West Seattle IRC Channel! (Was: Censorship drama)

[adamk]

The post that the spam filter ate:

I’ve been wanting a form of real-time communication amongst WSB readers for faster discussion of news as it arises. The comments section of articles doesn’t lend itself to informal discussion.

I’m sitting in #westseattle on freenode. If you want to join in, point an IRC client to chat.us.freenode.net.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, IRC is a real-time group chat protocol. IRC networks are a distributed self-healing mesh of servers and tend to be more reliable than centralized forms of communication like websites.

Original post, sorry for the craziness:

I made a post last night discussing starting a West Seattle IRC channel.

I saw no replies to it, but figured maybe nobody else here had used IRC before and there was no interest.

I came in to work and couldn’t find my post. Then I logged and was able to see it. I tried to reply to it, and received an error that it had been closed. I didn’t receive an e-mail or any explanation as to why. In fact, if I hadn’t switched computers I’d have never noticed that my post was censored. I’m still not sure what policy I ran afoul of – I read all of the sticky posts.

Is this the form of censorship used? Trying to prevent the person posting from realizing they’ve been silenced?

To the WSB staff: I’d be happy to help you start and moderate an IRC channel – I’d really like some quick informal real-time group chat to discuss things like why a fleet of police cars just drove by. The forums aren’t an appropriate place, and there’s nowhere else.

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[WSMom]

What is an IRC channel?

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[adamk]

IRC is a multi-user real-time chat protocol.

A chatroom is called a “channel” in IRC parlance.

There are several large IRC networks, all of which are free to use. The one I suggested, Freenode, is run by a non-profit organization to facilitate communication between Open Source Software developers.

Yahoo Messenger, AIM and ICQ are good for 1 on 1 communication but aren’t meant for group chat. They may support it, but none of the chat clients are built to properly support multi-user communication. IRC clients are built for group chat, not one-on-one chat.

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[SarahScoot]

People still use chat rooms? Not being snarky – I’m genuinely surprised. I thought they died with Y2K.

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[JanS]

adamk..I’d suggest that you email the editor, and get an explanation that way. You have contacted them…right?

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[Carson]

I don’t get it. If you want to start it, start it, why does it need to be tied into WSB? If there is a need you should find a ready audience.

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[adamk]

Where else is there a community of West Seattleites? IRC channels aren’t like websites, there isn’t a search engine for them and you won’t find one without reading about it somewhere else.

This is another communication form that I’d love the WSB to enable. There’s no “catch” here – there’s no money to be made, no advertising, I don’t own or support any of the infrastructure running the IRC networks, nothing. IRC networks are available for use by people who like group chat.

And no, I haven’t e-mailed the editor. I don’t care why they deleted my post, what concerns me is the method of censorship. Silencing someone without notification while simultaneously making it hard for them to tell what has happened is… disturbing. It’s a method I haven’t seen used on any other forum.

The correct action is to edit offending posts, remove the part that broke the rules, and put an “edited by moderator” note in it. And lock the post, if necessary. Or just delete it outright. Making it invisible to everyone but the poster is Bad.

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[HelperMonkey]

adamk, there have been a number of spam posts lately that get deleted pretty quickly. I remember TR saying something about sometimes real posts are caught up in that and deleted by accident and to let them know if that happens. I am sure that’s all it is – WSB is not into wholesale deletion of posts “just because”.

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[adamk]

I hope that my post was confused with spam and it wasn’t out of line for this forum. If what I posted was against the rules, I wish I could have been told what rules were broken.

As it currently stands, I wouldn’t have known anything was amiss except for having switched computers. I’d have just assumed that my post got no replies.

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[SarahScoot]

I agree with HelperMonkey; odds are your post was caught up in the new, more effective spam filter. The forums are no longer inundated with Christian and/or golf and/or porn spam, but there is an increased chance of legitimate posts being swept away, too.

Besides that, even if the WSB editors did delete your post purposely, that does not qualify as “censorship.” Censorship is the suppression of the dissemination of information and ideas within a society. WSB is a private enterprise, not a society. You do not have the right to free speech in a private venue, therefore censorship is not a valid accusation against WSB.

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[KBear]

Whining about “censorship” isn’t likely to encourage the cooperation you desire.

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[adamk]

I’m not going to quote the dictionary, but your definition is incomplete.

Within a community (the WSB readership is a community) there is censorship. That is fine, it’s necessary. Call it moderation if you want, but this is a news site. Media organizations have been involved in censorship for as long as they’ve existed.

I am not objecting to the moderators doing their jobs keeping the forums clean as they see fit. A healthy online community requires it.

I am objecting to the method by which it is done: with no notification, and no user interface to make it obvious, posts will disappear from everyone but their author. This makes it very difficult to tell that anything has happened.

Again: I am objecting to this method. I am not complaining that my post was moderated. Please point out where I am, if you think I am.

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[JoB]

Adamk..

i think what troubles me is the automatic assumption of censorship… or discrimination.. or cheating.. or…

when things don’t work as we think they should.

and not just here.

it’s counterproductive at best.

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[WSB]

I just found your post in the spam filter.

I have no idea why Akismet thought it was spam.

As regular readers know, I had to activate Akismet here, with a warning that sometimes it would grab random posts, a few weeks ago because we were being barraged by spam that ranged from stupid to obscene.

I received no note about this claim of censorship before this post appeared and that alone violates our rules – report to the business owner before you vent about it here.

We do not and will not explain why we do delete certain rule-breaking posts and comments. We do not notify people if a post has been deleted or if it has been (in the case of main-page comments) held for moderation but not approved. We tried doing that for a while and on myriad fronts, all it did was cause trouble, and after consulting a variety of people on online best practices, we settled on the way we do it now. For those who would prefer to be notified or to have a deletion explained. sorry, that’s not our policy. We delete as little as possible – many days go by without anything needing to be reviewed or deleted, thankfully.

That said, something announcing an IRC channel certainly doesn’t break any rules and I am going to try to get it out of the spam filter – not as easy a process as it is to retrieve comments from the spam filter on the main site (which we try to do once daily). If I am unable to restore it out of the spam filter, I will add a comment here inviting you to post it again, though I can’t guarantee Akismet won’t deal with it the same way.

Posting in the forum does NOT equate notifying WSB management – it’s not even noon yet and both of us already have been out to multiple locations related to multiple stories. We do our best to check the forum at least every few hours to see what’s going on, not just for trouble but because sometimes breaking news and other items of interest turn up here, but if we’re both running around, that isn’t always easy.

Thanks to the person who DID flag this thread to call our attention to it. This is the first “real” post caught by the spam filter, to my knowledge, since we activated it to deal with the recent spam attacks.

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[JanS]

so there you go..maybe not such a bad idea to contact the editor?

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[WSB]

The spam filter is not letting me undelete it. This is a bug which we will be addressing with our next developer (and we are interviewing somebody tonight, in fact, as we have a long list of upgrades that have been on hold since the last time we had somebody reliable working with us).

All I can do is cut and paste – so here’s what the OP wrote:

>>I’ve been wanting a form of real-time communication amongst WSB readers for faster discussion of news as it arises. The comments section of articles doesn’t lend itself to informal discussion.

I’m sitting in #westseattle on freenode. If you want to join in, point an IRC client to chat.us.freenode.net.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, IRC is a real-time group chat protocol. IRC networks are a distributed self-healing mesh of servers and tend to be more reliable than centralized forms of communication like websites.<<

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[WSB]

P.S. And now my comment on the subject.

To be honest, I didn’t realize IRC was still used, either. We were big fans back before the Internet went more to browsers in the mid-’90s … I remember celebrating our first online New Year, ’94 to ’95, by hanging out on an IRC channel.

We use Twitter and Facebook extensively and engage in real-time discussion with people on both – in breaking-news situations as well as non-breaking situations. I realize they don’t function the same way IRC does, although I consider Twitter to be “son of IRC.” (And a lot like CB radio, which we used for voice communication in the same manner more than three decades ago!)

There are a variety of other chat clients that people have incorporated into their websites for side discussions. I agree that it would be great to have something real time to deploy here with java or ajax type instant-display in such cases. Maybe IRC is it, maybe it’s not. Maybe the person we’re interviewing tonight will have a suggestion – or anybody else with suggestions, fire away.

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[GenHillOne]

No offense, but I would NEVER click on a link as it’s offered in the original post. Good luck with that. And the forum is pretty immediate if you’re here – and if you’re not, it isn’t, lol. How would a chat room be any different?

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[adamk]

I’d like to apologize to the WSB for not contacting them before posting here. I shouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion that one of the moderators took my post down without contacting me.

Is there any way to change the user interface for posts marked as spam? It’s very jarring to find out that a post that’s still visible to the poster has disappeared from everyone else’s view.

As for JanS: the passive aggressive nature of your posts is unpleasant. Please stop.

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[SarahScoot]

“I remember celebrating our first online New Year, ’94 to ’95, by hanging out on an IRC channel.”

And with that comment, the WSB editorial team members finally end the “are they or aren’t they?” nerd-status debate. ;-)

(Said with the utmost nerd respect, of course!)

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[adamk]

WSB: There are various web-based IRC clients, ranging from extremely simple things like CGIIRC to full blown ajax/javascript apps.

This would allow people to use the chat room and also allow more savvy computer users to install an IRC client and have a better experience.

I’m a *nix admin by day, and I’d be happy to help with the setup and writing documentation.

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[WSB]

1994, we bought our first computer, PowerMac 6100/60, from now-long-gone Ballard Computer, because we’d read about That Internet Thing in some cool-ish magazine and wanted to be part of it.

Subscribed to the Delphi Internet access, wow, trial offer, something like FIVE HOURS A MONTH!!! for $10 or $5. Hung out there for a good long time before continuing to move onward and upward. Even won a cash prize once in the weekly Trivia Group game (I bet they are still together).

However, and I know many have great stories of being on the ORIGINAL Interwebs, I also was briefly on an online service called “The Source” back in 1980-1981, while working for a radio station in Vegas that was part of the now-defunct but then-visionary RKO Network. It scheduled spots by computer!!!!! and while RKO affiliates could use part of The Source to chat with each other for free, you could also go out on The Source – not for free – and browse information! And stuff!

I spent so many hours on the computer while working at my boring semi-automated job tending the automated radio station … that I got ******so******* busted for running up a big bill.

They probably would have fired me, but I was the token female on the staff, and that had federal licensing implications, sooooo ….

Yes, we have old nerd tales to tell.

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[WSB]

Adamk – Thank you.

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[SarahScoot]

How I picture Tracy and Patrick in the early ’80s:

Ok, had to get that out of my system – I just watched “War Games” again for the first time in about 15 years, so the WOPR hijinks are fresh in my mind.

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[JoB]

adamk…

no need to take your frustration out on JanS who suggested you follow the rules and contact the editors instead of running your mouth off.

I don’t know how to put this other than bluntly…

but none of us gets to decide that another has to post in a way we won’t read as something that offends us.

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