Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I'm enjoying the fresh breeze caused by the USyd threads. Two suggestions that (in my opinion) would increase its value further.

1. Is there a method of spreading the threads as much as possible? Five in a day dilutes their impact - we cannot savour them.
2. Usyd students should consider posting comments to the site, both before and after their course-required thread. For example, the refugee crisis has been a hot topic on the site for a coupleof weeks, postings could have helped foster and build up the ideas that are explored in depth in the the new thread. Journalism is also about establishing rapport, developing relationships with one's audience.

Having taken a little time to send a couple of posts this evening am curious at  their non eventuation  en-blog.

Any reason why neither would have made it online. Ist here something I should have been informed of earlier, that I not then divert time to posts that are not included.

Richard:  Have published two of yours this evening Paul, and there's nothing in the communications queue that hasn't been attended to. If there's something else it hasn't made it to us.

Political and ideological disputes within the now defunct Communist Party of Australia often had the tenor and tone of a famly brawl about them.  Nothing remarkable about that given our collective marginality and the intensity with which we plotted the overthrow of global capitalism and the establishment of a new epoch in which the exploitation of man by man would be replaced by its opposite.

One of the most infamous disputes involved a reading at a Trade Union May Day function of a short story published in the Bulletin's annual collection of Australian short stories.  The story was a very funny account of how at the height of the bombing of Hanoi an attempt to sell Moratorium badges around the Rocks in Sydney ended in an all-in brawl.  So much for the peace movement.  The scene of the stoush was  a pub named "The Bunch of Grapes" but which was known colloquially as "The Bunch of C*nts". 

While the Bulletin editors saw fit to publish the colloquial name of the pub some union representatives thought this language was a bit ripe for a May Day dinner and so began a long cultural dispute between the (wait for it) Worker's Cultural Action Committee and the Central executive of the CPA (among others). 

Even at the time it was funny.  With hindsight it was hilarious.  

The big difference between that dispute and the one currently under way is that thirty years ago we didn't publish our proceedings on the Web! 

Now, are you guys serious?

Scott; please hang around (albatrosses don't usually use that term) my favourite fellow wanderer. As our darling Kath stated: "Life's too short, really." Indeed it is.

Take a break, drift upon the thermals and glide the crosswinds then come back and give us hell.

Please.

The joys of a thousands Christmases - or a pub with free booze, to you old mate.

Cheers.

Oh golly, you don’t pay attention for a couple of weeks and all hell breaks lose. I am shocked, shocked to read the latest posts on this thread. I’ve read through them but I don’t think I fully understand what has happened. However, it’s clear many of the people, all of whose contributions I appreciate and am thankful for, feel they have been hard done by. It looks like a major crack up. So may I please appeal for a time out.

Editing/moderating is a difficult business and the rules are always open to interpretation and objection. In the end, operating in real time, decisions have to be made and there will always be some people who will sometimes not be happy with them. If someone feels the decisions are consistently unfair or wrong then it is to be expected they will leave. Yet this does not seem to be the nub of the matter here. The complaint is over a specific set of moderations not the general level of moderation. The moderators felt they were acting in good faith and are upset at the criticism coming at them. Those doing the criticism feel it is justified and that they have insufficient redress.

Meanwhile, and this is quite important, the discussion is taking place in open forums and through the flat medium of text, which has a great capacity, in what is a highly personal interaction, for creating misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and backing people into corners. The upside of a blog like webdiary is its capacity and demands for measured conversation and argument. The downside is that if things get emotional the tone can be misunderstood. Without the body language of face to face conversation, with its power of gestures, tone of voice and the capacity to instantly adjust our responses as people are speaking, to read and be read, disputes can escalate in an unexpected manner. The result can be a fast and even terminal erosion of good faith. Anger and other negative emotions can seize the upper hand. Some of that seems to have happened here.

Yet Webdiary is this thing of ours. It is on one level no more than the series of conversations its contributors choose to have. It is also crucially a fabric melded together by the unpaid efforts of contributors and very importantly the moderators, who police its borders and keep out flaming, trolling and much of the cant that makes many blogs almost unreadable. (Such blogs have a right to exist but I prefer to come to zones like webdiary, and I prefer the conversations of others who do as well.)

I would respectfully suggest that (a) people all just take a step back (b) the disputes be taken temporarily off public posting (c) each person involved tries to set out their point of view to the others in good faith and acknowledges a willingness to listen to and respect the others point of view. In the end this may mean agreeing to disagree but agreeing to try harder to agree in future.

At the same time we must be mindful of this, Webdiary is a moderated site and moderation is a difficult and wearing job, editors are often punching bags. But punching bags because of their efforts to stop the site degenerating into punch-ups. Webdiary has very well developed guidelines for posting and moderation, the moderators can and do try and stick to these. I would suggest the history shows they have done a great job. If one is not happy with the rules you can always raise suggestions for changes and it can be the subject for argument. Now you can argue with a moderator but the watchword, as it always has been at Webdiary, is civility. Webdiarists are people who are proud to be citizens, we must treat each other with respect, the answer to someone who loses it (and we all can) is to be met with a mountain of respect coming back from everyone else. In fact the only people we do not tolerate are those who remain consistently uncivil, and the history shows they are usually just ignored.

And note that in such conditions, if a moderator is making decisions that many people are constantly disagreeing with, I suspect the democratic temper will take over and either the moderation or moderator will change. But on the level of day to day decisions the moderators, right or wrong, have to be given the final say. You don’t take the ball and leave the ground because of what you regard as a bad decision. By all means voice (civilly) your dissent, others should have an opportunity to agree, but also accept that without rules and moderators the site would not be what it is.

So please, suck it in, and calm down. (and no, I don’t think that would be easy, when I lose it I can go on a jag for days or longer) You can say, "I do not take back my grievance or my right to it, I do say I had a right to be angry and to say so. But I do still accord you respect as fellow members of this group, and I shall remain civil and inclusive of your right to be here as you should of me." This can be the basis of a trust that will allow these sorts of arguments and disputes to take place but not split the community wide open. Having read many of the posts over the years of the people involved in this dispute(s) I have no trouble imagining any of you voicing the sentiments I have just listed. It’s Christmas, an auspicious time for turning the other cheek and offering the olive branch. I wish you all well.

PS Perhaps after a bout with the rigours of Christmas, and the sometimes fraught encounters with the extended family associated with it, a far less jaundiced view of this community might prevail in many minds come the new year?

Vale Scott Dunmore.  I loved your comments.  I loved your world view.  I loved your editing.  I loved your posts.  Missing in action.  Mourned.

I wonder if the timing of my (meant to be idle) comment has caused the apparent problems with it.

It seemed to me to be quirky and piquant that "guest contributor" was anonymous.  No, I was not wondering who posted them, I have no problem with them, nor was I implying anything.  Lordy, I wish I hadn't.  I certainly had no intention of causing offence.

Re-reading it, I can see that it is heavy handed, and therefore ambiguous in intent. It was not meant as such. 

The only problem with this site is that it is three drinks behind.

Fiona; good night and good luck to you too - hope you'll be back soon, after a quiet "cuppa" or two.

Many thanks for your good humour and efforts to date. 

"Some Webdiarists  have possibly been chewing their fingernails waiting for the next  instalment in the Editorial Saga."

I doubt it Ian, I doubt it very much. Actually I would argue most have forgotten all about it.

"I am reluctant to flog this horse much further...."

Then why do it? You have already made your point.

"Accordingly Jenny and I ask that our donations to Webdiary, totalling around $1000, be drawn from the Webdiary Account and paid as follows:"

Mmmmmmmm.

One hopes you feel better now old chap; it was always a storm in a teacup (as these things always are); at least to the observers.

Best wishes and a safe new year to you, Jenny and all creatures great and small (especially the ones with wings).

I was not "trying to imply" anything at all, Fiona Reynolds.  I am not devious, or in any way au fait with city whiles or suspicions.

What I was querying was legitimate, straightforward and guileless.

Obviously, your resignation is a cause of deep regret for such as me:  however, I thank you for your tireless work here, and wish you well.

There is no doubt that Webdiary  exist s within a tight membrane that includes a certain limited political outlook, and a certain "politically correct" social outlook, a certain rehashing of old issues, as well as a commitment to a sort of concept of "naiceness" - (and there is nothing wrong with being "naice". )

 There is no doubt that the membrane has and continues to prevent it from growing.

If the moderators could withstand the content of David Tank's post, why can't they trust the  rest of us to  see it, judge it, criticise or ignore it as we choose?  Shades of the 19th century still linger.  Yes, the 19th.

It is a privilege to post, but that post is a greater asset to the site.  A person has their opinions irrespective:  the site does not exist without them.  Or the site can degenerate into a "rudd is a dud" repetitiveness...as it seems in risk of doing.

I deeply regret the loss of such deeply thoughtful and informed contributors as Ian MacDougall. 

I am unaware of David Roffey's contribution to Webdiary, except for the recent thread headers, which I assumed were reactive.  I do know that he has evidently been uninterested into entering into discussion on ...any threads? during the several years that I have been a member.  Has his name arisen in connection with the loss of others from Webdiary?

I see the author of the piece, but I do not see who has chosen to post the piece.

Webdiary does not allow anonymous posters, right?

I am suggesting that there is a little inconsistency here, in that a topic for discussion can apparently be posted by  anonymous, but that anonymous would be debarred from posting on that topic.  Is that so?

I have been away so have had no opportunity to deal with this earlier. Some Webdiarists  have possibly been chewing their fingernails waiting for the next  instalment in the Editorial Saga. To them  I apologise.

The site’s manager David Roffey footnoted my comment Circle the Wagons! with the following:

"[B}rief notes to those bits of the above that involve me: 1) irony is obviously beneath Ian's notice, 2) the "rule" I set out is a (to me) obvious corollary of the original rules - if a comment was deemed inappropriate to be published, then it shouldn't be published vicariously in the body of another comment; 3) if there is no trust between editors and they have to indulge in conspiracies, then the site is better off without their input, 4) Ian presumes my agreement with a comment I have never read and therefore have no opinion on:"

I am reluctant to flog this horse much further, but it involves issues I believe vital to the site, towards which by the way, I have never had anything but the best of good will. So, before I deal with David Roffey’s remarks, I will  briefly refresh his memory and also that of the remaining Webdiary community with the facts behind the unresolved dispute I have with the Management :

As an editor, I had marked four comments by Webdiarist Paul Walter ‘DNP’ (do not publish) in the ‘Henson versus Hanson Land’ thread , all of which were highly abusive of me and/or of my wife, the then-Webdiarist  Jenny Hume.  Richard Tonkin, another editor, disagreed with the DNP labelling of just one of Paul Walter’s comments,  but chose not to publish it, which he could have done.  Paul Walter accused me of bias in my editorial capacity and that my DNPing of comments by him directed at Jenny showed that I was under undue influence from her, which was simply not true. 

So I wrote, as the reader may remember, an explanatory comment which included the four comments I had rejected on grounds of abuse, some of which was extreme. This I believed would allow the Webdiary community to decide whether I was being fair to Paul Walter or not. Before I formally submitted the comment I copied it to Jenny, since nearly all the abusive material in it was directed at her through me, or at me.  No other Webdiarist was involved.  As editor I considered it proper to ask whether she objected to the abuse of her being published in that form, explaining to her my reasons for wanting to include it, which was to deal with those accusations. She had no objection. I then submitted the comment, and while I could have published it myself I thought it proper to leave it to other editors to rule on.

David Roffey deemed my copying my proposed comment to Jenny as a serious breach of editorial ethics, as it included Paul Walter's DNPed  comments directed at her. He DNPed the comment and for good measure sacked me as an editor. While I accepted his ruling on the comment itself, I found his sacking of me on the grounds he did quite absurd, though it did free up my time remarkably. It would have been most improper of me not to have sought Jenny's consent to that material being submitted for publication in the way I proposed.

While David Roffey took issue with me over all that, he saw no ethical issue in the fact that another editor (Richard Tonkin) had used his editorial privileges to self-publish on the site abuse of another Webidiarist, namely Jenny. I think most would see that as a far more serious matter. To date David Roffey has offered no explanation for such arbitrary editorial policy on his part. I suggest that to be consistent, David Roffey should have also sacked Richard Tonkin.

I was invited to re-write the comment deleting Paul Walter’s DNPed material. This I did, only to then run into a brick wall of silence when I sought to have that published, thus denying me the right to challenge the allegations against me.  That was unacceptable to me. 

Thus I felt I had no choice but to find a way to be heard  and Scott Dunmore agreed to help me by publishing the comment late one night. 

So  I will now examine David Roffey’s  footnotes to it (quoted above)  in reverse order:

Point 4. "Ian presumes my agreement with a comment I have never read and therefore have no opinion on:"

While it may be true that he never read the comment , he replied  to it all the same. In that reply of his, he referred  to his invitation to me to rewrite the original comment he had DNPed  which would then have made the comment publishable. (This I did submitting  a draft, only to be told by editor Fiona Reynolds that if I formally submitted it, it would not be published. Thereafter all communications about it were ignored.   It appears now thanks only to Scott Dunmore, who informed me he was never consulted by the rest of the Editorial Team about it.)  

Point 3: “if there is no trust between editors and they have to indulge in conspiracies, then the site is better off without their input.”

I was no longer an editor at the time of my alleged ‘conspiracy’ with Scott Dunmore.  As the site’s  remaining liberal editor, and given the manifest reluctance of all other editors to have anything to do with it, Scott agreed to look at the re-written comment as well as my proposed threadstarter ‘What Furure for Webdiary?’ (which had also been ignored and he had never seen) and if happy with it all, to publish both. That he did. I did not ask him to publish anything that in his view was in breach of the guidelines, and clearly none of it is.  To say that the site is better off without the input of such people as myself (and by implication, Scott) is to show precisely that political-cleansing mentality that I cited in ‘What Furure for Webdiary?’ as one of the site’s major problems.

Point 2: I accepted David Roffey’s ruling in regard to the DNP material and deleted it from the re-written comment as requested. So why did I have to resort to late night tactics with Scott to get that re-written comment "up there"? Because without Scott, it would still be languishing in the approval queue and the allegations against me would have gone unchallenged. 

Point 1. As to "irony being beneath my notice", I note I am in the good company of F Kendall.  The irony is compounded, because quite frankly I haven’t a clue what David Roffey is talking about. Perhaps he could enlighten us.

Finally, I am no child in a garden of verses, and assume that no apologies will be offered over any of the above, though I consider they are certainly due to me by David Roffey as Team Manager , for the arbitrary and discourteous way I was treated, and by Richard Tonkin to Jenny for his use of his editorial privileges to publish his ad hominem attack on her on the site.  Accordingly Jenny and I ask that our donations to Webdiary, totalling around $1000, be drawn from the Webdiary Account and paid as follows:

50% to Oxfam on my behalf.
50% to Animals Australia (Live Export Campaign; 37 O'Connell St, North Melbourne, Vic 3061) on Jenny's behalf.

That money was contributed to the site in the belief that the management team running it would ensure it abided by its banner claims (“Webdiary - Independent, Ethical, Accountable and Transparent.”) On those points in regard to this whole matter we say that Webdiary Management (with the exception of Scott Dunmore) has failed miserably. We think that we are entitled to our money being sent on to organisations of our choice which in our view will put it to better use.

I would quite like to know the identity of "guest contributor". 

An anonymous post seems to be quite at odds with the protocol of this site.

 Is "guest contributor" the same person behind each thread so designated?

Why are we "not allowed" to know who guest contributor is? 

Fiona: F Kendall, if you look carefully at each piece that is labelled Guest Contributor you will find that the author of the piece - whether it is Senator Hanson-Young, George W Bush, Michael West etc etc etc - is clearly indicated. There is no suggestion that the same person is "behind" each thread, nor that you are "not allowed" to know who the Guest Contributor is.

Since the beginning, Webdiary has published around one new piece by a Webdiarist each day, with occasional bursts of two or three. For a time, we also published a piece from Project Syndicate most days, and for another (overlapping) time we also published Wayne's Daily Briefing.

When Kerry was actively managing  input, we used to hold non-time-specific contributions over to publish on quieter days so as to maintain that steady rate. With editing being done essentially in Fiona and Richard's spare time, they get a bit more bunched, but the underlying rate hasn't changed - nor do we really want it to. It has been our experience that when multiple new posts are made on the same day, they all suffer in not being read or commented on as much as those where people have time to see them at the top of the page and "take them in".

I'm not sure what period Ian's stats for his "exemplary" site, LastSuperpower, relate to. If it is since the founding in 2004, then Webdiary's stats for the same period are (roughly, because we lived on three different hosts with different stats conventions in that time):

posts/topics: about 1850

comments/replies: about 56,000

views (very much not the same thing as visitors, BTW): about 4 million each year recently, but a great deal more than that while Margo was still writing in 2005, when Webdiary was by some margin the highest traffic blog site in Australia.

However, I strongly disagree with Ian's " The ‘more the better’ is taken for granted. " Very much not true. One of the stats missing from Fiona's list (because the total was spread over 5 or 6 posts) was the interminable Creationism/Origins debate initiated by Phil Uebergang, which totalled 1350 or so comments, incredibly repetitively and with, as far as I could see, no-one at all changing their mind one iota as a result. At almost any time in Webdiary's history we could have had a 500-comment post by starting another debate on the causes of the Iraq war (or the 9/11 conspiracy schtick): but the extra traffic wouldn't move the world on at all.

Also, much of the traffic on post-moderated sites (including Comment is Free) continues to be one-line pieces of witless snidery, which we are all better off for not having to read. Post-moderation? not going to happen: you'll have to get your fixes of witless snidery elsewhere.

Traffic on the site has been pretty constant ever since Margo left. Though it goes up and down from month to month, some of the highest traffic figures ever have been in the last few months. No terminal decline there.

As to the bias of the editors - we've always been a pretty like-minded bunch, pretty much on the same side as Margo. But we've always applied the rules in an unbiased fashion, and continue to publish almost everything that is submitted to publication. Any bias in what is published therefore results only from bias in what is submitted, not in the editorial decisions, and. as ever, the way to redress any bias is to put in comments on the other side, and so long as they are coherent, have content, and aren't personally abusive, they'll be up there ...