CiF Moderation Watch
Revealing Censorship on Comment is Free
Sunday 4 July 2010
This message will be held for moderation
Friday 18 June 2010
WADDYA Facing Shutdown
This thread was a nightmare for our mods recently (although it was very good this week, must say), and it gets an awful lot of comments at times, especially at week-ends. As you know, we rely partly on our community self-moderating (i.e reporting comments which are clearly abusive or trolling) to keep the Guardian's communities as aggreeable and decent as possible.Does this area get special treatment for some reason?In that it will close again if unmanagable? Yes, I guess.Have a nice week-end.
Thursday 17 June 2010
Congratulations, er, Celebrations, um, Jubilation
Wednesday 16 June 2010
CiF Hearts Rupert Murdoch
Tuesday 15 June 2010
CiF: Beyond Praise, Complaint or Parody
Having said that we should start copying and pasting posts which look like prime deletion candidates, this is what I did.
The sequence was this:
PaulBJ
Jessica
I think it would be a good idea to have a Peoples Panel on Poverty in Britain. Panelists would be peope who are classified as long term relatively poor by British standards.People who are either stuck in mimimum wage jobs and/or long term recipients of State benefits.
Obviously anonymity would have to be guaranteed as some people may be working in the 'Black Economy' to make ends meet.Whilst others may be claiming benefits as a single person whilst secretly cohabiting with a partner.Additionally the poor are often denied mainstream financial services so are vulnerable to the loan sharks.
There are so many different angles to this that could be explored.However the Right wing media has done a pretty good job in either demonising the poor or reverting to splitting them up into the categories of 'deserving' and 'undeserving.'And clearly there are also a few regular CIF posters who are inclined to blame the poor for their predicament.So if a few people who are chronically as opposed to temporarily classified as relatively poor in Britain are prepared to share their stories it could prove to be enlightening all round
zounds
An article, in the Guardian of all places, advocating (essentially) the removal of the right to strike. I honestly never thought I'd see the day. My granddad must be turning in his grave. What with the tone of comments these days, when you get articles like that it's hard to see what differentiates this paper from any other neo-liberal rag.
[Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/15/trade-union-strike-immunity]
Then this from carnivalesque:
PaulBJ
I think it would be a good idea to have a Peoples Panel on Poverty in Britain. Panelists would be peope who are classified as long term relatively poor by British standards.People who are either stuck in mimimum wage jobs and/or long term recipients of State benefits.
This was actually suggested a year or two ago, at about the time that the Global Economic Meltdown had moved from being a twinkle in the bankers' eyes to a mess in their collective underpants.
No, you didn't miss it. CiF did not pursue the idea, perhaps because nobody at The Guardian knew any poor people to ask how it felt to keep being robbed by the rich from generation to generation.
Don't hold you breath.
zounds
An article, in the Guardian of all places, advocating (essentially) the removal of the right to strike. I honestly never thought I'd see the day. My granddad must be turning in his grave. What with the tone of comments these days, when you get articles like that it's hard to see what differentiates this paper from any other neo-liberal rag.
Yes, don't try looking too hard for something which is not there.
How about combining the two, CiF, and just parading a group of stupid poor people on these pages to be laughed and spat at?
The Daily Mail might even stop your losses and buy you out.
Obviously, the comment by carnivalesque was not allowed to live to tell the tale.
Open Copy News
This is how the news used to be presented - by grey people, before anyone and everyone became media stars by simple dubious virtue of being on the telly.
We now have people like George Alaghia who, instead of just reading the news, acts it out as if he is auditioning for a part in a local amateur dramatics production.
We now have people like Chris Choi on ITN and [insert first name here when you remember it] Robinson on the BBC who give their own versions of the news, rather than just telling us what is going on.
This leads to a grateful nation being told that the British Airways strike is all - and only - about horrible people depriving lovely holidaymakers of their chance to sun themselves in wonderful abroad.
So, today is a shameless plug for the new age of me, me, me.
The link above is to a new site I am in the process of setting up.
The line of thought is that news can benefit from the way the open source software movement has used public collaboration and openness of code to make ideas and products freely accessible by everyone.
We are used to receiving news through a process whereby it dribbles from the few and mighty, through the filter of the media (which have traditionally been owned by the same few and mighty and their mates and henchmen) until, after distillation and evaporation and a fair amount of adulteration and corruption, we, the supplicant poor and many, receive it like a gobbet of phlegm spat at us from the passing limousine, filled with shrieking drunks, as it speeds on its merry way to a party to which we will never be invited.
The idea of the filthy public as newsgatherers and reporters is neither new nor original, but the underlying idea for this project is that all the time we think that we have to scrabble and ferret for the droppings and leavings from the tables of the old media channels - yes, like The Guardian - we are having their versions of news imposed upon us, with only the occasional and limited facility to politely and respectfully beg to differ, before our stupid thoughts are deleted.
So, here we go.
It may be that things will be invitation only to begin with and I am still playing with setting it up.
Anyone interested can get in touch through the contact form on the site or:
atomboy -(at)- atomboy -(dot)- org
If you felt like it, you could even pass it on.
Monday 14 June 2010
Look at me, Mamma! Top of the World!
Not exactly the top of the world, but this woodcut was supposed to show a pilgrim or traveller who had reached the ends of the earth, the edge of the world and was then supposed to be able to look out into the heavens.
It turned out to be a fake, but is nevertheless an image which is extraordinarily touching and seems to find a ready resonance with people.
Or perhaps he was just at his wits' end.