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.

Comments

But the quality of the posts

[BattleCat]

? What about s/n ratio on censored and uncensored forums ? if 5 of 6 posts on latter messageboard are offtopic (goatse, flamewars, irrelevant and trollish) , then s/n ratio of censored forum is waay higher.

Re:But the quality of the posts

[Apatharch]

Judging which posts qualify as noise is not a straightforward issue, though; one's results could vary wildly according to exactly where one chooses to draw the line. And when all the moderators drawing that line are on one side of an argument, any deletions which might objectively be judged as overzealous will most likely favour that side. The only way to be sure of seeing the whole argument is if there is no moderation (or, less euphemistically, censorship).

As far as the uncensored site attracting more discussion, that can only be judged conclusively if the number of posts deleted on the moderated site is known - although they would have to outnumber existing posts by a factor of 5.5 for the sites to have had equivalent levels of traffic.

(All of which disregards bannings from both sites, which would also be a factor.)

Re:But the quality of the posts

[corporatemutantninja]

In regard to this question of quality vs. quantity, where is the line between "censored" and "moderated"? I'm thinking of the official WoW forums compared Elitist Jerks forums. The EJ forums are heavily moderated, whereas the WoW forums are not. The WoW forums get many, many, many times as many posts...yet most of it is total crap. Anybody who wants to seriously discuss WoW and not just have flame wars goes to EJ.

And in response to concerns that "oversight doesn't scale", the advantage of moderation is not just that the moderators weed out the junk, but that people end up posting less junk in the first place.

Melodramatic

[minginqunt]

Censored? Do we mean, less melodramatically, "moderated"?

Perhaps the author is under the impression that quantity and quality are the same thing.

Re:Melodramatic

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. And moderation doesn't necessarily have to mean deleting posts. As a FidoNet echo moderator many years ago, 90% of what I had to do was to tell users to cool off or they were gonna get banned. Only nodes that were deliberately sending spam (or refused to listen to the moderator) got banned. It wasn't like we could really delete messages anyhow (there was no equivalent of UseNet's 'cancel'), but my moderation for local boards (where I did have the power to delete) was basically the same.

I only ever deleted a very small number of posts, most at the request of the original posters.

Re:Melodramatic

[ScentCone]

You are wrong

Not really.

From the dictionary: censorial control exercised repressively

What you're missing here is the complete absence of any repression. You are not being "censored" (in the way that the word is both usefully used and somewhat in the way that it's commonly used) when you can find or create any number of other outlets to say what you will, when you will, both anonymously and not.

There's a reason that the terms "edited" and "moderated" are correctly used in cases like this. It's because to use the terms "censored" completely cheapens that word as it's used to describe its actual, repressive, authoritarian use as in (for the obvious examples these days) China, Iran, North Korea, etc. You don't experience repression when you use a moderated message board. You go there BECAUSE it's moderated. It's a choice. Censored public discourse restricts choice, while moderated discourse in which you choose to participate is itself the expression of choice.

If you choose to assign it a negative connotation to the word, that is your prerogative.

You didn't find the connotation of the word, as trotted out in the summary, to already be dripping with negativity? The summary correctly assigns a repressive tone to the word "censorship," but is completely tone-deaf in applying it to the topic being discussed, where it's not meaningful.

Anecdotal Evidence Does not Warrant a Headline

[Russianspi]

Wow. One website has a green background, and another has a blue background. The one with the green background has 12x as many posts as the other one. Coincidence? I think not.

Pro Vs Anti

[eldavojohn]

To be fair, there are a few other differences between the two forums, but the point may still be valid.

I'll say.

My first suspicion was that one just reeked of horrid angry fruit salad 1999 intarwebs design (dancing Jesu & flying toasters with a midi track in octaves meant for torture timed with a blinking marquee tag). Honestly, they look about on par although I prefer the simplicity of YaBB though in my opinion it doesn't seem to be an issue here. Normally this is the biggest discriminator for a website's success, not the content.

I did find it interesting to note the slant to these message boards though. The 'uncensored' website has this text as it's homepage:

Did you know:

• The consensus view among scientists is that polygraph testing has no scientific basis?
• The FBI considered the creator of the lie detector test to be a phony and a crackpot?
• The man who started the CIA's polygraph program thinks that plants can read human thoughts?
• The foremost polygraph advocate in academia was discredited by a federal judge?
• A prominent past-president of the American Polygraph Association is a phony Ph.D., and this premier polygraph organization doesn't consider it an ethics problem?
• The longest polygraph school produces newly minted polygraphers in just 14 weeks -- less than half the time it takes to graduate from a typical barber college?
• The Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment (the erstwhile DoD Polygraph Institute) suppressed a study suggesting that innocent blacks are more likely to fail the polygraph than innocent whites?
• The researcher who developed the U.S. Government's polygraph Test for Espionage and Sabotage "thought the whole security screening program should be shut down?"
• The National Academy of Sciences concluded that "[polygraph testing's] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies?"
• Spies Ignatz Theodor Griebl, Karel Frantisek Koecher, Jiri Pasovsky, Larry Wu-tai Chin, Aldrich Hazen Ames, Ana Belen Montes, and Leandro Aragoncillo all passed the polygraph?
• One of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history passed the polygraph and killed again?
• Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents know full well that the lie detector is bogus?
• You don't have to be a psychopath, go to spy school, or somehow believe your own lies to fool the polygraph? (We'll reveal how it's done.)

While the 'censored' board has this as its opening text:

The Polygraph Place

6.5x posts in unmoderated forums....

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Re:6 times as many posts is not necessarily ...

[The_Wilschon]

Parent is making things up. I'm certainly not gett~$^NO CARRIER