William Gibson Completely Deleted from BoingBoing Archives
Valleywag just reported Boing Boing deleted every mention of William Gibson on the site. A list he wrote of “Top 10 Science Fiction Memes of 2006″ is now offline. They no longer link to his books. A few days later the podcast interview they did with Gibson was offline too. Only a “via” link to a site that’s not his own remains.
Ok, it wasn’t William Gibson. It was Violet Blue who was unceremoniously purged. But whatever it was she did that so grossly offended Boing Boing, it is entirely possible that Gibson, Douglas Rushkoff, Bruce Sterling, Lawrence Lessig, Steven Johnson or any other male Boing Boing favorite could say or do the same thing. Violet Blue is a published author too (who is only going to gain prominence now that Kate Lee is representing her.) If you believe Boing Boing would ever so thoroughly scrub their archives of any of these men, please leave a comment here. I am always welcome to dissenting viewpoints.
This is sexism. It’s also bad journalism. And it goes against the free interactive spirit of blogging.
If Tim Noah got on David Plotz’s bad side, and the Chatterbox column vanished, the whole web would know about it within the hour. Pitchfork cleared Nick Sylvester’s reviews from their site after it was discovered he fabricated parts of a Village Voice cover story, a move most would say was unnecessary, but in the end it was Pitchfork’s call. (CORRECTION 7/2/08: They didn’t. The reviews are still there. Here’s one.) You’ll still see Jayson Blair as a byline in the New York Times archive. They only pulled the stories containing lies. “The Jayson Blair stories are going to (stay) in the archives,” Craig Whitney, standards editor for the New York Times told OJR. “We can’t pretend he was never here.” (He also discusses constant requests from divorced couples to nuke their wedding announcements.)
But no one is calling Violet Blue a dishonest journalist. She’s pulled from the Boing Boing site for some reason anyone several miles or more from Ritual will never know, (and doesn’t care to know either.)
And in one way what Boing Boing is doing is a lot worse than MSM pulling the plug on someone. It’s a snag in the blog quilt at large. Say I linked to a Violet Blue Boing Boing post using the old blog cliche “read the whole thing.” That post is worthless now, as is any external commentary on the content that Boing Boing deleted.
As Rebecca Blood wrote in her outline of weblog ethics:
Changing or deleting entries destroys the integrity of the network. The Web is designed to be connected; indeed, the weblog permalink is an invitation for others to link. Anyone who comments on or cites a document on the Web relies on that document (or entry) to remain unchanged. A prominent addendum is the preferred way to correct any information anywhere on the Web. If an addendum is impractical, as in the case of an essay that contains numerous inaccuracies, changes must be noted with the date and a brief description of the nature of the change…
The network of shared knowledge we are building will never be more than a novelty unless we protect its integrity by creating permanent records of our publications. The network benefits when even entries that are rendered irrelevant by changing circumstance are left as a historical record. As an example: A weblogger complains about inaccuracies in an online article; the writer corrects those inaccuracies (and notes them!); the weblogger’s entry is therefore meaningless — or is it? Deleting the entry somehow asserts that the whole incident simply didn’t happen — but it did. The record is more accurate and history is better served if the weblogger notes beneath the original entry that the writer has made the corrections and the article is now, to the weblogger’s knowledge, accurate.
History can be rewritten, but it cannot be undone. Changing or deleting words is possible on the Web, but possibility does not always make good policy. Think before you publish and stand behind what you write. If you later decide you were wrong about something, make a note of it and move on.
This is a discussion we need to be having. Already blog archives are rarely looked over by the authors or major readers of a site. But they are found by people googling something specific.
Evidently, this isn’t the first time Boing Boing has removed a post because of a perceived microfeud. In February this year, Rex Sorgatz wrote, “BoingBoing linked to me yesterday. For 10 minutes. Then someone apparently told them that I’m the guy who hates on BoingBoing. Post deleted.”
From the post in question:
One of these days I’m going to do a take-down article on a sacred cow of the internet: BoingBoing. I’ve already got a few ledes written: “BoingBoing, the pretend-thinking-man’s Fark,” “BoingBoing, your source for two-week-old links,” “BoingBoing, keeping post-hippiness alive since 1991….” And so on. Truth is, I like Cory and Xeni and the gang — they’re swell people. And I bet I’m the only one here who owns every single issue of bOING bOING — the magazine. But BoingBoing is clearly the most over-rated blog on the internet (which is easy to declare, since it’s also the third-most-popular).
Those are the words of a disgruntled fan, not a hater. There’s nothing there that wouldn’t get published in a print magazine Letters to the Editor section. Seems like Boing Boing should listen to Will Leitch’s parting words: “Someone Hates You Online. Try Not To Be Offended.”
Like Jim Harper at Tech Liberation Front, I get annoyed when people use “Big Brother” to describe non-coercive private actions. BoingBoing, as a private entity, is entirely free to censor their own material. They get a lot of flack for their overly eager moderating policy, but for the most part it seems to keep the trolls at bay. (Although, here’s an example of a heavy hand.)
But, Boing Boing hates corporate censorship too. They made a huge fuss when SmartFilter blocked their site for its “nudity.” And rightfully so. The story even ran in the NYT. The most interesting point coming out of the Valleywag story, was a comment from one of Cory Doctorow’s former students:
I find this extremely disappointing given that Cory Doctorow was a visiting Fulbright professor at the USC Annenberg School of Communication in the Public Diplomacy program. Needless to say, there is a great deal of irony in Cory assuming such a “public”, democratic position, and yet for BoingBoing to censor voices like they seem to be doing.
I took Cory’s graduate seminar, which was a life-altering experience, but he clearly is stuck in larger “networks”, I guess.
Another blogger writes she’s angry “because I know that — because Boing Boing taught me — that we’re supposed to call out sites that do shit like that. So that’s what I’m doing.” Unfortunately, it’s unlikely any other bloggers will. This is a big fish in a small enabling pond situation. Most bloggers will ignore the story because they want to keep in Boingboing’s favor. Big media will ignore it, because they think it’s insignificant Mission District coffee shop gossip. Banning Violet Blue doesn’t exactly merit a Vanessa Grigoriadis expose.
However, this unfortunate incident is now noted on the Boing Boing Wikipedia page (”Sex blogger Violet Blue has, in the past, been regularly mentioned in Boing Boing, including a being the subject of a Boing Boing Boing interview. On the 23rd of June 2008, Blue posted on Tiny Nibbles that all posts making mention of her had been deleted from Boing Boing, without explanation. Boing Boing has refused to comment at this time.”) In the meantime you can hear the podcast on The Internet Archive.
So what might really be behind Boing Boing’s people purges? Fear of the inevitable. In cycling the person racing ahead of everyone else has to work the hardest. The person behind has an aereodynamic advantage from the drift, meanwhile the rider ahead has to work as much as 35% harder. That’s a great metaphor for everything — especially in technology. The leader is always the one who sweats the most. Because everyone can see where he is heading, but he can’t turn around to look at what’s coming from behind. There’s going to be a website that will do what Boing Boing does now, but better. Whomever develops it, is likely watching this event closely and vowing never to make this kind of mistake.
Images from “The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia,” by David King
Update: 6/30/08 Finally the media is commenting on this. The LA Times blog has a pretty long piece on what happened:
No one, including Blue herself, has any idea what’s behind the scrubbing. BoingBoing has been conspicuously silent; despite considerable confusion in the blogopshere, the site has not posted about the issue or said they planned to. Blogger and long-time BoingBoing contributer Xeni Jardin did not respond to an e-mail from me, and several other bloggers and writers reported non-answers too…
It’s bizarre that BoingBoing has failed to take any steps to clarify the situation.
For one thing, post-snuffing is usually “a serious no-no,” said Eve Batey, Blue’s friend and Chronicle editor. “That’s just against the rules of the blog world.”
But there’s also the fact that BoingBoing has often presented itself as a stalwart of cultural openness. Doctorow himself is a well-known copyfighter — a crusader against restrictive intellectual property laws. He has removed a post at least once before — when writer Ursula K. Le Guin asked that an excerpt of her book be taken down — but he immediately wrote a long, apologetic explanation of the incident.
I really hope Wired News and others continue to cover this story.
Update 7/1/08: If you are reading this for the first time, understand you’re a little bit late to the conversation. I wrote this post on Saturday. I first read about the deleted posts on Valleywag last Wednesday. I wrote this post because no one was talking about the issue, I would have been happy enough staying out of it, had other blogs and news sources commented on the Valleywag post. Since Monday, mainstream media picked up the story and today Boing Boing finally made an announcement, admitting the posts were deleted an entire year ago.
In the comments, Suzie Q writes:
Here’s the best theory I’ve come up with - and DO feel free to send this around the blogosphere, since hitting on the wrong answer will get the real answer just as surely as hitting on the real answer will get no response - it all comes down to this article on friend-of-boingboing Amanda Congdon:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/05/violetblue.DTL
This is a pretty blatant slam on Congdon for dishonesty regarding her corporate sponsorships, and may in fact have been related to Congdon leaving ABC ( I believe I heard a rumor about them getting upset when they found out about the side vlogging).
Essentially, Violet Blue possibly got Amanda Congdon fired, or at least that’s what it looks like. I would imagine that very likely, VB found out about this in a Boing Boing-related way. It could even be that VB didn’t get her fired, but betrayed their trust in revealing the info about her.
Which is why they’re not saying what the reason is. Because it’s actually the only thing that would make them look more hypocritical… because it’s anti-transparency.
But note that the only hint we get in their note of explanation is that VB’s posts were removed about a year ago - and this was the only really noteworthy thing she did around that time; at least, publicly.
Of course no one really knows what is going on here, but maybe this is worthy of a Vanessa Grigoriadis expose after all.
Another update: “violet blue boing boing” is #31 on Google Trends today. “Violet Blue” is #12.
Update 3: Here’s the post about Rex that was deleted.
Update 4: LA Times Web Scout this afternoon:
In its explanation of the Blue purge, BoingBoing cited what it called an “erroneous” claim that it had removed 100 Violet Blue-related posts. They did not name the allegedly erroneous post as mine or even bother to link to it, so let me name the post: it was mine, and I linked to it earlier in the sentence. Notably, BoingBoing did not offer the correct number of purged posts (saying only that they had “unpublished some posts relating to her”). Also, someone from BoingBoing refused to tell me how far off my count of 100 was.
Let me correct the record. With some help from Violet Blue herself, and her boyfriend, who stayed up late last night writing a script to scan the WayBack Machine for Blue BB posts, I can present this spreadsheet.
It contains 72 BoingBoing posts containing the name of Violet Blue. I found one duplicate in the 40 or so that I spot checked. This was not a high duplication rate, and Violet’s boyfriend, she said, had written a second script to eliminate duplicates. Maybe it missed one or two. So maybe 72 is slightly high.
In any case, let’s say that more than just “some” posts were removed. And let’s also note that this search only went from January 2005 to August 2007, when the archive ends. Further, BoingBoing’s Internet archive has many different gaps in it where other Blue posts might have been sitting.
In sum, I was remiss to take at face value Violet Blue’s number of 100. I should have said at least 70.
I apologize for the imprecision.
Update 7/2/08: Zenarchery articulates why this is a great breach of ethics far better than I did.
Also, I’m no longer allowing comments to this post
Open Source Art: Will There Ever Be Another Lily Chou-Chou?
All About Lily Chou-Chou is one of my favorites, and thanks to Youtube you can spend all day watching these dizzyingly beautiful clips. Shunji Iwai’s 2001 film somehow makes the activity on a message board about the fictional musician, just fascinating to watch.
It began as an online novel about two friends entering high school. Readers were allowed to post to the BBS alongside Iwai’s fictional characters. Before long there was a screenplay — one that’s uniquely nonlinear due to its unconventional creative direction. Some of the content in the film was taken straight out of their posts.
Fast Company’s Kevin Ohannessian, remarking on the film, once asked whether transparency could help creative writers:
Shouldn’t creative writing be as transparent as other steps in the process? Designers show mock-ups and various versions of projects to other team members; and we are always pushing transparency in leadership here at the magazine. Except for the editor, how many others see a story’s evolution? This is another place for innovation, letting team-members contribute to the copy writing in a project.
Yes in theory, but no in practice. Show me a confident writer and I’ll show you a bad one. While Lily Chou-Chou’s success owes to its collaboration, it is a rare case.
Indiana University cognitive scientist Robert Goldstone might know why, “It turns out not to be effective if different inventors and labs see exactly what everyone else is doing because of the human tendency to glom onto the current ‘best’ solution.”
This study used a virtual environment in which study participants worked in specifically designed groups to solve a problem. Participants guessed numbers between 1 and 100, with each number having a hidden value. The goal was for individuals to accumulate the highest score through several rounds of guessing. Across different conditions, the relationship between guesses and scores could either be simple or complex. The participants saw the results of their own guesses and some or all of the guesses of the others in their group.In the “fully connected” group, everyone’s work was completely accessible to everyone else — much like a tight-knit family or small town. In the “locally connected” group, participants primarily were aware of what their neighbors, or the people on either side, were doing. In the “small world” group, participants also were primarily aware of what their neighbors were doing, but they also had a few distant connections that let them send or retrieve good ideas from outside of their neighborhood.
Goldstone found that the fully connected groups performed the best when solving simple problems. Small world groups, however, performed better on more difficult problems. For these problems, the truism “The more information, the better” is not valid.
“The small world network preserves diversity,” Goldstone said. “One clique could be coming up with one answer, another clique could be coming up with another. As a result, the group as a whole is searching the problem space more effectively. For hard problems, connecting people by small world networks offers a good compromise between having members explore a variety of innovations, while still quickly disseminating promising innovations throughout the group.
I tend to skip over co-authored books, even match-ups of my favorite writers. That is why I’m inclined to think A Million Penguins, the just completed wiki-novel, is more of an accomplishment in coordination rather than great literature. Is it, as James M. Larkin writes in The Crimson, “A Mere Novelty?” He finds the novel itself is terrible, but the accompanying research report makes for better reading:
First, it supports to some extent previous attempts to label the Web the angriest medium ever, also shored up by the majority of comments below this paper’s editorials. Take the example of ‘Pabruce,’ the most active contributor to the novel and its ready diva. Among other things, Pabruce introduced a non-lethal drug called strychnine that would become a “code word for global warming”. When another user wrote his theatrical voice into the novel, however, this Ms. Ross figure deleted all his edits, nearly scuttling the nascent work. Days later, he returned, chastened, as ‘Lewis Oswald.’This degree of anonymous strife and petulance would certainly threaten any great novel’s composition: Imagine if Melville and Hawthorne had been sniping at one another out in antebellum Western Massachusetts, instead of spending spring days together. There might be no Moby Dick, no Scarlet Letter. High-school reading lists would, frankly, become much more tolerable.
No, the old folks never had to deal with spiteful “trolls,” the progeny of a device that allows the dispatch of hateful, threatening messages to others without any spoken or visual contact—risk-free. But they also lived in an age bereft of the neurotic self-awareness of our own; this is drawn into stark relief by “A Million Penguins.” It’s not long before things become hopelessly meta, as in George’s mid-narrative musing: to Jim’s question, “So a community can write a novel?” he answers, “Yes, but only a humorous one…It is humor that is shared by a community.”
I am open to the possibility of another All About Lily Chou-Chou. But in almost ten years, I’ve yet to see anything that comes close. On the other hand, I’m excited to see how A Swarm of Angels progresses. This project isn’t just internet-created, it’s internet funded. Another successful project is Jesse Reklaw’s webcomic Slow Wave (via,) “a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world.”
Did you know Barbara Bauer is the “dumbest of the twenty worst” literary agents? You do now. There is an actual list from a group called “Writer Beware.” This isn’t Bauer’s first brush with the Streisand Effect. Is Google her next target?
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