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The Effects of Censorship — a Tale of Two Websites
An anonymous reader writes "Two message boards devoted to the same topic have each been on-line for roughly eight years. One is censored, and the other is not. The two forums are virtually the only ones devoted to their topic (polygraph testing, a fairly arcane one), so they're in "competition" only with each other. The result? The uncensored forum has more than six times as many posts as the censored one." To be fair, there are a few other differences between the two forums, but the point may still be valid.
I shouldn't have to say this. The article doesn't talk at all about the quality of the posting in the forums, only that in one, dissenting opinions are banned (and, being said by the competition, I take it with a boatload of salt).
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
One search engine has been online for roughly 10 years, the other for about 13. Both devoted to search the web. One is Google and rules the world, the other is Altavista and almost disappeared. Conclusion? There are a lot of factors that influence success; this article is useless.
22,919 is not 6.5 times 4,579 or anywhere near 30,000. And if you include the private posts on the other forum, it's down to less than twice as many posts.
I guess it was a typo, as it now reads 29,919 with 22,919 stroked out.
You are wrong.
Censorship is the correct word to describe the practice of a third party deleting or reediting publications. Google for it. If you choose to assign it a negative connotation to the word, that is your prerogative.
Football Odds
I can say that this "article" is quite off base. I own a fairly busy political debate forum. We're a moderated forum by choice. We have a clear set of rules in place aimed specifically at maintaining quality and discouraging quantity, regardless of whatever opinion someone may present, and we have a group of moderators who cover the entire political spectrum. We've been around less than six years (compared to the 8-9 years in the article), and we sit at just short of a quarter million posts. Who cares? Post count only matters for those who believe quantity is more important than quantity. I see all these forums that are proud of their massive volume of content, yet it is clear they haven't placed nearly as much emphasis on ensuring that their sites offer anything resembling quality. The "censorship" claims are a load of bushwa. Censorship is silencing at the hand of government. On a privately owned and funded website, there is no such thing as censorship. A person has just as much right to espouse the positive aspects of polygraph testing at an anti-polygraph website as a person who stands at the front door of a Ford dealership and tells everyone walking in that Chevy offers a superior product. And a member at any forum has the right to find a different forum to post their dribble. What he have here is a moderator at a website-- one who as an individual has over 15% of the total post count of the "uncensored" forum and who single-handedly is only 300 posts short of the total post count at the opposing forum-- trying to make his site of choice look good with the forum-equivalent of a press release. And as we all know, you can't post it on the internet if it's not true. My site has been on the opposing side of this type of situation. We've been accused of everything: They're too strict. They're biased. They censor. They ban people for disagreeing. They take the fun out of political debate. I've heard it all. I've been at it long enough to know that my site-- much like these two polygraph sites with radically opposing positions-- is not a perfect fit for everyone. Some people like moderated forums, some like the unmoderated forums. If someone leaves our site for another site because the other site is a better fit, so be it. It doesn't mean we're in competition with the other site. It simply means that one particular person is more comfortable at a different site. But I like quality. I would rather have 10 members with 10 good posts apiece than 1,000 members with 1,000 posts apiece that consist of nothing buy smilies. But wow would a post count of 1,000,000 sure look better than 100. Looks, of course, can be deceiving. BTW, I've been lurking at Slashdot for years and this is the first headline that got me to comment. Please be nice. Mike
Better yet, the article is in the anti polygraph, and they are those that argue to have more posts. Is there an "objective" document somewhere, rather than complains of "And yeah.. they even removed our posts!".
I guess the difference is not as much due to being "censored" (i.e. moderated) or not. One site is for professionals in the field, the other is for activists who fear that technology for some reason.
Anyone could create the exact opposite effect if they wished to: create an unmoderated forum on, let's say, chrome plating technology. Then create a moderated forum debating the supposed ill-effects of chromium on human health. Want to bet that the "censored" anti-chromium site would get six times as many posts as the technical one?
The line between censorship and moderation is thick and blurred, if indeed there really is one.
It's pretty clear on slashdot. Moderation = no comment is ever deleted or altered; comments become more or less visible due to moderation but anyone can easily view every single comment exactly as it was entered. Censorship = entire comments or parts of comments completely disappear or change and the originals are permanantly removed.
A quick check of Google Groups shows that soc.history (my favorite USENET group back in 1994) has 42477 topics, while soc.history.moderated has only 7482, around one-sixth as many topics. But I would never pick soc.history over soc.history.moderated. The quality of posts in the latter is much better. Indeed, I had to abandon soc.history entirely around 1995 or so due to the flooding of the group by "Serdar Argic" (a semi-automated genocide-denier that argued that the rest of the world had it all wrong and that the starving Armenians had massacred the poor defenseless Ottoman Turks during World War I). The number of posts is far less important than the content of those posts, and some forms of censorship (restrained moderation) end up producing a much more interesting and intelligent discussion than a free-for-all.
Make cheese not war 8:)
This would have been much more amusing if it had been moderated +5 Informative.