Last week I posted about the increasing problem of incivility at comment sections for blogs and news sites. As I noted at the end of the discussion thread that was started, I plan to return to the topic in depth, perhaps as part of an article or study.
My thoughts on the topic are apparently at least partially shared by Richard Dawkins. In a post yesterday, Dawkins lashed out against many commenters at his own site, noting their "remarkable bile" and extreme reaction to a change in comment and editorial policy at RichardDawkins.net. The full post should be read, but here is just an excerpt, reflecting Dawkins' trademark anger as he chastises commenters at his site:
Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?
Be that as it may, what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it. If I ever had any doubts that RD.net needs to change, and rid itself of this particular aspect of Internet culture, they are dispelled by this episode.
UPDATE: The UK's Telegraph has this to report:
The cloak of anonymity under which many users contributed to discussions had allowed a culture of abuse and foul language to develop that would not be possible if they identified themselves, he [Dawkins] said.
The discussion section is one of the internet's busiest atheist forums, attracting 3,000 postings per day on subjects including science, religion and ethics.
But Prof Dawkins now faces a backlash from fans who are unwilling to be silenced.
"A lot of people have lost respect for Dawkins after this, although I do still support the work that he does," Peter Harrison, a former moderator of the website, told The Times.
"Thousands of loyal, intelligent, rational forum members have been misrepresented as a bunch of foul-mouthed, vitriolic thugs by the man who so inspired them."
UPDATE: Over at Eureka Zone, The Times of London's science blog, Hannah Devlin opens with this observation:
Richard Dawkins has something of a reputation for provoking the religious community, but it seems he may have underestimated the atheistic fervour of his own fanbase. Amidst a tsunami of vulgar and vitriolic comments, the 85,000-strong forum on his official website RichardDawkins.net had to be shut down this week
UPDATE: At his blog at the Guardian, Andrew Brown remarks on the "mutiny at RichardDawkins.net" with this observation:
To anyone who has been on the receiving end of this kind of abuse, which is sometimes directed at people who do not work for Richard Dawkins, this conversion of the professor's comes as wonderful news. Hallelujah, brother. You have seen the light!
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Is there any real evidence that there is a rise in incivility, rather than a lowering tolerance to it? I don't deny that the culture of the internet can be vicious, merely that I see no evidence that it is increasingly vicious, beyond what can be explained by increasing access.
Sharon
Bravo - a quotemined quotemine.
Sharon,
Good point and a question definitely to examine. My expectation is that it is a combination of both.
Sorry but you're missing the point. The real incivility and bile was from Richard's right-hand man, Josh Timonen. The resulting abuse was from a minority of posters on a different forum, because by that time, Josh had locked RD.net down. If you're interested in the truth, and not the misinformation fed to Richard by Josh, please check out the blog entries on www.realityismyreligion.com
Matt,
Rather I think the anonymity of the internet allows the lurking nastiness of mean little people a refuge. Letters to the editor have to remain civil as long as they must be signed to be published, and so must the responses, but now look at the online comments section.
DrA, I happen to agree with you but you're still missing the point. there was no culture of nastiness or incivility on RichardDawkins.net. There was a hardworking team of volunteers who moderated the forum, and they were told in no uncertain terms to get lost by the paid members of the RDF. When the new changes to the forum were unveiled, people were upset but things were mostly kept civil. It took Josh's inflaming of the situation, by deleting posts, deleting user accounts, tampering with admin logs and RickRolling those who tried to make backups, which made a minority of forum refugees make insulting comments about him. After what he did, can you really blame them?
The forum staff have made their views known and it all comes down to much more than what Richard Dawkins would have you believe.
@Matt H
I agree that some things were done wrong, but I don't disagree with Dawkins reaction. Any legitimate claims were swallowed by a majority of angry and unreasonable comments. It's no wonder Dawkins took Josh's side 1) he knows him personally and 2) he was not foaming at the mouth.
The reaction yesterday was seriously appalling. And the sheer amount of violence and vitrol at rationalia made me think "good riddance to bad rubbish" as well. I don't want to be a part of a community that goes towards name-calling, flaming, and threats of violence over a technical snafu. No good can come of that sort of dehumanization, and any claims that the other side was acting unreasonably don't work when others act unreasonably back.
I think you missed the point and background of the story. The anger is not about "a change in comment and editorial policy at RichardDawkins.net." Unless of course, by "to a change in comment and editorial policy," you mean 'deleting years of hard work by volunteers'. This is a case of a very poor management choice, and very poor decisions by the IT support staff. Followed by a very tactless and clueless response by the head of the organization. There are people how literally put hundreds of hours of work into creating on online resource. Then they were told that it would be deleted. To add insult to injury, after being told that they could retrieve and back up their work, any tempts to save the data, led to a childish "Rickrolled" instead. Also to put it into more of a perspective, there were roughly 85,000 people affected by the decision. I have been situations like this before. Where management steam rolls over people without an tact and destroys peoples hard work. It is never pretty. And it doesn't matter the community or if it is online or in real life, people get angry, and mean nasty things get said. After reading the whole story, I am surprised at how civil the conversion is, given what has happened and the size of the community it has effected.
All over cyberspace, there are people who firmly believe that but for adverse luck (read "being born less talented"), they would be equally famous. The internet offers them the opportunity to rectify this problem and to realise their ambitions. They feel that they not only have an inalienable RIGHT to express their opinions, whatever those opinions may be, but that their opinions merit equal consideration as those of experts in the field and had better not be contradicted. If their opinions are, they react with anger and believe they have the right to defend their opinions, whatever it takes. Remember, they are the ones wronged! To such people, Professor Dawkins' rules are an infration of the RIGHT to express and defend one's opinions.
That said, someone such as Professor Dawkins - who unfortunately comes across as a fundamentalist atheist with an agenda and a rude, intellectual snob with a closed mind to boot in his series on religion - must accept the likelihood of being vehemantly opposed by people to whom Professor Dawkins beliefs are just that, beliefs, and nothing more. Now imagine that Professor Dawkins proposes rules that limit their opportunity to champion "The Truth"! Of course Professor Dawkins will be seen as an "Un-Democratic Champion of Heresy"!
That someone of his intelligence should pretend surprise at what should have been eminently predictable reactions merits the raised set of eyebrows.
@Matt H
I agree that some things were done wrong, but I don't disagree with Dawkins reaction. Any legitimate claims were swallowed by a majority of angry and unreasonable comments. It's no wonder Dawkins took Josh's side 1) he knows him personally and 2) he was not foaming at the mouth.
The reaction yesterday was seriously appalling. And the sheer amount of violence and vitrol at rationalia made me think "good riddance to bad rubbish" as well. I don't want to be a part of a community that goes towards name-calling, flaming, and threats of violence over a technical snafu. No good can come of that sort of dehumanization, and any claims that the other side was acting unreasonably don't work when others act unreasonably back.
Might wanna check where Dawkins got his own quotes from...
Comment number 2 hits the nail on the head.
Might wanna check where Dawkins got his own quotes from...
Comment number 2 hits the nail on the head.
It sounds from the above comments that the changes were more than trivial. However, Dawkins does seem to suffering from hubris here. He may not like 'vicious language' on his forums, but he is quite happy to call people stupid and worse for their beliefs. I spend a lot of time explaining science to the general public, and this isn't made easier when they have had their backs put up by Dawkins' choice of words. Stones and glass houses, perhaps.
darna,
It wasn't "over a technical snafu", it was deliberate. Josh Timonen actively deleted people's work when they complained about the situation. Some people lost years of work. And other's people when they tried to save and retrieve their work, were Rickrolled. I can not imagine a situation where Mr. Timonen after doing that would keep his job, other than being best friends with the boss. This situation speak far more poorly of Mr. Timonen and Mr. Dawkins than it does anyone else.
"If you're interested in the truth, and not the misinformation fed to Richard by Josh, please check out the blog entries on www.realityismyreligion.com"
this sounds a lot like "if only the king knew!" if dawkins takes such a hands-off policy that he could be hoodwinked, he deserves ire too.
I think what RD.net was is subject to dispute. Apparently it had become something Dawkins no longer wanted to be associated with.
I've been involved in situations like this before--volunteering means you give your labor. That is, you don't get anything for it, not pay, not ownership rights.
What moderators *did* get was a measure of control. But that control was exercised always at the sufferance of the people/entities that owned the blog.
Volunteers often get a rather inflated sense of entitlement--volunteering doesn't mean you have a stake in the entity you volunteer for unless that's the clearly stated basis of the relationship. If you volunteer for a soup kitchen, you don't get to decide whether they serve lunch or dinner or whether they serve animal products. You get to help them do what they are doing or not.
I am extremely doubtful that this is the case.
The RDF folks made a huge mistake in not FIRST taking admin privileges away from the moderators. The way you make sure no one does anything unethical in a situation like this is to take away the easy course to doing so.
Secondly, they should have closed down posting except on a very limited basis from the get-go.
Thirdly, they should have emphasized a transition strategy right from the get-go--that is they should have looked to move the board to an appropriate other owner & host, locked it down and moved on.
The thing is, if you have already decided to do the difficult thing and make big changes, you ought to get right in there and take control and move things along, negotiating as best you are able people's legitimate concerns (can I get to my posts? Can I recompose this group somewhere else?) about the change.
Not taking control meant: 1) All hell broke loose and 2) those legitimate concerns are falling by the wayside.
It was foolish to think they could finesse this.
@holytape
I didn't mean for it so sound like it was unintentional. I acknowledge that Josh's actions were out of character for the RDF. I know what happened as much as anyone else and I still do not think that it was handled well on either side.
Those posters had a complaint originally, but they squandered it by sending hate mail and being just as unreasonable as Josh. The seven page threads devoted entirely to Josh where words like "hitler", "stalin", and "monster" were thrown around is no way to convince people that you are on the "right" side of things. And people were comparing the lost posts to the death of a friend, and the burning of the library of Alexandria. This makes it really hard to take some of the complaints seriously.
Dawkins is no god of reason. I don't blame him at all for acting out against a community that has acted in this way. I honestly think that in the same situation I might have done the same.
There was recently a comment moderation issue with a group to which I belong. I explained that moderation has a high price, namely that it quashes free expression. Needless to say moderation has been removed.
"Those posters had a complaint originally, but they squandered it by sending hate mail and being just as unreasonable as Josh."
Where is there any evidence of hate mail? I'd like to see this as there was no hate mail. Those comments that Richard Dawkins mentioned were quote mines from among thousands of posts on a completely diferent website and represent a tiny fraction of the posts made in threads about the situation.
Where were people being unreasonable until their voices were silenced? You won't find it on the RD forum as all dissent was deleted but I have a copy of the latter half of one dissent thread and there are no personal attacks in it.
If you cannot realise that a small proportion of people are quite willing to use profanity and insults then you are completely out of touch with modern society.
Interestingly, PZ Meyers had to write a post imploring his zombie-legions to stop bombing a naturopath with nasty emails.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/do_not_harass_the_quacks.php
@ David M
Any evidence of hate mail? Really? You don't think anyone was sending as nasty as stuff as they were posting (or even saying that they sent)?
Perhaps you should read Dawkin's letter again. I don't buy this quote mine stuff. He says it's from "a website". As for the those posts being "unrepresentative" I think you should probably go back and look again. This is why this event shocked me, it wasn't just a few screwballs it was a large number of the people commenting.
And no, I don't think they were being unreasonable when they were silenced, that one is on Josh. But after? Most people never saw those posts, including Dawkins, but to respond with such violence because of that?
When James Randi made his mistaken comments on climate change, I was one of the first to say that he deserved a lot of what he got. However, there were a few posts that mostly consisted of name calling that I thought were terrible, but those were only a minority. In this case there are large number of people who are not only overreacting, but are doing so in a way that is no better.
There is hardly anyone that I think deserves the sort of dehumanization that Josh was getting. Sure it seems like he was acting like an ass, but to threaten violence is going too far. I mean where is this sort of vehemence when a child gets beaten to death for not saying it's prayers? Or who dies from a preventable disease? None of that gets that sort of widespread condemnation. To do so because people were treated unfairly on the internet just seems petty.
I think it is a pity that expletives and invective have hijacked the "enlightened thinking" debate. There is a reason they are called overlapping Magisteria rather than the âvernacular of the gutter.â
Imagine if Mr Lennox and Mr Dawkins stood up and just started calling each other #*&@!x(}. Many notionally âatheistâ fora treat the AvT topic it as if it was just a blood sport and one I was at recently had a thread where the regulars were complaining about how there werenât enough âtheist chewtoysâ to go around and contemplating taking turns because the atheist to theist ratio was so high.
A lot of pent up, angry, counter culture vultures with foul mouths and little commitment to âatheologyâ. The expletives, insults and incivility are just mental laziness by bloated egos who care more about getting a round of sniggers than they do about the actual topic. When you can't be bothered using a thesaurus to find the right adjective - stay out of places like the one Mr Dawkins (and some of the RDF moderators) were trying to provide.
Lion (IRC)
Mr Dawkins has discovered something about human nature.
D J Wray
http://www.atotalawareness.com
"Every insult on every Internet forum is a clear confirmation of the primitive forces driving human behavior."