The art of deleting trash and cranks
The unashamed racism that proliferates in anonymous vents on newspaper websites must stop. And all it will require is for moderators to apply the same standards they do to print, writes Keith Gottschalk
THE CAPE Argus last year published a witty piece written by a remarkably bright and remarkably cosmopolitan 16-year-old girl. This Grade 10 pupil explored that old joke about someone who – instantly after arriving in South Africa or Cape Town – is asked by defensive locals what she thinks of the place.
Her answers played on her experiences of what her questioners really wanted to hear – and how this was usually predictable by their colour. Top marks to a star pupil of Cape Town’s French School: mademoiselle Kine Dineo MokwenaKessi.
Her chatty piece generated a staggering, unprecedented 1 369 online comments. Sadly, huge proportions of these were abusive, either to her or between the commentators themselves – and included the inevitable racists.
This comes against a background of an increasing drip of white racist assaults against black people in Cape Town.
The satirist Pieter Dirk-Uys was more precise than conventional political scientists when he analysed what had stopped, and what had not stopped, in 1994.
“In 1994,” he said, “white racists ceased to be politically correct.”
This recent increase in racist assaults and verbal abuse shows that white racists feel increasingly confident that there are no consequences for their words and actions.
Independent Online (IOL), which also carries content from The Star, set up a panel of lawyers, journalists and an IT professional for advice on what improvements are achievable with its online platforms.
The panel recommends that IOL should, like other news portals, edit its online contributions before publication. This would require two extra assistant editors at a time when internet competition and declining newsprint sales are forcing companies to retrench journalists to survive.
If this is unaffordable, two of the panellists recommended IOL ends its online comment facilities.
However, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Independent’s newspapers have always edited letters to the editor, selecting the best half-dozen and trimming those to fit the limited space available.
These assistant editors have long developed implicit borders as to how aggressive polemics may become, and which level of personal abuse is a cut-off. They are the obvious staff to apply the same standards to e-mails sent to an online forum.
One practical challenge is that letters to the editor follow a 24-hour cycle for selecting, rejecting and editing, while e-mail forums may operate with as little as a 24-second delay. It is clearly not affordable to have editors online every minute for, say, 18 hours daily, to delete trash and cranks.
But an online forum doesn’t have to be run for instant gratification. Many online e-mail forums require once-off registration and are edited just like a newspaper.
If, for example, IOL refreshed its online forums every hour or second hour, on the hour, its readers would swiftly adjust to that cycle. And if the editors simply selected the best one or half-dozen e-mails and SMSes per hour, readability and attractiveness would go ballistic.
My proposal ticks the boxes for what’s possible.
For a piece to provoke 1 369 comments is a once-a-year phenome- non. More usual is that a piece generates zero responses or less than a dozen. Many SMSes and e-mails are one-liners or still much shorter than most print letters to the editor, so they take less time to select or reject.
Online pieces do not have to be edited for length, so this saves still more editorial time. For an experienced editor to cast an eye over 10 to 30 e-mails and delete all but the six or eight best reads would take less than half an hour out of each hour or two-hour cycle.
One upside would be that the bulk of comments – brainlessly banal and boring – would vanish. When wannabe contributors know they are competing to be selected, they will try harder to be bright.
The lazy who recycle abuse, stereotypes or urban legends will drop out. And not a minute too soon.
Far more readers will be attracted to and stay loyal to those online forums moderated to be intelligent, witty, original and well informed. This will also be commercially appealing to advertisers.
Another aspect where it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel is anonymity. Newspapers that do not permit pen names except in rare circumstances cringingly allow even the most defamatory online abuse to be anonymous.
Facelessness encourages crank minds to spew verbal abuse they would feel embarrassed by if attaching their name were compulsory.
IOL must apply the same standards to print and online forums. No name, no e-mail. If personal circumstances mean you can’t appear in public with your name, then you must make your case to the editor as a deserving exception.
None of this needs to prevent online forums from being funkier and hipper than print letters.
No one proposes stopping fad acronyms, slang, and zany grammar and punctuation.
I just propose that onliners should have to use their brain cells productively and positively.
I also propose that IOL invites Kine Dineo Mokwena-Kessi to write one provocative contribution every six to 12 months.