Great post, thanks for sharing. I have been picking away at this area (“healthy communities”) and one of my take-aways mirrors your conclusion that “safe & free” is the more correct choice and that “openness” is very risky. I see it as the need for strong, clear moderation as a force for setting and enforcing community norms. I have seen many web 1.0 forums dissolve into 4chan-like chaos due to lack of moderation. I’ve also seen software projects dissolve into an immobile mess when their community decided to only do “safe” and discard “free” completely.
A recent article by Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev about these topics points out that anonymity (“openness”) creates problems. An example they bring up later, The Front Porch Forum, which has strong moderation rules, requires a real identity to sign up, and is limited to those who live in Vermont and parts of NY, is a great example of “safe & free” in action. This appears to be a growing trend, a reaction against the overpowering wave of social media, and I’m interested to see how it will play it out in the next few years.
The problem (or at least a problem) with seeing moderation this way is that moderators who are aware of the concepts at all tend to say that criticism of arbitrary moderation amounts to criticism for not being open—in other words, once you accept that openness is a bad idea, pretty much anything the moderators do becomes justified on that basis.
I only skimmed the article you linked, but I don’t think I agree with your characterization of anonymity—it’s not on the axis of openness, but the axes of freedom and safety. If someone is already let in, they may choose to be anonymous if they think anonymity helps them express things that are outside the box of their existing reputation and identity, or if they think anonymity is a defense against hostile actors who would use their words and actions against them.
Good point. I think my characterization was overly broad, where in my mind, I was picturing anonymous registration, eg. not checking identity at the gate, allowing anyone in, even multiple times.
Great post, thanks for sharing. I have been picking away at this area (“healthy communities”) and one of my take-aways mirrors your conclusion that “safe & free” is the more correct choice and that “openness” is very risky. I see it as the need for strong, clear moderation as a force for setting and enforcing community norms. I have seen many web 1.0 forums dissolve into 4chan-like chaos due to lack of moderation. I’ve also seen software projects dissolve into an immobile mess when their community decided to only do “safe” and discard “free” completely.
A recent article by Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev about these topics points out that anonymity (“openness”) creates problems. An example they bring up later, The Front Porch Forum, which has strong moderation rules, requires a real identity to sign up, and is limited to those who live in Vermont and parts of NY, is a great example of “safe & free” in action. This appears to be a growing trend, a reaction against the overpowering wave of social media, and I’m interested to see how it will play it out in the next few years.
The problem (or at least a problem) with seeing moderation this way is that moderators who are aware of the concepts at all tend to say that criticism of arbitrary moderation amounts to criticism for not being open—in other words, once you accept that openness is a bad idea, pretty much anything the moderators do becomes justified on that basis.
I only skimmed the article you linked, but I don’t think I agree with your characterization of anonymity—it’s not on the axis of openness, but the axes of freedom and safety. If someone is already let in, they may choose to be anonymous if they think anonymity helps them express things that are outside the box of their existing reputation and identity, or if they think anonymity is a defense against hostile actors who would use their words and actions against them.
Good point. I think my characterization was overly broad, where in my mind, I was picturing anonymous registration, eg. not checking identity at the gate, allowing anyone in, even multiple times.