I have recently begun using computers to communicate in the way that others have before me. I was late coming to this posting and blogging due to my own lack of interest and equipment. I was satisfied doing my writing for an audience of one on notebook paper with the occassional piece becoming a classroom affair - sometimes copied and discussed with other student writings - possibly ones even processed through these social bookmarking sites that I am now using myself. It is all just writing to me, but the social aspects of internet posting has proven troublesome for me, and I refuse to take the blame.
I have been aware of the raucousness of the internet even without participating through information from other media. I can appreciate the foolery that goes on, and even laugh at some of the crass humor, but my problem is not closely tied to these facets, despite the common placement of my problem and the rowdies who have so roiled the nerves and were the motivation to create the screens that are my problem.
For the past several months I have been involved at the MSNBC owned social bookmarking site, Newsvine.com. My time there has been almost entirely consumed with personal battles with other users and a continuing struggle with the managing moderators to keep my account from being deleted over complaints of abuse by the other users.
The site is a few years old and they have about 20 members who are the elite class of member who has achieved all the branches of the complete Newsvine logo, each 'vine' representing a conquest of a sort and being a badge of merit to rank the users and demonstrate their worth to one another. I presently have four of these, minus the one for good citizenship that usually arrives between the topmost for participation and the lower for seeding articles. The coveted final vine is the Random Act of Vineness or RAV which is only in the possession of a handfull of viners after all of these years.
Two of the most recent designates of this honor have been in a concerted dispute with myself over issues at the service which the moderator has viewed and chosen to give all consideration to these elite users for what I see as petty harrassment of another user. My complaints were met with a determined restatement of the original decision and an admonition to me to stop trying to blame anyone else for my problems with the moderator.
The situation with these users developed over several days and was begun in what appears to me to be a coordinated two-pronged attack. The moderator himself did things that could also be viewed as being part of the coordination that was taking place. After several days of being followed on my columns by these two RAV holders and having my new group that I founded threatened with an order to delete it for being a 'vigilante group' and then the moderator requesting to join my writing group after I sent him my description of the group that came under suspicion I was handed a very insulting notice from this moderator that I was suspended for a month and that the next problem that I had would probably result in having all of my 100 or so articles deleted and my groups of 20 members in one and all growing at a steady rate.
I am reluctant to ascribe motives here for these actions. I have opinions on that, but they are based on a prejudiced process of speculations. There are numerous actual statements made to me by these RAV holders which should provide ample proof of the pettiness of their complaints, but no one at Newsvine will listen to them from a user of little vine.
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They seem to be very clever at shifting blame. I keep getting told to think about what I did to create all of these situations. It is very demeaning to me to be talked to like that. The new moderator is just out of college and in his 20's and he really should be listening to his elders more than he is. I am more than twice his age and he is trying to infanticize me because I write things that get some of the activists at Newsvine excited and they come after me with their mob attacks of mostly undeserved complaints. At least not by any measure of their own code of conduct.
ReplyDeleteThey will gladly tell you that there is no free speech guarantee on Newsvine because it is owned by a private corporation with no obligation to anyone to let them say anything they wish to. I wish there was someplace to tell these people that there is a public right to have the companies that you participate with honor their own contractual obligations with you. The thing is that when you sign-up on these internet things the contracts usually say - you the user are nothing to us.