and she's kindly allowed me to quote them here:
I recently attended a conference for copy editors in Miami and whenever conversation turned to the Web, the editors in attendance often fell into two categories:1) They hate the Web because they believe its mere existence is going to result in profit/job losses.
2) They fear the Web because they don't understand where copy editors fit in.I have no doubt there are other editorial folks at newspapers and magazines across the country that feel the same way. This is so easy to fix! All it takes is a little time and training. Those of us who've been working in new media for many years need to show the print folks what the Web has to offer, particularly the advantages of publishing news in different formats, reading/writing blogs, using RSS feeds, etc.
I also believe newspapers and magazines should make a concerted effort to update their online portals. So many sites are clunky, hard to navigate or simply replicate the print product via online templates. What can these companies do to fix this problem?
• Look at the competition and see what works and what doesn't.
• Experiment with design but avoid repeating others' mistakes.
• Hire copy editors, or assign current editors, to give blog entries and articles a once-over before posting on the Web.
• Allow comments, albeit moderated ones, on stories.
• Create a forum just to find sources for stories.
• Include e-mail addresses for reporters on each entry/article, or a link to a profile page.
• Provide "e-mail this entry" links as well as permanent links for readers/bloggers who wish to discuss stories and share them with friends/family.
• Offer one-click options to the recommendation sites (digg, technorati, netscape, etc.), or follow USA Today's lead and allow readers to rate the stories themselves based on usefulness or entertainment value.
Jade ended her post with "Any thoughts?" And I echo her question.
I'll add one thought from my own online-writing experience: The editor of The Tyee finds comments a chronic headache. Too many are illiterate, incoherent, abusive, and plain libellous. He requires registration before people can post comments, and this has helped a lot. I find the comments on my own Tyee articles generally pretty civil. But some topics can bring out the barking loonies.
Protected: Christmas Keywords Extracted from My Own Sites
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Starting a Blog
After a reader of my flu blog asked for advice, I decided to answer in some detail: Should you start a flu blog? has some general suggestions that any webwriter might find helpful. Tell me what you think....
After a reader of my flu blog asked for advice, I decided to answer in some detail: Should you start a flu blog? has some general suggestions that any webwriter might find helpful. Tell me what you think.
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