Blogging Bako - jasonsperber's Blog - Bakersfield.com

YouTube upload test

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:09:27 PDT

Another user reports problems uploading this Youtube video using our "add media" --> "add a YouTube video" tools. So I'm testing if it works for me, using Firefox 3.0.12 on a Mac. If you are unable to upload YouTube videos to blogposts using the media uploader tools on B.com, please detail in the comments what happens when you try, what you see (messages, etc.), and info re: your browser and OS.

Site problems are being investigated

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:46:43 PDT

We're following a situation where the servers are under high load, and thus any slowness in pageloads, timing out, or other wonkiness (like having to log back in sooner than normal) are tied to this. We're investigating and will keep you posted. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Sites down for 5 minutes at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:19:43 PST

FYI, all Bakomatic sites, including Bakersfield.com's blogs and interactive features, will be inaccesible for about 5 minutes on Tuesday morning, December 30, starting at 8:00 a.m.

The sites will be down to allow for the merging of the Northwest Voice and Southwest Voice sites into the new Bakersfield Voice, ahead of the merge in January of the two neighborhood print products.

If you're on the site at that time, just take your coffee break at 7:59 and come back and log back on at 8:06. See you on the other side, and don't forget to check out the new BakersfieldVoice.com.

Site down tonight from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:41:51 PST

From 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. tonight, Bakersfield.com and all its sister sites will be unavailable due to a hardware upgrade. If you are on the sites tonight, please log out of your accounts. When you return, we'll be on the new servers, which will hopefully serve to alleviate a lot of the issues we've experienced in recent months (page load lag, needing to refresh feeds in set increments of time rather than live, etc.). (Though some of the changes we've promised won't happen right away, as we'll need to make sure everything's working correctly.) As usual, please drop a note if you see anything wonky. See you on the other side!

Site Rules, Disciplinary Issues, and Community Culture

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:44:03 PST

So, of course it has to happen that on a weekend during which I, unfortunately, have no internet access at my house (a situation which hopefully will be rectified soon), things get, shall we say, a little heated around here. Or more than normal, rather.

You know that I make it a personal policy to keep interpersonal disciplinary actions between me and individual users as private as possible, so I'm going to be more vague on a few fronts here than you'd probably like.

First, regarding suspicions about who has and has not been disinvited to participate in this blog community, let me set something straight. If a user has been suspended (temporarily or permanently), then going to people.bakersfield.com/home/blog/USERNAME will result in this message:

Unknown Blog: The blog you requested could not be found. The user may have removed the blog.

Of course, that also happens if an active user goes private. So to make sure, you can go to people.bakersfield.com/home/user/USERNAME. A suspended user will display this:

Inactive User: The user profile you requested is not active.

A previously public profile that has merely been taken private will show you this:

Private Profile: The user profile you requested is private.

And of course, a public profile that is still active but simply hasn't been either logged into or used for posting will show that information ("last signed in" date and datestamps on most recent blogposts and comments).

So that should clear up a bit of the rumormonging on that count.

Now, let me repeat what I said elsewhere about the whole thread-locking/comment-blocking mechanisms and issues:

First, we agree that the language that appears at the bottom of the screen in place of the comment composition box, in red type, should be different for threads that are locked by admin and for threads from which an individual user is blocked from participation. The developers have added this fix to their list, and thank you all for this input.

Second, the ability to lock a thread to further comment from anyone is an admin privilege accessible to only a few staffers here at B.com, and is usually only exercised by me in my role as community content manager, as a community management tool when I've decided that, for example, a thread has been derailed and become a flame war and that further on-topic, constructive comments are not likely to be forthcoming and I need to stop the further posting of inappropriate content so I can clean up what's already there. (Locking a thread also makes one's comments on the locked thread uneditable.)

Third, we gave users the ability to manage certain aspects of their profiles and blogs that had previously been beyond their reach in order to give you some degree of control over your own profiles and blogs, while, of course, retaining others as the hosts of a newspaper-based interactive blog community. The ability to control who sees your status updates, from whom you receive messages or status updates, and who can and cannot post comments to your own blogposts--we felt that, due to previous interpersonal scuffles, deletion/reposting wars, and accusations of harassment based on unwanted attention or participation, these were aspects of one's own profile that we could afford to let individuals have more control over. We had hoped, of course, that these tools would be used sparingly and that they would lead to less overt conflict, not more. Seeing these tools used in practice has been educational, and we are mulling a variety of ways to tweak the tools to make them better serve the community.

Okay, now about temporary and permanent suspensions. The first level of discipline for TOS violations here, depending on the severity of the violation, is usually a quick [edit.] on my part and an email to the offending user letting them know what I edited and why. That usually ends things right there. If a pattern exists that shows that my earlier communication didn't get through to the user and another incident occurs, I suspend the account (which hides any blogposts by the user and the profile as well, but doesn't do anything to existing comments on others' blogposts) and write to the user. I explain why the account has been suspended and offer a temporary suspension, usually lasting about a week. I give a date upon which I will reactivate the account, if, by that time, I am in receipt of an email from the user explaining that s/he accepts and understands the TOS and will follow the rules, especially those broken before, upon her/his return. The user is also made to understand that if s/he continues to violate the Terms after being let back in, the suspension will be reinstated and made permanent.

If a user chooses to ignore my email and create a new account to circumvent the suspension, or writes back to refuse to cooperate, the suspension becomes permanent. So, if I write to a user explaining how s/he can return from a short temporary suspension by agreeing to follow the rules, and s/he responds by refusing to accept the terms, that makes the temporary suspension permanent. There are plenty of users on these blogs who have politely agreed to the terms of return from temporary suspension, waited the week out, and come back without problems.

Now, to the issue of community culture. A great many of you from a variety of religious, political, cultural, subcultural, and ideological backgrounds have adopted this virtual place as a home and space within which to have discussions and hash out differences, even knowing that you aren't necessarily going to change each other's minds, and many of you have thus become protectors of this space, handing out warnings when I'm not around, reminding each other of the rules. And for that I thank you. While I've seen many rivalries and enmities thrive here over the past couple years, I've also seen folks who disagree with each other on issues they deeply care about still "hang out" virtually (and even in real life) and get along, and I've even seen folks who've had nasty, escalating conflicts learn, over time, to set those differences aside and get along.

I used to teach ninth graders. I remember banging up against this mentality, over and over, among my students, that any slight, real or perceived, had to be dealt with with the utmost force lest face be lost. The old "they looked at me funny so I have to fight 'em" cliche. The ambiguitiies of text-based cyberspace make this kind of thing even more prone to flare-ups. Online culture has its own terminology for this kind of stuff--trolls, flamewars, etc. What Bakersfield.com endeavors to do is to reinforce an online community and culture in which we don't let that stuff grow, we don't let it fester. It's not easy, and it's all subjective, so of course somebody always feels they're getting the short end of the stick. But when someone offers advice, say, on how to make your comments more readable when you quote other people, or offers some advice, based on experience, about following the rules here (like the fact that profanity isn't okay here), take it in the spirit offered.

If you think you're being insulted or attacked or treated unfairly, I'm not saying to lie down and take it. I'm saying to think about how you respond. Are you escalating things? Are you breaking TOS? Hit "report a violation" and explain it to me. Remember that if you're doing it after hours, at night or on the weekend, it might take me a while to get back to you. And if, on a work day, it's taking too long for you, ping me again and ask me what's up. Also, please know that, unfortunately, the violation report doesn't copy the original text of the reported comment or post into the email that I'm sent, so please copy and paste whatever you want to make sure I see.

We don't have to all agree here. But we can disagree without resorting to personal attacks and using profanity and other unacceptable language. We can remember to properly source content that is not our own original work. We can vehemently disagree about one issue on one thread and laugh about something else together on another. We, from all ideological points of view, can do well to examine our language for polarizing words and phrases and figure out other ways to get our points across. We can recognize when it's time for us to step up, own our part in an escalating disagreement, and end our part in it so as to stop feeding the flames. We can figure out when, in responding to a sleight or perceived sleight, we've crossed the line into doing the same kind of thing we're upset about being the target of, and shut it down before it even gets going. We can do all of that.

I'm sorry this is so long. Even at that, I'm sure I left something out. Have a good evening, everyone.

Your input requested!

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:08:41 PST

Good morning, B.commers! I have a few site-related things I need to talk about, the first of which is something we need your feedback on a.s.a.p., so please leave a comment below.

First, we all know that the originally 15 minute, now 5 minute cache refresh on /recentblogcomments, designed to help with the load lag problem, is an imperfect solution. Part of the problem is that when the cache is refreshed to include new comments, the entire archive is rebuilt--check out the pagination links at the top and bottom, there are over 2000 pages of 50-comments-per-page.

So, a solution that would allow us to go back to real-time updating on that page would be to limit the number of page links available to view. Instead of being able to page through 2000 pages of comments in reverse chronological order, we'd limit it to, say, 5 pages. Older comments would get bumped off the bottom of page 5 by newer comments coming in at the top of page 1. They wouldn't be gone--they'd still be live on blogposts, archived on people's profiles, etc.--you just wouldn't be able to page through pages of reverse-chronological-order comments that are really old.

So, my question is, how many pages of old comments do people need? How far back do people go on /recentblogcomments, on average? Is 5 pages of 50 comments each enough? A look at our metrics suggests that it is, but I wanted to get your opinions. So, have at it, and thanks.

[Edited to add: We need to change the pagination links today, but the caching timeframe won't change until next week.]

The other things I wanted to mention are a continuing bug and a new feature. First, the bug: the ability to save blogposts as drafts to work on for later is still broken. We're working on it, but please don't try to use it right now, or you'll lose your content.

And second, the new feature: in the past, folks who've asked about changing their username have been told it wasn't possible. Now, it is. However, please know that changing your username will change the part of the URLs of all your blogposts that is your username, so any extant links to those posts using the old URL will now be dead. If you need to change your username for some reason, please contact me directly.

We apologize for the inconvenience - Bakomatic sites now back up

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:46:16 PST

For a period of about 2 hours this morning, all Bakomatic-powered sites were off-line due to a database problem which has now been addressed. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Site problems on Thursday afternoon

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:42:00 PST

FYI, we are aware of site problems including increased page-load times on Bakomatic-powered pages and pages with Bakomatic feed content (like the homepage), logged-in users being logged out and forced to log back in even when they had just logged in (myself included), and error messages marking users as inactive (when they are not). These are connected to database issues that our developers are currently investigating and endeavoring to ameliorate. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Stuff and things...

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:13:07 PDT

Okay, a few things...

First, we rolled out a software upgrade late last night that primarily had to do with improvements to our Inside Guide interactive business directory, where many of you post reviews. Please check out the new review page designs and new business listings and categories, and start reviewing! Here's a post on the BdotCom blog explaining the changes. If you find anything acting buggy on the Inside Guide, please contact the folks in charge of it at insideguide@bakersfield.com.

Second, regarding the page load slowdown problems that have been oft-reported recently, all we can say at this point is that the problem is complicated and multifaceted and that our team of developers is continuing to investigate. Trust me, I like it as little as you do--especially when it occurs in the middle of me trying to suspend an account! Heh. If you encounter any site issues or buggy things, feel free to leave comments on this thread and they'll get seen.

Now, why am I telling you to leave those kind of issues on this thread instead of telling you to email me as I usually do? That leads us to...

Third, I'm going on vacation. Now, I've NEVER ever announced to you beforehand that I'd be going on vacation. But recent site activity leads me to believe that it's prudent at this time.

Here's the important, take-away point for you. Some of my colleagues, including my boss, the Vice-President for Interactive Media, are going to be monitoring violation reports in my absence. This is in addition to the more-than-full plates they have in front of them for their regular jobs. Some of you, when I've been away before, have gotten deleted or suspended by them before. They have neither the time, inclination, or patience to investigate the context around a violation report. If they think something needs deleting, or someone needs suspending, they'll just do it. I know some of you think that I manage the disciplinary side of things here unfairly, but you also, grudgingly, know that I read as much as I can, that I know you, know backgrounds and histories, that I keep records of interactions and disciplinary actions. They don't care about all that--they don't have time to, and that's not their job.

So instead of seeing this as a chance to wreak (more) havoc while the teacher's away and the subs are in, I'd advise that this be seen as a chance to practice following the rules and disagreeing with opinions without resorting to profanity, namecalling, slurs or personal attacks. By all means, use the "report a violation" button when you see something worth reporting. Be specific, copy the offending comment into your report, and explain your position. And don't assume, in your language and tone, that because the offending comment is there that we obviously are cosigning on its sentiments.

Before I go, let me address one thing that's come up recently in discussions about the comings and goings of certain individuals. Nobody "makes" me suspend someone. No one "gets" someone else suspended. They do that all on their own. And no one gets permanently suspended for a first-time infraction--that always happens only after outreach and contact by me and attempts to avoiding getting to that point. Warnings happen, then temporary suspensions that are lifted after the person in question gives me a promise in writing to follow the rules upon return. If I don't get such a promise, or if they come back and break it, or if they respond to my offer by freaking out and cursing me out, or if they try to circumvent a temporary suspension by creating new aliases, then they themselves have, by their actions, converted their temporary suspension into a permanent one. Some of you, by your comments, get that, and I thank you. Others of you continue to cling to the belief that I have it out for you personally or for a group you think I think you belong to, or that I'm coddling or protecting chosen "pet" users. Funny thing is, I get those accusations from individuals on opposite sides of the political and cultural spectrum, each saying I'm obviously in the pocket of the other. Obviously, neither is true.

Okay, folks, I'm going on vacation. Try to be nice to each other.

When parody crosses the line to inappropriate...

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:59:54 PDT

Some of you are probably going to wonder why it took us this long and why we let the situation go for so long, and for that, all I can say is sorry and hindsight is 20/20.

But from now on, the creation of usernames/personas intended only to mock other B.com users is not okay. If you currently have one of these and have been using it, you will find it inaccessible. Any new ones will be taken care of in a similar fashion, and if users continue to try to get around the issue by creating new ones, they will find their original accounts affected by their actions as well.

Parody is one thing, but creating sock puppets designed only to mock other users, even ones you disagree with vehemently, serves only to corrode and disrupt the community environment.

I'm sure some of you have "I told you so" ready to go in the comment box, and others are ready to fight me on this, but this is the new rule.

Early Morning Site Issues

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:46:13 PDT

FYI, as many of you no doubt know from first-hand experience, Bakersfield.com and its associated sites were inaccessible from some time in the early morning until the issue was resolved at about 8:35 a.m. We apologize for the inconvenience, and invite you to alert us to any other site issues you may encounter today either in the comments or directly.

The Great Profile Photo Debate

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:56:19 PDT

It seems that folks only question whether I'm paying attention over here when I don't act on their complaints. That, or they get upset at me for paying attention if that attention centers on their online behavior in a way they don't agree with. At any rate, I make lots of you unhappy by either, in your perspective, ignoring you or picking on you. Of course, I don't think I'm doing either, but then, that's the crux of the matter here, isn't it. It's a matter of opinion, and of context.

If you have no idea why I'm writing about this, or what the title of this post refers to, then you're either a newbie, an occasional reader of these blogs, or else have had the good fortune to either miss or ignore the maelstrom. Rest assured folks, I have not had that good fortune--I have neither missed nor ignored it.

But some folks seem to think that if I don't agree with their assessment of whether something is a violation of our Terms of Use worthy of removal or other disciplinary action (or, conversely, when I act on something they don't think needed to be acted on), that constitutes either a lack of oversight, a damning bias on my part, or a desire to silence different opinions.

I want to thank witbee for posting that excerpt of our Terms of Use on the thread in question, and for others who chimed in about the responsibility of community members to familiarize themselves with the rules and to police themselves first and foremost.

I am not a lawyer. Yes, our Terms of Use contain legal terms, but I am not holding up flagged images to a legal obscenity test. The clause that witbee pasted refers to "false, defamatory, abusive, obscene, threatening, racially offensive, sexually explicit or illegal material," and elsewhere the word "pornographic" is used. We don't allow profanity or slurs--some folks think that if I remove a slur from a comment, that means that I'm censoring their opinions. Nope--I'm removing a slur. Notice that, in the thread in question, I did not remove the many proclamations of personal disgust, some of which were more colorful than others and could have very well been flagged as violations or personal attacks of someone had wanted to. (Not that that means I would've acted on them, I'm just illustrating my point.) I only removed the slurs. We've had this conversation before--it's not about the content or the opinion, it's about not using language that we've prohibited to describe the content or opinion. If you can't express yourself without breaking out the f-bombs or slurs, then, well, there are plenty of unregulated spots on these interwebs.

Now, to the issue of obscenity and profile photos. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but to paraphrase a supreme court justice who wrote on the matter, I know it when I see it. The problem here is, so do you, each of you, but we don't all agree. And though it may be unfair, I have the job here to sort through things and make decisions about these sorts of things. The profile photo in question, to me, was not sexually explicit. Was it more than a peck on the cheek? Sure. Could you see tongues playing tonsil hockey and naked torsos? No. Am I a legal expert here? No. But I am the one charged with evaluating your complaints. You may not agree with what I decided, and you are more than welcome to take it over my head. When touchy issues like this come up, believe you me, I ask for coworkers' opinions, and they weren't all the same on this issue either. But then I have to make a decision, good or bad. One community member has repeated complained about another profile photo and called it obscene (which, according to what I've read, usually deals specifically with sexually explicit material when discussed in legal terms), and I have not acted on these complaints because, while tasteless to me, it doesn't quite violate our terms of use. Did I make a bad decision? You want my bosses to overrule me? Go ahead and take it over my head. That's fine. (I do want to point out though, that whatever the user's intention was in putting up that profile photo, that particular blog inviting people to weigh in on the image was prompted by several comments on another blog which went off-topic in order to comment on the photo which had appeared by the user's earlier comment on the thread; the post about the photo wasn't apropos of nothing, and, perhaps, might not have happened at all if the offended users had used "send-a-message" or some other way to make their opinion known.)

Have I never acted on inappropriate images, then? Some of you will be quick to volunteer personal experiences that vouch for the fact that I have removed images that violate terms of use. The ones that come to mind right now, which many of you would probably treat as harmless jokes, involve the physical representation of cursewords that wouldn't be allowed on the site if they'd been written out, and thus, their removal.

This is not a perfect system, by any means. This is about people, and opinions, and context, and experience, and whenever those things come together, we're talking about subjectivity and interpretation and misinterpretation and disagreement. But you know what? If you cut through all the hyperbole and some of the more volatile and extreme reactions on that comment thread, what you have is, indeed, members of this community talking to each other about standards of behavior and what to do when we disagree. And that kind of conversation isn't bad to have.

We've talked before about implementing other kinds of technological tools that would help the "policing" of this site; maybe it's time to revisit that conversation.

Keep having opinions, keep revisiting the Terms of Use, keep flagging things you think are violations, keep disagreeing with me, keep policing yourselves and your virtual neighbors--keep having the conversation.

Say hello to your Personal Inbox!

Tue, 20 May 2008 10:34:19 PDT

Today, you will notice a change when you log into your account and glance over at your "My Stuff" box in the top right corner of People section pages. No longer will you see a huge profile picture and a bunch of big buttons leading to your profile manager.

Now, you will see a small profile pic next to your latest "friend update" (more on that in a sec), above the latest updates from your friends on the site and four "My Tools" buttons that drop down to reveal links to where you can add or edit content and manage other parts of your profile.

If you click the "Open My Inbox" button below your new friend updates, you'll go to the front page of your new Personal Inbox. From here, you can manage everything your email notifications and friend invitations, as well as your friend updates.

If you use social networks like Facebook, you're familiar with the idea behind friend updates. From your My Stuff box or from your Inbox, you can jot a short "update" about what you're doing that will be seen by others in their update feeds and on your profile page. There are plenty of privacy options here too--you can choose to let anyone see your updates, to not use the udpate feature at all and turn it off, to let only those you've friended see your updates, or to choose specific people on your friends list to see your updates.

Apart from the update feature, you can also make other choices as to how you receive information from Bakersfield.com and from whom you receive information. You can choose to receive emails from registration@bakersfield--comment notifications, friend invitations, "send a message"s--in your email only, in your onsite inbox only, or both. And you can also choose who can and cannot contact you via "send a message," guestbook messages, and blog comments, through the "blocked users" manager.

Check out our FAQ for these new features, explore around, try stuff out, and let us know when you have questions, concerns, or ideas.

Blog Categorization: "Interest Groups" in live beta - We need your help!

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:55:42 PDT

Today, bloggers will notice some changes when they go to write a blogpost. Under the "title" field, you will see a "topics" field. Here, you are asked to "change the category of only this post" via a pull-down menu with 18 top-level category choices. Below that, replacing the old topic tag field that used to appear below the composition box, is a prompt to enter "keywords," a.k.a. topic tags.

What's this "change the category" thing, you ask? This is the first public step of our interest group and blog categorization project, and we need your help testing it out. We're calling this a public beta test--while the blogpost categorization tool is live and visible to anyone who posts a blogpost, the links I'm giving you right now, to our Interest Group Directory and the Interest Groups FAQ, are not pubicly linked elsewhere on the site yet (though you can get to them via the interest group links on categorized blogposts, like the link to the "Technology" interest group on this post).

You've heard me promise, over the last year-and-a-half, that a blog categorization scheme was coming that would allow you to browse blogs and blogposts by category. Well, it's finally here, but we need your feedback to make it really work. Right now, when you go to compose a blogpost, you will be prompted to choose one category for your blogpost from a list of 18 top-level categories. This is optional. When you view a post that has been categorized, you will see "Posted in the _____ interest group" below the text and above the "posted by _____ on _____" stamp. That interest group tag links to that particular interest group's page. For example, a colleague of mine posted this morning and categorized his post as belonging to the Travel interest group.

If you go to the Travel interest group, you will see a few new things. First, at the top, you'll see "Travel Talk." The Talk section on every Interest Group page is like a message board. While we are working on implemented threaded discussions, right now, this first version is like our profile guestbook, with no threading, with the latest comments at the top. If you want to talk about something travel related, maybe ask a question but not write a whole blogpost, you can do that here. When you go to post something in Talk for the first time, you'll be prompted to become a "member" of this interest group first. This is a required step (and violations of our usual Terms of Use can result in your removal from an interest group) to participate in Talk. You can choose to have your group membership displayed on your profile, or not. You can also choose to be a member of a group without posting to Talk, in the Members section at the bottom of the page.

Content in the appropriate interest group category will surface between these two sections, so that, if you go to the Travel page, you'll see the latest blogposts submitted in that group, as well as the comments on those posts. Eventually, you'll be able to switch a toggle to see content in that category from across our network of sites.

Now, we need your feedback. What works, and what doesn't, for you? What's self-explanatory and what's too confusing, and how can we fix it? Right now, it is optional to categorize individual blogposts. We have not made live the feature that allows you to categorize your entire blog. Do you want that? If we go that route, we could allow you to choose more than one category. As well, the reason the categorization language reads "change the category of only this post" is because you can recategorize individual posts if necessary. Say you write mostly about politics, and so you categorize your blog as a Politics blog. All your posts will appear on that interest group page. Now, what if you write a post about travel on that blog? You can mark it as travel so it will appear on the correct interest group page and not the wrong one. Now, should everyone have to categorize their blogs (that's entire blogs, not individual posts)? What would you call a catch-all, miscellaneous, "I write about life and/or all kinds of stuff" category?

You can go into your archives and categorize old posts to see how this looks and works, and of course you can start categorizing your new posts. But the idea, of course, is that this is supposed to make it easier for you to find content by your peers about the things you're looking for, by going to the appropriate interest group page. Our 18 top-level categories are just a start. We made them broad on purpose. What are we missing? What's there that shouldn't be? Do you want nested subcategories? (Right now, that exists only for the neighborhoods interest group.)

Please, check out this new feature at the links I embedded above, read over the FAQ, and write your comments, questions, criticisms and suggestions in the comment thread here--or join the Technology group and start chatting about it in Technology Talk. And of course, you can email me directly. Thanks in advance for your help in making this a better community.

Is "online community" an oxymoron?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:29:55 PST

Sometimes, especially after antagonistic flareups on these blogs, it certainly feels that way. That's not to say that non-virtual, offline, "real" communities are by any means necessarily better, or less conflict-filled, or anywhere near perfect, because we all know that that's not true. But because much of my job here is to try to figure out not only how to make things "work better" in this online community, but to figure out what that even means, these flareups and disagreements weigh on my mind.

Often, the root issue is a fundamental disagreement over how we should treat each other. When I first started working here and exhorting community members to engage in civil dialogue even when they disagree, I was told by many veterans that that just wasn't a reasonable expectation. That's not how things were in the blogworld, I was told; get used to it, grow a thicker skin--If you think it's bad now, you should've been around when.... And then, of course, there was the ever-popular retort that it would just be too boring without personal insults and namecalling.

But in between flareups, I've been buoyed by occasional shout-outs, in comments or via email, from even those who warned me to cut out the wishy-washy goody-goody stuff in the beginning, that things were better than before, by whatever standard. And I've been gratified to watch community members take the lead, unasked, in engaging their neighbors, building community, even asking the tough questions and getting us all to participate in some self-reflection about what we're all doing here. And I thank you for that.

But even still, it seems that some of us are unable, for whatever reasons, to leave insults and namecalling, however veiled or inocuous we think they may be, behind. Some, when called on such behavior, are amenable to change. Others slip back into bad habits. And still others refuse to agree to try to follow the rules, and resort to changing identities, using IP proxy servers and newly created email addresses to prevent us from identifying them beyond a shadow of a doubt as previously suspended users, even when it may be obvious on the surface to other users.

As usual, politics and religion remain contentious flashpoints in this community. And though some of you still refuse to believe me, I don't care what side of what argument you're on--all I care about is that you make your case without resorting to cussing, namecalling, and personally insulting your opponents. I know that many of you think that I am unfair and unbalanced in the "discipline" I dole out--but remember that yes, this is subjective work, done by one person with one pair of eyes and limited time, in need of your help in identifying potential problems and understanding why you may think it's a problem, and that I try to keep much of this behind the scenes, without publicizing what happens to which user and why or when, in favor of users' privacy.

It's fascinating to me how often both "sides" of an escalating argument employ the same strategies against each other, and both accuse the other of being unfair in its use of said strategies, and both accuse me of being unfair in my handling of the other side when it uses those same strategies (but of course doesn't see anything wrong with what it's doing and doesn't want to be chastised for its similar actions). But let me lay this out as clearly as I can: if, instead of arguing your case, you resort to tarring your opponent by, in so many words, dismissing them as inherently stupid because of mental defect, mental illness, drug use, or other disease, saying that this is why they believe what they believe (and of course they're wrong and you're right because of it), that's an insult. That's an attack. That's not making your case. That's not building an argument. That's dismissing what another human being has to say, what another human being believes. So you don't believe what they believe, you don't agree--explain why. Don't just say, well, you think that because you're stupid/mentally ill/deluded/high. And please, don't think I'm addressing this just to "one side" or another, because all sides have done and continue to do this, and it needs to stop. And, of course, if this doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you.

I've been reading and rereading this post about online social norms since it was posted in December by danah boyd, a leading scholar of online communities and social networks, especially as used by teenagers. She digests and puts together all of this much better than I could, and so I'll leave you with her words. Thank you all for continuing to be here, continuing to work to make this a "better" community, whatever we all decide that means.

"musing about online social norms"

by danah boyd, social media scholar

Since the earliest days of Usenet and email, people have complained about how much easier it is to be mean online than offline. If you spend enough time on public forums, it's hard not to run into mean-spirited rhetoric: defamation, hate speech, flaming, etc. The latest story of helicopter parenting turning deadly highlights how easy it is to deceive to be cruel. Discussions of using mediating technologies for the purpose of bullying often rely on arguments about how technology aids and embeds malicious acts by reducing the consequences of breaking social norms. Governments often seek to ban technologies because of mean-spirited interactions that take place.

Of course, what's at stake is fundamentally a philosophical question, the precise one that got me kicked out of my 9th grade English classroom: is "man" basically good or evil? (I argued that man was basically evil, but apparently this was the incorrect answer and I wouldn't back down.)

There are all sorts of forces that limit social behavior in everyday life: fear of legal consequences, fear of social consequences, fear of damage to our bodies, lack of functional capability, whether potential gains outweigh costs, etc. Our legal system takes these forces into consideration and this is where punishments like jail (or the death penalty) operate at disincentives. Likewise, we often try to regulate structures so that it is functionally impossible to commit an act that is perceived to be collectively "wrong" (legal or social). Yet, in truth, we rely primarily on the things that are essential to humanness: desire not to face physical harm and desire to fit in socially.

Mediated environment throw these forces for a loop. I can say anything I want here and you can't punch me. At least not while you're sitting on your computer reading this. And I have a reasonable expectation that your potential anger will dissipate before you see me again. Furthermore, this fear of bodily harm is very ephemeral - we are much worse about evaluating whether or not an act will result in _future_ bodily harm than determining if it will result in immediate harm. The lack of immediate harm is key here.

The bigger issue has to do with social consequences. I have no way of determining if you're nodding along or scrunching your face in disgust and violent disagreement. I have to imagine your reaction as I write this (and I'm imagining the nods). I have no way of adjusting the next paragraph according to your implicit responses while reading this paragraph, both because I can't see you and because you're reading this in a time-shifted manner. Furthermore, unless you explicitly provide feedback (like comments), I have no real understanding that you're out there let alone what you thought of my post. The lack of social feedback sucks, but the lack of immediate social consequences can be far more dangerous.

Impression management is a core process of human participation in social situations. I try to present myself in the way that I want to be received and based on your feedback, I adjust my presentation. This is not easily learned and teenagers often struggle with this (thus, an "identity crisis" is when one's imagined self doesn't mesh well with how one is perceived) but adults are by no means perfect at this. We all learn through experience which is why social interaction is crucial.

Yet, in mediated environments, impression management is stilted. There's no implicit feedback and explicit feedback is minimal at best ("nice picture" isn't really informative). The immediate social consequences are also not there because there's no way of knowing if someone just walked away. As a result, social norms aren't really enforced online and without this re-inforcement, it's easy to break them without even knowing it.

This gets even trickier when you remember that networked publics bring together people from all sorts of environments with fundamentally different sets of social norms and expectations. Many imagine a melting pot where a new set of collective norms evolves, but because it's hard to provide social feedback, that doesn't happen. It's more like a rotting salad bowl.

Now, add in the fact that people regularly seek attention (even negative attention) in public situations and that public forums notoriously draw in those who are lonely, bored, desperate, angry, depressed, and otherwise not in best form. Mix this with the lack of social feedback and you've got a recipe for disaster. There are few consequences for negative behaviors, but they generate a whole lot of attention.

The question remains: is this the fault of the environment? In some sense, yes because the architectural underpinnings of these environments don't allow for social feedback or meaningful social (or bodily) consequences. This is where legal folks get into a tizzy because they think that legal consequences will solve everything. For this reason, they often argue against anonymity, viewing it as a barrier to regulating social behavior online. Unfortunately, this argument is flawed. While legal consequences certainly limit some people from some acts, they certainly do not limit everything. If they did, we wouldn't need jails and murder would be a thing of the past. More problematically, most of what needs regulated in social environments online is not a rupture of law but a rupture of social decorum. "He's being mean" is not something that the law really wants to involve itself with.

So then how do we fix it? Is it a matter of design? Do we need to bake in social feedback loops and consequences into the core of our technologies? If so, how?

Alternatively, is there a way to socialize people into an environment where they do "what's right" simply because it's right? Of course, this question extends beyond the internet. I fear that as a society, we are relying more on legal regulation and less on social regulation and I can't work out why. But, perhaps the problem is not the internet but a general lack of collectively understood everyday norms. Older people certainly spend enough time bitching about "kids these days," but there are all sorts of contributing factors for building and maintaining collective social norms is hard: age segregation, class segregation, homophily more broadly. We can blame overworked adults, cars, lack of public spaces, single family social units, and other such bits on contributing to homophily and the lack of collective social norms.

But here's where I think that there's an interesting sociological puzzle. What network structures result in strong collective norms? What forces are needed to create those kinds of social network? (This is a classic question of tolerance... we know fairly well that diverse networks have higher levels of tolerance, not surprisingly.) Given that universal unitedness isn't really going to happen, what are the structural changes that increase norm maintenance?

As for the internet, mass media hype aside, I bet that the internet is statistically nicer than it was when I was growing up. While many public forums and community sites like Slashdot are still bogged down with crud, most people are going online to interact with people that they know. There's only so much you can get away with when you're going to see the person the next day. Time delay might not be ideal for social feedback, but it certainly helps.

Testing, testing, 1 2 3...

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:18:18 PST

Last night, we made some back-end upgrades to our network of sites to make sure that they can keep pace with all the amazing growth we are seeing in our online communities. Unfortunately, as many of you experienced, that upgrade came with some problems this morning, and we want to thank those of you who alerted us to them.

The most noticeable problem was pages either taking a really long time to load or not coming up at all. Our software development team worked to roll back and fix some of the changes to correct to the glitches.

However, we need to keep testing this upgrade for a few days in order to fine-tune the improvements. So, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 15, and at the same time on Tuesday, Feb. 19 and Wednesday, Feb. 20, please be on the lookout for any problems or glitches and let us know if and when you experience them.

We thank you for your patience, and for your help in making our sites better, faster, and stronger.

Site outage tonight from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:30:11 PST

Attention night owls: due to a software upgrade, the Bakomatic-powered parts of Bakersfield.com--namely, the interactive parts you contribute to every night--will be inaccessible tonight from 11 p.m. to at least 1 a.m.

[So fair warning, Nancy--don't start writing something at 10:58 and then hit "post" at 11:01 and tell me I didn't warn you first when it disappears! Heh.]

Jim Padgett, "bballdadmc," 1962-2008

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:19:46 PST

Head Bakotopian Matt Munoz has let me know that local actor and acting teacher Jim Padgett, who posted here as "bballdadmc," passed away on Tuesday, January 29. He was 45.

Bballdadmc was a member of this online community at least since the move to Bakomatic, and was a semiregular blogger and commenter last spring and summer. Though he hadn't been an active participant recently, his profile page shows that he was visiting here as recently as two weeks ago.

Nick Belardes has a remembrance of Padgett up on Bakotopia. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.

When in doubt, try "shift-refresh" (or "ctrl-refresh," as the case may be)

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:38:57 PST

So, apparently, in the wake of a software upgrade earlier in the week (mostly back-end improvements), we've encountered a few bugs. Several of you have reported that the RTE (that's "rich text editor," a.k.a. the box that lets you post comments or blog entries or reviews and format the text the way you want) is acting wonky or broken, appearing blank or unusable or giving weird error messages.

My more technically-endowed colleagues here recommend two things: First, clear your browser cache. Second, go to a blog entry page where you're seeing this problem and hit "refresh" while holding down the "shift" key at the same time--*EDITED*--or, if that doesn't work in your particular browser, try "ctrl-refresh" instead. If neither of these things work for you, please email me directly with as much detail about the problem as possible (what you did, what you saw, screencaps if possible, OS and browser info, etc.).

We apologize for the inconvenience.

A chance to give (and an anniversary)

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:03:09 PST

The Bakersfield Californian's charitable giving program, TBC Gives, is at the tail-end of its second annual "My First Library" children's book drive. Hopefully you've seen the print ads in the paper, but here's the skinny:

We're collecting new and gently used children's books, appropriate for those in kindergarten through grade 6, until the end of business this Friday, November 9. We've partnered with the Bakersfield City School District and the Kern County Superintendent of Schools to make sure all books collected get in the hands of children who don't have books at home.

You can drop off donations at the front desk of The Bakersfield Californian at 1707 Eye Street downtown (or at the HFPC at 3700 Pegasus Drive) through Friday.

Last year, our Interactive Media department (responsible for the B.com interactive features you know and love) spearheaded a TBC Gives drive collecting personal hygiene materials for homeless persons, and several regular bloggers stepped up and helped us out. I hope that you're similarly inspired now.

Also, to show how much you love the blog community you spend so much time keeping going here, you can mark your donations with a post-it or something with "Interactive Media" on it. You see, we're in the middle of a little interdepartmental competition here, seeing who can bring in the most books, and I know you'd want to help us out.

BTW, I was reminded that today is my one-year anniversary at TBC as your Community Content Coordinator. That's right, you've been putting up with me for an entire year now. Love me or hate me, you should know that I've really enjoyed working with you over the past year, continuing to create a vibrant, dynamic online community here. I know I can sometimes come off as a killjoy or worse (heh), but I do appreciate the feedback, support and help many of you have lent in our never-ending quest to make this virtual space, and the features it offers, better. We've got a lot of cool stuff coming down the pike (including that long-promised topic-categorization system--seriously, I mean it!), so stay tuned, and as always, keep those suggestions coming.

And drop some books by while you're at it!