CiF Hearts Rupert Murdoch

The Guardian always lays great store by the fact that it is financed by a trust with dodgy tax dealings, which it claims means that it does not have to tug its forelock to shareholders or media mogul proprietors.

Which makes it strange that it frequently runs editorials and articles fawningly praising the abundant and unquestionable brilliance of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

It has even, in the past, run articles (you know, the ones which look like propaganda pieces) by James Murdoch and protected him from embarrassment by mowing down dissenting voices from the BTL ranks and then pulling the article altogether when, presumably, little James's face was blushing with such vermilion violence that there was fear he might explode.

So, here is CiF in its best cheerleader mode, with its pants around its ankles, about to fellate the octogenarian Emperor of News:

Set aside the personalities and the politics for a moment, and the idea of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation buying all of BSkyB makes pure commercial sense. After all, Sky does television and News Corp does papers – and the boundaries between the two are getting increasingly blurred in the digital age. Type news.sky.com into your internet browser and you get an impressive news website that would make any newspaper proud. But BSkyB has an even more important attribute that News Corporation lacks: it is a massive and well-run tollbooth on the media highway.

Free virtual sick-bags for every reader.

UT on WADDYA

Here are some of the thoughts from people on The Untrusted regarding Jessica Reed's little hissy-fit in closing WADDYA for the weekend to prove that the voices of the horrible people can be silenced if you know which button to press - or which member of the IT team to ask.

Bitterweed

Waddya was developed into its current format shortly after UT rocked up - as a holding tank for potentially unruly account holders, a place where moderators could go and gaze at the wild and uneven outside world, but without having to delete comments on mind-numbed reflex, because they also knew everyone would there act out of aspiration rather than egalitarian exchange of ideas; they would therefore moderate themselves and yet make CiF appear cooler

The fucking amateurs.

HankScorpio

I see Cif as a place for bored middle class professionals to get together to pontificate about how the world would be a much better place if only the poor worked a little bit harder, and for less money.

It fucking annoys me beyond endurance that kizbot and bru get indulged on there, the pair of them posting arrant nonsense on there all day, while Athens and Brussels burns in the background, and neither them or fellow posters question whether middle class jobs could be cut.

Let's cull the jobs of middle class wasters like kizbot and brussels if efficiency savings need to be made.

Stick that up as an idea on waddya and see where that gets you.

HankScorpio

@martillo and chekhov - fair play to Jess for taking the ball home with her. The waddya thread is a fucking joke, and has been for a year or more. It's somewhere for kiz and bru and all the hangers on to bitch and gossip and ultimately say nothing much at all. MavisCoulter and MelissaDarley have seen through all the crap there, and their comments got deleted as a result.

It's interesting to note, as HenryTheThird said, that the proliferation of posters with "C"s against their names on Cif over the last year or so have almost exclusively come from the ranks of the luvvies who kiss each others' arses on waddya.

There are a lot of interesting and informed posters on Cif, posting on domestic politics, finance, foreign affairs etc. A vanishingly small number of them get commissioned to write ATL though, because they're not in the waddya gang, and the editorial staff at Cif are too lazy to read those threads or to talent-spot beyond the tea and jaffa cake crowd of time-wasting idiots on waddya.

Very few of those who have got commissioned by Cif to go above the line in the last year have anything of interest to say, and very few of them post regularly elsewhere on Cif because they would be shot down in flames by those far more informed than they are.

La Ritournelle

Just a quick slag off - Kizbot is a bloody pain in the arse, but "Imogen -Pleeeeeze give me job on the Guardian-Black" is worse. Her comments btl on the Unemployment thread are infantile and as for being asked to 'contribute' well, pah, her 'contribution was pretty asinine - I'm sure someone will commission her soon (Jess/Matt) as she's got everything they need - nice white middle class girl, pwetty face (just look at my professional shot avatar) an ex-actress, miles of vacouous vaguely left wing b/s to spout and her contributions below the line read like one long CV.

HankScorpio

They shut waddya just when it was likely to get interesting. Kizbot posted some old shite about waddya just being a cosy little corner, not to be taken seriously, so why did trolls go on there and get so venomous about the regulars on there. The usual self-justifying crap we've come to expect from the self-appointed Queen of Bland, to which HenryTheThird responded (paraphrasing, from memory):

"Nobody would have objected to waddya being a cosy little corner for Cif regulars to while away their working days.

The problem was that waddya became disproportionately important in the eyes of the Cif staffers, who started commissioning the in-crowd to write stuff above the line, even though it should have been clear that the only reason waddya regulars posted their views regularly on waddya was because they would have been exposed as woefully out of their depth elsewhere on Cif."

As I say, I'm paraphrasing. I'd have copied and pasted but the post in question has been deleted.

gandolfo

Hank I pretty much agree with you
I see it as a grooming ground to get BTL that fit into the "profile" of the average Guardian reader...it's kind of Islington wine bar chit chat...full of identity right on politics that spew from the mouths of people that essentially haven't had to fight for anything in their lives and have no real intention of doing it unless they risk their iPhone...what sums it up is that bloody "rush home for the nanny" thread the other day.......
Alas decent posters and ATLers are in a minority...

Alisdair Cameron

Did get talking to someone who knows a lot about the Guardian's working, knows q a few of the staff. In brief,they are bollocksed. Business plan is like the South Park underpant gnomes but my source was very enlightening about the staff. The upper echelons are hated for being overpaid and massively incompetent, and of more interest to UTers there is little love lost between real news journalists and the all-singing,all-dancing multimedia fluff merchants, and some figures disliked on the UT are disliked in their workplace too.

chekhov

Hank: agreed with most of your comment on "wadya". However, as much as I don't have much time for Kizbot et al, she made a valid point in that when the wadya thread was first set up, it was ignored by most people and the ones who did respond ended up inventing a chat room.
That's my recollection of what happened anyway, feel free to tell me I if I am wrong.
Well we all know how it panned out; more and more people joined in and started to challenge the orthodoxy. To cut a long story short the Oxbridge cretins who set up the thread didn't like the fact many btl were more intelligent than themselves, so they called in the "Mods" to hose down the hoi polloi.
It didn't work of course which is why Jesicca has taken her bat and ball home.

Alisdair Cameron

@ the Duke. That's about as much as I got, I'm afraid, but a certain cyclist's departure wasn't viewed as sad by all...
The big bunfight though is between those obsessed with new media gimmickry, video pieces etc (which are too often fronted by good-ish print journos, who aren't broadcasters, and it shows...and most readers don't have the internet speed/bandwidth to watch the bloody pieces) who hog all the resources, and those who think a little more focus on, er, news, in a newspaper, might be a higher priority.
Non-'sexy' items (i.e. those which aren't unsubstantiated, ATL trolling typically on gender/race/faith,those centred on vacuous ephemeral celeb shite, or thos tenuously tying something topical to the author's hobby-horse, streching credulity all the while) are getting marginalised, and the notion of actually investigating anything, or sophisticated,nuanced analysis has been marginalised.
Obviously you can guess with which category of staffer my source consorts and sympathises, and that cohort of journalists are looking to jump ship before they are thrown overboard.

.............

There may be more but, as I have said, CiF has become a dead horse which I am no longer very interested in flogging.

I am working on one or two other things, so if anyone has an interest in CiF which can beat mine, (which cannot be bothered to struggle anywhere much above nil) they are welcome to take over. Otherwise, things will just have to remain very occasional and desultory in terms of posting here - unless something interesting actually happens on CiF, for which I am not holding my breath.

The Matt Seaton and JayReilly Question

I posted this over at The Untrusted, but it may as well also go here.

Morning everyone

Out of interest - and because I am not looking at CiF any more in anything other than a very cursory and occasional manner and not managing to get here much, either - did Seaton ever get back to JayReilly or anyone else regarding moderation?

I seem to remember that he said he would select one happy camper to provide evidence of CiF's crimes and that joy seemed to fall on JayReilly, who was going away for some days at the time.

Someone else stepped in on the now, presumably, forgotten thread and there was a lot of coughing and ahems and "Just because hundreds of people below the line keep pointing out that moderation is unacceptable doesn't prove anything and you have no right to question the moderators anyway because they have each been stamped with my personal seal of approval, which will trump anything you stupid, filthy scum have to say so just feck off, I hate you all" from an increasingly shrill Seaton, with a face set to explode.

So, just as a final check, did the reinstatement of Summerisle make everything better? Was that all it took?

Were any other bribes or threats used to seduce or scare everyone back into mute and apologetically supine submission?

Or was the lure and heady junkie fix of being able to type "Hi!" with as many exclamation marks as your heart could wish to people you do not know and indulge in a figurative dance of slapping high-fives and jive handshakes just too much to resist?

Despite the sniffy, aloof claims from Seaton and Henry that CiF was decidedly not a social network, but an arena of ideas, was it the fear of losing a line-up of virtual zelebrity people the thing which allowed everyone to let Seaton off the hook, just as long as he did nothing to impede the mingling march of the lovely faux society for which people will give up any principle, as long as they are allowed to belong?

As has now become de rigeur when signing off:

Just askin', like. I'll get me coat...

The Moderation Will Not Be Criticized

Hurrah! We can all now have absolute faith in the moderation at CiF because Matt Seaton says that it looks like its broken - but it will not be mended. So there.

Here is Seaton's comment, which shows to the full the capabilities of his keen analytical mind:

mattseaton

18 Mar 2010, 7:07PM


@ MozP:

Sorry for delay; thanks for your patience. I'm not going to give immediate gratification here, because you referred me to this post:

JayReilly
13 Mar 2010, 12:50PM
As for moderation on fem threads, well, i've had more deletions than hot dinners, most of them overtly partisan. In one post (notable only because they actually explained the deletion to me) i spoke of how elements of feminism care little for "equality" but rather special pleading and rights grabbing for women, to elevate women to superiority without any regard to equality at all. I made the effort to make clear it was elements of feminism i was speaking about, not the whole movement, i cant remember the thread but in the context of the debate it was very measured.
So shocked was I by the deletion of my effort that i emailed for explanation, and got a rare response.
"The comment was removed as the implication that feminists are predominantly concerned with women's superiority over men was considered offensive." (quoted from their email)
Thats political censorship, no ifs and buts. There was no abuse in the comment, nothing off topic, nothing ad-hom, nothing but a view on a political (and very diverse) movement. And they deleted it. Not only is this political, partisan censorship (not "moderation", its censorship) but they actually admitted as much.
Imagine being deleted for implying conservatism was for the rich, or Labour for the rich, or secularism being concerned with X, or liberalism being concerned with Y. Thats political censorship.
There is no other political ideology/movement that is deemed so sacrosanct that non abusive criticism is "offensive".
I have also spent two spells in premod for discussing moderation. Question our censorship and we'll put you in premod. Nice.

The way JayReilly presents it, and makes his counter-argument against the mod's explanation, any impartial reader taking his account at face value would have to agree that the deletion decision looks dubious at best.

But, not that I don't trust JayReilly, but he is the polemicist's polemicist, as we all well know, so I'd need the full picture before pronouncing on the case and finding for or against. I'd need a link to the deletion referred to; to look at the precise content of that deleted comment; to examine the thread context; to discover whether, as the mod who corresponded with JR implies, there were independent abuse reports that led to a modding decision to delete; to see the full explanation from the mod, if JR is quoting only part of it.

Also, JR says his tone was beyond reproach, but he may not be the best judge of that: a reasonable argument can be interpreted as offensive if its language and tone are hostile and angry. Further, threads where the debate is about feminism/equality often have an edge of male anger against perceived feminist bossiness and self-righteousness that many female users find off-putting and borderline misogynist. I'm not suggesting that JR was guilty of that or a perpetrator in that regard; but it is part of the context in which mods have to judge what is offensive or abusive.

I am aware that this may just look like just so much obfuscation and flannelling on my part. But I'm not trying to duck the issue or be defensive. If you or JR will send me the link I need so I can locate that specific thread and deletion, I will follow through. And I don't rule out the possibility that our modding was trigger-happy on this occasion. I would never say it never happens, so if I'm directed to a specific instance where we got it wrong, then I'll hold up my hand and admit it.

But please understand that one such admission would not amount to a concession that the entire system is biased, arbitrary and effectively broken. That's not where we're headed with this, so please don't imagine otherwise.

Even on a thread which is conveniently derelict and dead, someone's keen sense of smell sniffs a stink.

Triffid100

19 Mar 2010, 11:12AM

Matt Seaton said:

But please understand that one such admission would not amount to a concession that the entire system is biased, arbitrary and effectively broken. That's not where we're headed with this, so please don't imagine otherwise

I'm a bit confused by this.

if we look at what has happened it's all started as many, many posters say they are unhappy with the moderation policy.
Matt S believes fundamentally that everything is in order. He agrees to review one case.
Superficially looking at the case it appears to be censorship by the moderators due to their own political beliefs.
Matt acknowledges it looks bad but says he needs more details - fair enough.

However, he then says even if it's proven to be censorship it's just a one-off because everything is wonderful. QED

Matt - seriously. How do you want posters to say to you that the moderation policy is being affected by political censorship? You refuse to investigate in case you find you have an issue. Considering the importance of this - it's to the core of free speech - I think the majority of people have been polite and calm.

So, what exactly would you like posters to do ?

It would seem that the problem might be that CiF is so used to deleting things which it just doesn't like and censoring opinions which do not match the ideology of the site that it never crossed the collective mind, throbbing in CiF Towers, that once this can of worms was spilled over the pages for all to see, it could not just be made to disappear as if by magic.

Still, no doubt the line of defence trotted out by Seaton will be accepted by everyone in the end:

You have proved that moderation on The Guardian's flagship internet site, CiF may be arbitrary, malicious, ideologically and politically motivated, completely disconnected from the stated community guidelines and possibly employed by moderators to pursue their own personal agendas - but we can promise that we are not going to do anything about it whatsoever.

Three cheers for Seaton for once again showing the brainlessness which seems to be a condition of employment by CiF and the monumental disregard and contempt CiF has for all those BTL who provide daily deluges of free content, without which Guardian Media Group would be losing even more money.

Hurr...

Steve Hill Sees CiF's Future

SteveHill has this to say about the moderation policy on CiF, which seems to be getting more infamous by the moment.

stevehill

16 Mar 2010, 6:02PM

Georgina

stevehill: of course it doesn't say that in the community standards, and of course LS wouldn't have been moderated for disagreeing with the writer - every day, on hundreds of threads, people are disagreeing with AT writers on Cif. It's how you say it.

Georgina: I've queried three moderation decisions in the last few weeks where I know I have breached no community standards, and my only crime has been to take a contrarian view to somebody else. And maybe that someone has been more "politically correct".

None of my emails ever received anything but an automated "we're all very busy we'll get round to you" response, but look them up if you wish (I assume you can).

I am forced to the conclusion that the faceless moderators are superimposing personal agendas onto their work and are not acting impartially but are effectively taking sides in arguments.

If you think what is happening is wholly in accordance with community standards, then the standards themselves are an ass.

CiF is treating not just Lord S, but the entire community, with contempt. The respect for "free" speech is just risible: the very name CiF is considered by many to be wholly satirical.

And there's only one way your organisation is headed once you become widely known for treating your own forum members contemptuously.

JayReilly and the Smoking CiF Censorship Gun

JayReilly posts this over on The Guardian's Comment is Free Waddya thread. It pretty much confirms what we have all known for a very long time: The Guardian employs censorship to control the message it broadcasts from its supposedly free and open blogs and comment sections.

Interesting debate. Smellthecofee - when was it exactly the UT lynch mob came for you? I dont recall it, not doubting your heroics would just be interested to read the details. I dont think i've ever been rude to you before at all. Which misogynists are you referring to? The UT is i think actually mostly female posters, 100% of whom are feminists.

Very sad news, the Duke's passing. He is also leaving the country soon, and has just written an excellent piece at the UT on Adam Smith. Since he is leaving CiF and the country and is a very widely liked poster here maybe the Graun could publish his article here (its better than most of the stuff published here anyway).

As for moderation on fem threads, well, i've had more deletions than hot dinners, most of them overtly partisan. In one post (notable only because they actually explained the deletion to me) i spoke of how elements of feminism care little for "equality" but rather special pleading and rights grabbing for women, to elevate women to superiority without any regard to equality at all. I made the effort to make clear it was elements of feminism i was speaking about, not the whole movement, i cant remember the thread but in the context of the debate it was very measured.

So shocked was I by the deletion of my effort that i emailed for explanation, and got a rare response.

"The comment was removed as the implication that feminists are predominantly concerned with women's superiority over men was considered offensive." (quoted from their email)

Thats political censorship, no ifs and buts. There was no abuse in the comment, nothing off topic, nothing ad-hom, nothing but a view on a political (and very diverse) movement. And they deleted it. Not only is this political, partisan censorship (not "moderation", its censorship) but they actually admitted as much.

Imagine being deleted for implying conservatism was for the rich, or Labour for the rich, or secularism being concerned with X, or liberalism being concerned with Y. Thats political censorship.

There is no other political ideology/movement that is deemed so sacrosanct that non abusive criticism is "offensive".

I have also spent two spells in premod for discussing moderation. Question our censorship and we'll put you in premod. Nice.

Atomboy's Resignation Letter

It seems that various people are abandoning the good sinking CiF ship.

I had certainly not intended to come back here to comment and am doing so now simply to add my name to the list, along with 13thDukeofWybourne (noted by chekhov) and MontanaWildhack.

There may be others but I think chekhov is right about Wybourne - although it is his choice entirely and we may both be wrong - and Montana has made her own declaration.

When we had the great moderation debate around the banning of JayReilly and many others, I felt that we were allowed to speak and then told what we were going to get.

We have had a number of people recently questioning the vast discrepancy between the stated moderation policy and the way it is actually seen to operate. There are many people who seem to think this is just sour grapes or sporadic fits of pique and not a matter of principle which is central to how a site like this operates. That is their choice or their lack of perception and they are welcome to whatever positions they occupy.

Georgina recently wrote a piece celebrating CiF's forth birthday. Perhaps those of us who brought up the moderation question were simply regarded as churlish and bad-mannered spoilsports to ruin the party, but the question was raised and again left unanswered.

As long as the moderation remains inconsistent, apparently malicious, apparently operating to an agenda outside the stated community guidelines, apparently motivated by each moderator's own prejudices and feuds and as long as this apparently officially sanctioned hidden set of rules operate as a form of censorship and crowd-control, why would anyone want to be part of CiF?

During the moderation debate mentioned above, many people, including MrPikeBishop said that they regarded CiF as a community. MrPikeBishop said that he regarded many of his fellow posters as friends. The official line tended to seem to want to play that down.

A community is more able to be flexible and accommodating to foibles and mishaps and allowing its members to stray from the accepted line. If CiF is not that, it is simply some kind of moderately open forum for debate and it will only have credibility if it can be seen to be operating to guidelines which are both acceptable and consistent. It is failing to do that.

Whether or not you like the editorial style or the people chosen to write or the apparent use of the site as a propaganda machine or sounding-board by politicians are all separate issues.

At the moment, CiF seems to be like an incompetent parent. It wants to be firm and consistent, but by the time it has been on the bottle for half the day and is becoming frazzled, bedraggled and at its paranoid wits' end, it simply lashes out and keeps forever proving itself unable to master the task.

Anyone who chooses to walk away from CiF knows very well that they will not leave a ripple and will not really be missed.

You simply get to the stage where you also know that you will really not miss CiF.

So, given the context of the other farewell letters and news above, this is me signing off and walking away, in all my various and mutating instars and avatars.

Atomboy

The Power of One

A comment on Georgina Henry's announcement that the world should celebrate the unadulterated wonderfulness of CiF.

GeorginaHenry

"So the least worst option is to keep comments open but remove those that breach the talk policy."

This would be all well and good were it true.

The fact is that we all see comments being deleted which we know have contravened nothing and would not upset the composure of an elderly maiden aunt.

What we seem to see is moderators operating without control to their own agenda and personal prejudices.

If you think that enhances the user experience and engenders loyalty and increases the credibility of The Guardian, all well and good.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with being in a minority of one.

Celebrate CiF's Fourth Birthday

Georgina Henry, the Executive Comment Editor (apparently) at The Guardian asked us all to join in the celebrations for CiF achieving the grand old age of four.

"Comment is free celebrates its fourth birthday next week, which in internet years is practically geriatric", she said.

Amongst all the non-existent party food and fizzy drinks, there was a sour note, however.

Speedkermit had this to say, first quoting Henry's lopsided view:

Bit by bit, this is helping us build a community that spends less time discussing our commissioning flaws and moderation practices and more time contributing positively.

That's very dismissive of genuine grievances. It also betrays the sad-assed truth that what counts as 'contributing positively' on CiF is whatever the moderators say it is on any given day. The most damaging aspect of this policy is that when you invite commentators such as Alistair Campbell, Peter Mandelson or David Cameron to write disingenuous electioneering pieces - with the inevitable result that they are met with a barrage of vitriolic abuse - that you feel obliged to censor the bile according to your own subjective preferences and give the appearance of being insufferably partisan. It doesn't do you any favours at all. At the risk of being moderated, the moderation policy on this site is a farce. Sorry I can't be more 'positive'.

---------

It seems that some people just cannot help spoiling a party, even when the whole point of the party is to pretend to the world that there is nothing wrong.