Rights and Responsibilities of Bloggers and Commenters

I have been read­ing with great inter­est in the debate brought up by sev­eral peo­ple such as Hank Williams and now being dis­cussed on both the Disqus and Intense Debate web­sites regard­ing  “A Commenter’s Rights” and who owns the com­ments. I believe that there is a prob­lem with the dis­cus­sions. This is my perspective.

When ever one dis­cusses the “rights” a per­son has, there needs to be the inclu­sion of what that person’s respon­si­bil­i­ties are as well. It also needs to include what rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties oth­ers have that are affected by that per­son. Without this inclu­sive­ness, a person’s rights can be declared and they stomp all over every­one else’s rights.

I became intrigued by this dis­cus­sion since I have gone through many cycles of thought myself. Having run a forum for many years at my old ISP, we con­stantly ran into this whole issue of who owns the com­ments, how should they be dealt with, and what to do with com­ments that con­tain some good stuff that moves the dis­cus­sion for­ward but has some cruft as well.

We ended up using a sys­tem with explicit guide­lines that explained what was accept­able. I based this on the guide­lines the local papers used for their let­ters to the edi­tor. The sys­tem then did three things. First, we let com­ments stand even when there were typos, idi­otic opin­ions, etc as long as they had fol­lowed our forum guide­lines. Second, we would delete unac­cept­able com­ments totally if they were just inap­pro­pri­ate.  Finally, for com­ments that did move the dis­cus­sion along but had cruft we would delete the cruft if pos­si­ble and indi­cate it had been removed with the visual sig­nal <snip>, some­thing peo­ple used to do in e-mail lists to indi­cate non-essential text had been removed in a reply. If we couldn’t remove the cruft with­out chang­ing the comment’s mean­ing, the com­ment would be deleted.

This sys­tem said basi­cally, we want your com­ments but we want you to com­ment respon­si­bly. Cruft nor­mally was bro­ken links (or links to inap­pro­pri­ate sites) and per­sonal attacks against some­one else on the forums (although if a post had a per­sonal attack in it, it nor­mally was com­pletely deleted). It was my opin­ion that if some­one wanted to show their lack of intel­li­gence by spelling poorly, spout­ing off really stu­pid opin­ion, or just writ­ing non­sense, that was their priv­i­lege and we would let the world see it.

I decided to do some research again to see what on-line papers such as the New York Times have now as their poli­cies. Most were brief and to the point: we own what you send us and we can do what we want with it.

However, I found the New York Times pol­icy rather inter­est­ing (I had dif­fi­culty get­ting a good link to it). I quote, “We reserve the right to edit for space, clar­ity, civil­ity and accu­racy, and we send you the edited ver­sion before pub­li­ca­tion.” They then state that they ver­ify authen­tic­ity of the writer (they are who they say they are). They stated the writ­ers have a respon­si­bil­ity for ensur­ing that facts cited in the let­ters are accu­rate.  They say, “Letter writ­ers, to use a well-worn phrase, are enti­tled to their own opin­ions, but not to their own facts.” Finally, they state, “As with any let­ter, writ­ers speak only for them­selves or their orga­ni­za­tions; pub­li­ca­tion should not be taken as an endorse­ment of that view by The Times. The aim is to stim­u­late dis­cus­sion, not end it.”

This pol­icy of the New York Times has kind of woken in me what I have always felt with regards to com­ments. There is the right and respon­si­bil­ity of the pub­lisher of a blog to ensure that all com­ments made respect the rights of the com­menter but also enforce the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the com­menter as well.

Blog com­ments don’t need to edit for space so we cer­tainly don’t need to worry about that. Right now, there is no way to send an edited ver­sion back to the com­menter before pub­li­ca­tion but we can always allow a com­menter to delete or request a dele­tion of an edited com­ment. Of course, right now, Disqus doesn’t even allow for edits so it is a moot point. Using a sys­tem like Disqus or Intense Debate can pro­vide some authen­ti­ca­tion of who the writer is but in gen­eral most on-line sys­tems can be fooled. Unfortunately, this allows some inac­cu­rate and mis­lead­ing state­ments to be made in someone’s name who had no idea it was being said.

I also have to say that if some­one posts a com­ment anony­mously, they are obvi­ously giv­ing up all rights to that com­ment includ­ing copy­rights since there is no attri­bu­tion. People just can’t com­plain at all if they post anony­mously and it all gets changed.

I will be work­ing on fully writ­ing this out but as a pre­lim­i­nary revi­sion of this blog’s stance regard­ing com­ments here is my policy.

We reserve the right and feel we have the respon­si­bil­ity to edit for clar­ity, civil­ity, and accu­racy all com­ments sub­mit­ted. All edits will be noted. If an addi­tion, the addi­tion will be sur­rounded by square brack­ets, e.g., [ed: Sam Spade]. If con­tent is deleted from the com­ment, it will be indi­cated by “<snip>”. If a com­ment is edited, and the com­menter is known (anony­mous com­menters give up all rights since there is no attri­bu­tion), they have the right to clar­ify their com­ment, delete it, or request it be deleted.

Commenters have the right to look ridicu­lous, inar­tic­u­late, and unlearned. We, of course, hope for smart, artic­u­late and informed but feel that edit­ing should always be done min­i­mal­is­tic if at all. Don’t expect us to cor­rect your spelling, fix your gram­mar, or oth­er­wise become the “iron fist of edi­to­r­ial control.”

Commenters have the respon­si­bil­ity to respect oth­ers and the facts. All facts stated in a com­ment must be accu­rate. If what you are stat­ing is an opin­ion, it must be clear that is is an opin­ion and not a fact. Broken links or links to inap­pro­pri­ate sites dis­re­spect oth­ers and will be deleted. Libel, mali­cious, hate­ful and/or dis­re­spect­ful state­ments against oth­ers will not be tolerated.

Commenters speak only for them­selves and/or their orga­ni­za­tions. Publication of a com­ment should not be taken as an endorse­ment of that com­ment by this blog or any­one asso­ci­ated with it.

Our aim is to stim­u­late dis­cus­sion, not end it. This is a part­ner­ship between blog­ger and com­menter not adversarial.

I doubt I would ever edit for clar­ity since if you want to look dumb, you can but in some areas, it might be good to do so. I have seen it where a name needs to be added to clar­ify who said what.

Civility is just right. It is the respon­si­bil­ity of both blog­ger and com­menter to be civil.

Accuracy of the facts is para­mount. Twisting the truth so that it becomes a lie is just wrong too. I don’t see  inac­cu­racy or twist­ing facts as a right that a com­menter has, at least not on my blog. If they want to spew lies and mis­truths, they can do it on their own blog.

Note: at this point I am wait­ing to see how the debate works itself out at both Intense Debate and Disqus. I will not remove Disqus at this time despite the fact I can not do any­thing but allow or delete a com­ment which I feel is too lim­it­ing. I hope that one or both of them will end up at a posi­tion that will allow me to use them. If not, I will not use either and go back to the bor­ing old com­ment sys­tem that is built into WordPress.