Today is "Peace and Goodwill Reader Comments Day" on sj-r.com, the website of the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register.  In order to break through the tedious negativity that dominates the Reader Comment boards found beneath its online articles, sj-r.com is invoking the spirit of the holiday season and not posting "critical, cynical, sarcastic, whiney or otherwise Scrooge-ish" comments for one 24-hour period.

"From 7 a.m. Wednesday through 7 a.m. Thursday, the only comments that will make it onto the site will be ones that follow that old saying from mom: 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.'" writes sj-r.com's online editor.  "We'll still allow some debate on the issues, but you're going to need to be really, really nice to each other."  [To see the entire article, click here.]

This past Sunday, the Reader Advocate for Tucson's Arizona Daily Star and its StarNet website wrote that "[s]even months after StarNet launched a feature allowing readers to add comments to stories, Star editors are rethinking the whole idea because of the coarseness of those online postings."

According to the Daily Star's executive editor, "In the past month, though, more and more comments are violating our standards. Instead of offering constructive criticism, too many posts are just plain coarse.  While we added the reader comments feature to give readers a place to talk, StarNet is still our house. And our editors and staff simply do not want guests who make vulgar, abusive, obscene, defamatory and hateful comments. If you want to live in that kind of neighborhood, go create your own online forum.  Meanwhile, we've removed large chunks of comment today while we consider the future of the reader comments feature."  [Click here for the full article.]

While the situations at these two newspaper websites are qualitatively different from ours here on Bakersfield.com--both of these involve reader comments on news stories, while we have community-written blogs; sj-r.com moderates and screens comments before posting, while we do not--it's nice to be reminded that we're not grappling with these issues in a vacuum.  How do balance seemingly competing needs and interests in this new, democratizing information age?  Freedom of expression vs. the desire for respect and community feeling, anonymity vs. transparency, consumer vs. producer--we know that these are false dichotomies, that reality is much messier than either/or propositions.

That's what makes building this new digital world both so challenging and so important.  It's an interesting coincidence that this stuff is happening at the same time that Time Magazine has named "You" its Person of the Year for 2006.   Time's cover story explains its thinking in this way:  "that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy."  And in that very term, in that very idea, "new digital democracy," we are reminded of a responsibility that comes with this new freedom.  Democracy isn't anarchy.  It takes work, it takes negotiation, it takes communication.

As we look toward the new year here on Bakersfield.com, I look forward to doing that work with all of you.

larger view

Good morning everybody!  Just a few things I wanted to alert you to:

First, if you go to the People page, you'll find the new "Blog Bytes" box in the top lefthand corner, where I'll be highlighting interesting posts.  Keep checking back to see what's going on on the B.com blogs!

Second, Dusty is the first non-staffer blogger to upload her own video into one of her blog posts via YouTube, so check it out--and then join her in the fun!

Third, I want to thank folks for their recent attempts to "play nice," or at least "nicer" (and yes, that's not a real word), around here.  You're showing that it is possible to use humor and satire to make points, and to argue and debate and disagree and educate, all without resorting to stuff our Terms of Use frown on like profanity, defamatory name-calling, and libel.  And for those of you who don't like being told to play nice, well, a little positive peer pressure can go a long way.  Heh.  (Also, everybody, it'd help, re: getting in touch with you off-blog, if you made sure that you had your current, real e-mail addresses on file in your profiles.)

That's it for now.  Have a good day, and as usual, feel free to e-mail me with any concerns/questions/ideas/problems.

...an easier way to put videos in your blog posts!

All you need to do is find the video you want to post from www.youtube.com then copy the "URL" code:  click in the "URL" box to the right of the video (not the embed tags) and press CTRL-C or Apple-C.  Then log in to your Bakersfield.com account and start a new blog post.

You'll notice that we've streamlined your "add media" options.  To upload a photo, just click the browse button to search for photos on your computer. To upload a YouTube video, click the "Choose another type of file (Including videos from YouTube)" link. Then click the "Add" button next to "Add a YouTube video" and paste (Ctrl-V or Apple-V) the URL code into the box.

It's that easy!

Click on the YouTube video to the left of this text to see the process in action, and check out these links for examples:

http://people.bakersfield.c...

http://people.bakersfield.c...

 We look forward not only to seeing videos you find on YouTube, but also videos you've shot yourself and uploaded to YouTube

***In other site news:  You'll also find a new tool for viewing blog comments.  In the top righthand corner of the comments area on a blog post, you'll see a link called "<Reverse Sort Order>."  Click that, and the comments will display in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top.  Now you don't have to scroll through dozens of comments or multiple pages to get to the latest ones.

Also, you'll notice that comments and posts are displaying correct PST timestamps now.  However, because posts published during our bout with "8-hour-time-delay-itis" still display those incorrect timestamps, you'll have to scroll down on the "new posts" and "new comments" pages to find the latest stuff until time catches up with itself this evening.

As a long-time lurker before starting this job, I was already familiar with some of our community's, um, stronger personalities.  As I was reflecting the other day on my first month here, full of happy moments like when I got called a stupid fascist for the first time, I realized something.  I had gone a whole month without having to tangle with Mocus1!  Wow, I thought--I must've been doing something wrong.

Well, today, Mocus mentioned "the censorship nannies," so I thought I'd better live up to stereotype and write something.  Heh.  On our staff health blog, Mocus wrote a quasi-tongue-in-cheek but on-topic comment that, if we're being honest, probably wouldn't have provoked any reaction if it had been written by someone else.  But our veteran bloggers and commenters have long histories with each other, so of course, someone had to respond in that vein.  And then...well, you can see for yourself what happened then.

Since you're expecting Big Brother here, let me play the part and remind you of some of the finer points of our (yes, here it comes, everybody groan!) Terms of Use:

1. You agree not knowingly submit any false, defamatory, abusive, obscene, threatening, racially offensive, sexually explicit or illegal material to the Web site. In posting comments on the contributions of others, you agree not to harass other participants.
2. You agree not to post anything that personally attacks an individual whose identity can be easily learned from what you post. An example of a personal attack is posting negative comments about an individual in a way meant to demean that person. Note that posting your opinion about someone's ideas or actions are not a personal attack.
3. You may not submit information that is libelous or defamatory or that discloses private or personal matters concerning any person.

But all that's subjective, you say.  What's offensive, etc. to you may not be to me, and after all, I got hazed/harassed/attacked and I survived, so why should it be any different for you?  Heh.  Reminds me of my doctor friends when rules about the length of shifts for residents in training were changed to protect patients--no fair! we got treated like crap and worked over, so everybody after us should have to go through it too!

You know what?  Tough.  We're all adults here, for the most part--then how come my days at work online bring me back to my previous life teaching ninth graders?  [Okay, insert "high horse" comments here.]  Read over those three terms of use above again.  Where in there does it say that it's perfectly fine to, for example, try to insult another poster by intimating that s/he is both gay and HIV-positive, since, in some people's minds, those two seem to go hand in hand and are automatically insulting? 

No fair, you say.  You shouldn't call out one person that like.  You know, you got something there.  'Cause when others egg those instigators on and play their game, aren't you just doing the same thing?  What made me proudest about this community today was how, finally, other commenters chose to ignore the insult banter and just address the post topic as if nothing had happened.  (That, and how, on another blog, commenters came to the defense of a new blogger beleaguered by an anonymous commenter.)

So yeah, it's subjective, this "line" we're imagining when we say stuff like, "There's gotta be a line somewhere," or "s/he just crossed the line."  But this is a community, and that means that together, we can help define that line, subjectively, collectively, and dynamically.  It's our community, after all.

As for the question of the day, as posited in the title of this post--now I step back from the iron-fisted dictator role some of you imagine I relish around here, and leave it to you.  I fully expect some of Mocus' most vocal sparring partners to come his defense, or at least say that life would be so much less interesting without him around, and that's great.  But what about it?  How do we deal with stuff like this?  How do we get each other, and ourselves, to foment discussion and disagree with each other and try to educate and convince each other of our opinions without resorting to base namecalling that detracts from the very ideas and substance we're trying to get across?

Any takers?

*Hey Dr. BLT, don't know if you've done musical theater, but as our resident songwriter, feel free to work up some lyrics!