July 29, 2003

• And The Winner Is ....

  
  

  All of us.  Thank you to everyone who blogged about the Xanga Terms of Use yesterday and to those of you who are continuing to add your voices to the discussion today.  I have said before that the people who have subbed to my site are the cream of Xanga.  You guys totally rock. 

  
  

  The first order of business with any expression of concern about an issue is to define the problem.   As I defined it yesterday, the problem is that we have Terms of Use, but they are inconsistently enforced.  It has also been pointed out that it's difficult to be consistent if the terms are vague.  I'll grant that the less ambiguity the better.  Perhaps the Xanga Terms of Use should be examined to see if they are in fact enforceable as written. 

  
  

  However, and this is the key point.  The specific situation I outlined yesterday was one in which a blog was reported that clearly violated the Terms of Use.  Posting private personal information about another Xangan doesn't leave much room for discussion of whether the action is vulgar or obscene - its tortious.  (Love that word!)  There is no interpretation necessary and for that particular blogsite to have been ignored (as of this morning it's still there) has nothing to do with whether or not the Church Lady thinks my Profile Picture is a bit much.  And yes, if you haven't noticed, I AM in fact naked in that shot.

  
  

  If you want to be rude, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, or use bad spelling on your site, I really think that's your issue.  I may choose not to read what you have to say, but it's hard for me to believe that bad taste equals direct harm to another person.  Xanga is a community of writers, so I know that many of us get a bad taste in our mouth at the very thought of censorship, and in many ways I think rightly so.  It's always a dangerous thing to suprress free speech.  I know that some of the people in my camp may disagree with my position here, but that's okay, they can even call me names and take issue with my naked profile self.  What they cannot do is post information about me that makes me vulnerable to identity theft.  They cannot post credible threats to my person or property.  Those actions are tortious.  (See I told you I liked that word - so I'm using it again.) 

  
  

  I'm all for Kindness and Fairness, but at the same time, I'm very glad that those aren't the standards that I have to blog by.  I'm not always kind, and I'm not always fair.  I'm not the Xanga Team.  In setting up any organization, rules must be thought through and a plan of enforcement must be developed.  What will be done when a person violates the terms of use.  Will it be one strike, two strikes, three strikes?  Will it be lost of some privileges?  Will the site be closed and IP tracers set up to prevent a second site being opened from that computer?  These are decisions which must be made.  They must be made fairly.  I'm not particularly worried with whether the Xanga Team is kind to people who would engage in illegal behavior, but it looks good on the button.  Thank you very much to Craktpot for making it. 

  
  

  Of all the many many blogs I read yesterday, I'd like to recommend that if you missed it - you absolutely must check out Aleph's.  Other blogs were eloquent in describing the problem and calling for action - his proposes specific workable options for solving the problem.  

  
  

  If you are wondering where we go from here, I suggest that you do what I intend to do.  I'm planning to contact John, Dan, Marc, and Monsur through their email and their Xanga sites.  I will be forwarding blogs from yesterday and will be asking them to revisit the issue of enforcement.  They have given us powerful options with the delete, block, no anonymous subscibing allowed that have gone far down the road of solving some of the early problems Xanga experienced.  I'm going to encourage them not to give away their momentum in continuing to build the Xanga community into the coolest place on the web. 

  
  

  I'll hope to see you in their comments sections and guestbook. 

  • 1:32 pm
  • 29 Comments