Day: July 17, 2003

Categories
Weblogging

On identity and edits

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The discussion about tracking edits, and editing our weblog writing continues, and perhaps rightly so. Though this originally started out as a disagreement between two people, the impact is going beyond these players and may change how we view what we do here. Ultimately it may drive some of us out of this space altogether.

I don’t want to cover too much old ground about Mark Pilgrim’s now defunct Winer Watch. In a nutshell, Mark, in an effort to hold Dave Winer accountable for his writing, started tracking edits Winer made in his weblog posts. Uproar ensued, sides were taken, shots fired, and the virtual dead litter the waves as jagged debris, eddying the smooth flow of our thoughtful discourse.

What Mark did with Dave and what Dave did with Mark is unimportant. Popularity aside, they are, after all, only two of us. A far more critical issue is that of weblog writers pulling material or substantially editing it after publication, and the writers so-called ‘contract of accountability’ with their readership.

You can’t swing a dead cat around this discussion without hitting Rebecca Blood’s Weblog Ethics, which covers this very issue. In this, Rebecca wrote:

Changing or deleting entries destroys the integrity of the network. The Web is designed to be connected; indeed, the weblog permalink is an invitation for others to link. Anyone who comments on or cites a document on the Web relies on that document (or entry) to remain unchanged. A prominent addendum is the preferred way to correct any information anywhere on the Web. If an addendum is impractical, as in the case of an essay that contains numerous inaccuracies, changes must be noted with the date and a brief description of the nature of the change.
…
History can be rewritten, but it cannot be undone. Changing or deleting words is possible on the Web, but possibility does not always make good policy. Think before you publish and stand behind what you write. If you later decide you were wrong about something, make a note of it and move on.

Rebecca’s points are excellent, both in writing and in intent. I cannot fault either. By being careful with what you write, and making online corrections of your material, you are being held accountable for your writing. Well and fine, but what makes any of you think this is a good thing?

Let’s take a look at an existing example. In my comments, Werner made mention of the fact that Dave Winer had edited out a comment in a his Thanks for the Emails posting. He also, at my urging, wrote a posting on this, quoting the edited material:

* In an earlier version of the “Thanks for the E-Mails” posting, he wrote that the campaign against him was organized by “an alcoholic, a representative of BigCo and a 16 year old kid”. Everyone who knows the players understands these are references to Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby and Aaron Swartz.
* In a comment about Keith Ballinger’s slide about RPC at XML DevCon, Dave stated that Keith either was ignorant or a liar, and basically accused him lying in public to further the goals of a BigCO.

On this issue, Werner wrote:

I will defend Dave’s right to make edits, or anyone rights to make edits to what she or he writes. Whether it is for the flow of writing, or for correcting grammatical mistakes, your content is yours, to do with as you please.

This does however not take away that you do have to take responsibility for all your words, even if they appear only briefly on your weblog. If you have an issue with anger and frustration and frequently need to edit your posts to remove this anger, you should realize that editing does not remove them from the minds of the people that have already read them. And that maybe you need a different approach to manage your angry writing.

As another person who can be, shall we say, passionate with my writing, I understand what Werner says – we should be more careful about what we publish in the first place. Especially if we’re attacking another person.

Dave Winer should be more careful about what he says online about people. He is not. By tracking edits, we could hold Dave Winer accountable for these remarks. Arguing against this clearly puts me on the side of the devil, but can you all not see the ultimate danger with this accountability? To explain, I want to also enter the online discussion about identity.

Joi Ito wrote an essay recently on identity titled “I’m not Joi Ito, that’s just my name”. In it he wrote:

With ubiquitous computing, decentralize databases, information stored and disseminated everywhere, it is exceedingly important to know that 1) once information is created, it exists forever and can not be “erased”, 2) data mining will become cheaper and easier, 3) transborder data flows will become seamless, 4) profiling will become a common way for businesses and governments to efficiently focus their attention on people and groups that meet certain criteria.

What does this mean? The risk now is that you can be profiled and categorized in a variety of ways that can hurt your ability to travel, get a job, get insurance, get married, etc. for things that match a profile that increases risk to the establishment even if only in a statistical way. Interaction with radicals or reading of radical material could get you in this profile so the chilling effect on dissent will be real. It means that trying to “control information” once it is created is nearly impossible. The trick is to create as little information as possible and to make it as difficult to data mine as possible

In these days of heightened security, paranoia really, whatever you say can and will be used against you. I think that we’re all aware of this as webloggers, and for the most part, accept this. But what others say can and will be used against you, also, and therein lies the most dangerous aspect of weblogging – therein lies the accountability. We howl when a person defames us, but what happens if they make a comment such as Winer’s, and then edit it? We howl even louder and scramble to our aggregators in order to capture and persist…

What? Exactly what are we really persisting beyond the moment? The fact that Winer made a derogatory statement and then edited it out, or an association between a certain weblogger and alcoholism, and that another weblogger is a liar?

You see that’s the other shoe dropping in Joi’s essay – it doesn’t matter the origination of the source of the data because ultimately it is the data that persists not the event that created the data. That’s why I say, the sooner this data is pulled, the less chance to desseminate, the better because ultimately it will harm the person being discussed, not the person making the discussion.

Months ago Dave Winer made a statement about me online, one of many, most unflattering (but some positive). I can’t recall the exact words of this statement but I think it had something to do with me being mentally unstable.

You who read my weblog know for a fact that, yes, I am mentally unstable – the instability of a person who fights back against the status quo, against the tyranny of the commons regardless of the ‘rightness’ of the cause. I see that as the greatest danger in this new medium – the sameness that threatens all spontaneity in what we do here. And yes, I am mad as a hatter for keeping up this fight.

Winer pulled the statement before I had a chance to make a copy, or I’d replicate it here for your edification – it really was classic Winer. In fact, I believe it was up less than 10 minutes. Good. Because if he hadn’t and a person were to search on my name in Google, eventually they would see an association between me and ‘mental instability’. Without an awareness that Winer attacks without a moment’s provocation, the person reading the statement wouldn’t know to filter this comment based on prior understanding of the person making the statement and the person the statement was about. In fact, if they were to look up references to Winer online, his ’status’ as recorded in many online publications would seem to give him credibility. Doesn’t matter what “we know” – it’s all in the data.

Now, it is true that if the statement Winer makes lasts long enough it can be grabbed by a Gooblebot, but unless my understanding of Google is completely off, this doesn’t mean that the association between me and the comment are permanent – especially if the reference is pulled. Google’s cache is not historically regressive. Neither are historical recording efforts such as the Wayback Machine that granular in what they record.

I have to pause when I read the statements that people make that what’s on the Internet is forever. This is simply not true. Not a bit of it. You have to maintain the data online, or references to it, or a mirror of it for it to persist. I lost a multi-part science fiction story I started online because I accidentally deleted my copy of it, and the online version didn’t persist once it was pulled. Darnit.

No, the only way this comment will last beyond the original act of deleting it is in aggregators, and since they don’t maintain history, and don’t persist, the comment should eventually go the way comments of this nature should go – into the wasteland of “Bad Data Lost on the Net – Thank God”.

Well, aggregators didn’t use to maintain history, didn’t use to persist. Now our clever technical folks have shown how easy it is to persist these comments, and not only persist them – highlight them to the point where data propagation is almost guaranteeed. With this, the statement Winer made about me would not only live to be read by others, perhaps possible employers – it will be highlighted. In gaudy color.

Worse, dozens of outraged webloggers will rise in my defense and quote what Winer said again and again – thereby increasing the dessimination of this information more completely and more thoroughly, as well as diffusing the origination of the quote until all that’s left is the bald statement propagated again and again – Shelley Powers is mentally unstable.

(Yeah, you heard it here first.)

By holding a person ‘accountable’, by persisting in saying that we should never make edits, never pull data, never change what we write, we add to the noise of the Internet, without adding to either the truth or the quality of the data on the Internet.

Want to hold a person accountable for what they say? Then make a pictorial snapshot of their weblog entry and post the image online. Reference the person’s act but not the subject and what you’ll propagate is the correct data – that this person makes derogatory statements about people to cause trouble, and then pulls the information to maintain his or her own seeming innocence. Say, “Here’s an example”, but don’t write what the example is. Don’t add to the problem.

That’s for a person’s writing and accountability. On a more personal level as regards editing:

Ten Reasons Why wrote an essay on this issue for his own weblogging editorial policy, and I commend him for this. It sounds very much like Rebecca’s own policy. An excerpt:

CHANGES

What might be changed without notice: spelling, punctuation, typos, grammar, incorrectly entered URLs, and other non-substantive material like formatting, layout, and page design. Non-substantive material is that which can be changed without semantically affecting the entry.

What will not be changed without notice: Anything substantive that semantically affects the tone or meaning of the entry or would result in a factual difference.

Process for changes. If I notice incorrect information, if I need to “tone down” my language, or if I say something I regret, I will correct that error either by a new post with the change that links back to the original post and/or an addition (see below) to the post that contains the information being changed.

ADDITIONS

Additions to entries. Additions to an entry after the time of original publication will be indicated as such, either inline or as an appended paragraph marked as “Update.”

DELETIONS

Deleting entire entries. Entire entries will not be knowingly or intentionally deleted from this weblog.

Deleting portions of entries If it becomes necessary to delete a portion of an entry (e.g. for legal reasons or because I have later decided it is too offensive or incorrect to be allowed to remain in public view), the deleted portion will be replaced with a notice indicating the general nature of what has been deleted and the reason for deletion.

As with Rebecca, well written, concise, unambigious. I respect his effort and his policy.

But you see, I’m not Greg. And I’m not Rebecca. I’m not a journalist, and this isn’t a professional journal. I fuck up. I get angry. I make statements I regret, usually about my own person life. I hope I hold myself accountable for uncalled for attacks, with issued apologies and retractions. I try. However, I will continue to edit out material I feel has violated personal confidences, including my own. Without making an annotation of of my actions, justifying it, or making excuses for it. I wil try harder in the future not to do this – but no guarantees.

Because, you see, that spontaneous part of me that leads me at times to write things I regret is the best part of me, not the worst. It is that part of me that is most human. It is that part of me that leads me to learn more about myself.

And as for editorial policies – though Greg’s Ten Reason’s Editorial Policy reads somewhat like the Ten Commandments, he, nor anyone else is God, I’m not Moses, and these weblogs are not burning tablets.

Amen.

Categories
Just Shelley

Marbles

I was a real tom boy growing up, more interested in climbing trees then in playing with dolls. I remember getting a Barbie doll, once, and it was a real novelty at first as I tried to slip tiny little shoes on tiny little feet, and tight shirts over not so tiny hard plastic breasts. However, I quickly lost one of the shoes, and I wasn’t particularly enamored with female physiology then and now so Barbie ended up in a box of unused, discarded toys. I believe one of our dogs eventually found it and took it off somewhere to chew.

There was a succession of rather disgruntling Christmases where I was given dolls that cried and dolls that wet their diapers and dolls that drank out of bottles, while my brother was given really cool stuff like a mini-car racing set and a BB gun. I was especially envious of the BB gun until Mike accidentally shot his best friend in the head with it and that was the last we saw of the gun.

(Mike was also was given a Boy Scout knife, which he promptly lost when he played Mumbly Peg with it in the ground by my feet one summer afternoon and the knife bounced and ended up point first in my thigh.)

My parents weren’t dummies and they eventually realized that girl toys held little interest for me, so they started giving me things I really could enjoy — a trike, a bicycle, a toy doctor’s kit, balls, musical instruments, and a tape recorder. One Christmas, after not so subtle hints on my part, I got my own bag of marbles.

Now, the year I got the marbles, the really big thing among the kids of my crowd (my crowd being the entire fourth grade class of the town’s one and only elementary school) was playing marbles. Whenever we weren’t running around playing hide n’ seek, or runaway, or tetherball, or swimming, we were playing marbles. It was mainly boys that played, but there were some other girls besides myself who liked the game.

I kept my marbles in a soft carry bag made of blue plush, with a gold drawstring closure my mother had made for me. We all had our favorite marbles, the ones we really hated losing during play, and my favorites were an orange colored aggie and a blue swirly. I’d take them out at night, polishing them against my nightgown and holding them up to the light, gloating over the rich color and sparkly surfaces.

In spite of the color of the aggies and the sparkle of the shooters and the mystery of the cats-eyes, the real prizes were the steelies — marbles made of steel rather than glass. However, the kids in our town didn’t have your average, every day steely. We got our steelies from the Blacksmith.

The Blacksmith had a shop downtown, close to the general goods store we called the Candy Store (because that’s where we bought our penny candy), and across the street from the Post Office. The shop was a bit rundown, with a grubby looking tree out front, and had a large door that opened big enough to allow a car to back in. Next to the door was a small dirty window with a sign proclaiming type of business and hours of operation. To one side was a bunch of bushes that grew by chance, and between them and the tree, you’d pass the shop if you didn’t know it was there. Of course, we all knew it was there.

When the Smith wasn’t busy, he and one or two of his friends would sit in chairs on the sidewalk in front of the shop, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting and looking out at the cars passing.

I do remember the afternoon I went to get my steely quite clearly: the shop, the warmth of the sun reflecting off the sidewalk, and the Smith sitting out front, wearing a jeans coverall darkened with soot and grime, red and dirty white handkerchief stuffed into his back pocket, fanning himself with a folded newspaper. I don’t remember the Smith’s face, but the hands — I can still see the hands. Skin permanently darkened, calloused and scarred from years of work at the forge.

I was a bit hesitant at approaching this man who was so dirty and large and unknown. I had to be egged on my best friend, whose name I can’t remember. When I did get the nerve to approach the Smith and ask if I could, please, have a steely, his quiet, thoughtful eyes resting on my face a moment; then, with slow, deliberate movements, the Smith turned around and walked into his shop, not saying a word. When he returned, his hand was in front of him, fingers curved around something I couldn’t see. I held out my own hand, much smaller, delicate in comparison and only slightly dirty from summer dust, and into it the Smith dropped this perfect silver globe, surprising me momentarily because of the weight.

I rolled the steely around my hand and felt the fading warmth from the Smith’s hand, the smoothness of the surface, the deep glow of the metal. Looking up to thank the Blacksmith, the sun was behind his back and his face in shadows. I squinted against the light as I mumbled out my thanks, and I thought I heard a rumble of laughter in reply, or maybe it was a car going by at that time. Hard to say. But I had my steely, and I and my friend went running off to the playground to try it out, see what captures I could make with my new prize.

Over the summer, I never lost my steely but I did lose other marbles, including the orange aggie and the blue swirly. However, I also won new favorites, and everything tended to balance out. We were all friends, after all. Well, most of us were friends.

There was one boy my age who was a bully, plain and simple. His older brother used to beat up on other boys and this kid looked to follow in the same line. Surly, I remember that about him. Surly, tow headed, a bit stocky, and just plain mean. He scared most of the kids except for the few that were bigger then him, and they were scared of his brother. Between them, the two ruled the playground.

The bully and I just didn’t like each other and hadn’t for years, calling each other names, shoving each other around. Once, in third grade, when I was perched up on a cement wall above the steps leading into the school he pushed me off, and I fell on my back on the steps. I had the breath knocked out of me and scraped my arm real bad. When the teacher came out to see what the fuss was, I couldn’t find the air to push out the words to tell her what had happened and she assumed I had fallen on my own and sent me to the nurse to get my arm taken care of. Since in those days the worst scum on earth was a tattle tale, the bully never got in trouble.

It was towards the end of summer just before I started fifth grade and we were playing marbles one early evening when the bully showed up. He started taunting me as usual, but he seemed meaner that day, if possible. I tried to ignore him because I was having too much fun playing, but this just made him madder. Finally he kicked my pile of marbles scattering them about, including my favorite steely. As I watched it roll off and get lost in the grass, I jumped to my feet to run after it. When I stood, the bully kicked me in my privates.

Being kicked in the privates when you’re a girl isn’t pleasant, but it doesn’t have the crippling effect that it does on boys. The bully’s kick really didn’t impact on me that much and I remember brushing it off and started walking, quickly, towards him, determined to make this guy pay, once and for all. I’d wrestled with boys before including my best friend, and I wasn’t afraid to roll about in the dirt or get a little cut up. Might say I was a bit used to it by then.

As I got closer I noticed how much taller I was then the bully, me coming from a tall family and being a girl and girl’s getting their height sooner than boys. When I was in fist throwing distance, he moved back slightly, which surprised me a bit. I looked into his eyes and it shocked me to see that he was scared of me! The boy who terrorized the playground was afraid of me!

Now, I don’t know if I was an overly bright child but I was shrewd, the shrewdness that comes with just being a kid and trying to survive childhood. It dawned on me that he wasn’t scared of me because I could hurt him — he was scared because he realized at that moment there was a possibility I could beat him. And I was a girl. Being beaten by another boy would be bad, but to be beaten by a girl…well, that would ruin the bully for sure.

I’d like to say some noble instinct came over me, turning me away from the fight, but no such thing. Some kid’s parent showed up at that point and stopped it, telling us all to go on home. I wasn’t too happy about it, either, because I was really looking forward to putting that kid on the ground and driving his face into the dirt. I could taste the dirt in my mouth, feel his head under my hands, so real was the vision.

That was the last summer I played marbles. During the next year, I climbed trees less and danced more, discovering the Beatles and other rock n’ roll, spending more time with other girls, becoming more awkward around my best friend and the other boys. I was growing up. My bag of marbles began to collect dust and eventually my mother gave it away.

I never did find my steely that one summer day. As for the bully? He never bothered me again

Categories
Writing

Go Fly a Kite

The talk is of war and politics and the economy, in an endless cycle of news that drags one’s spirits down. I don’t want to talk about these things. Instead, I want to talk about kites.

Probably one thing that transcends cultural differences is kites. Kites are made, and flown, the world over. There’s few children that haven’t built a flimsy device out of paper and fragile wood and then promptly crashed it into something such as a tree, ala Charlie Brown.

For most of us, our first kites are little diamonds made of very fragile wood and paper, tied to a long, long string. We’d put them together, sometimes with the help of a parent or other adult, and take it out for a trial flight. I don’t know about you all, but I had my first lessons in flight, wind, and flight without wind, with a kite.

Someone had to hold the kite and run backwards very quickly, tossing the kite high into the air. If the wind was right, up the little diamond would fly. If the wind wasn’t right, whoever your flying partner was had a marvelous workout. “Run faster! Run faster!”, you’d scream. “I am running”, they’d scream back, face red, puffing like a blow fish. Half the fun of kite flying was watching the poor soul desperately trying to get the kite into the air so they could sneak off to collapse while you were distracted.

After quickly breaking these kites, or losing them into a tree, or having them removed because we “buzzed” the family cat, we either progressed on to sturdier models or, for most of us, we went on to other toys, other hobbies.

Unless we happen to become someone else’s flying partner some day (“Run faster. Run faster”) that’s the last experience many people have with kites.

However, for a lucky few, kites re-enter our lives. And this time, they stay.

Flying a kite.

Throwing a kite into the wind and hoping it catches; sending the kite dancing on transparent bands of air that originate here in this place and there in that country and high in on this mountain, and and low, skimming the ocean, until they reach you and your kite. And you soar! Can’t you just feel the tug of the string in your hand, head back, eyes on a bright spot high overhead?

Throwing a kite into the wind and the wind is fickle, maybe even a little mean, and it catches your kite only to throw it down to the ground at spar breaking speeds, out of control, spiraling. Ground breaking thud. Wince. You swear you hear ghostly evil laughter whip past you as it seems to pick your kite up off the ground only to send it thudding back again and again, until your kite is a tattered remnant of cloth and broken wood.

Standing alone on a beach and trying to get your kite to rise and no wind wants to play. You kite just sits there, and you have no one to grab it and run with it, hoping to tease one single puff of air into noticing your kite long enough to take it for at least the most gentle ride.

There is nothing more forlorn then a kite flyer on an empty beach with a kite and no wind. Still….

…there is that anticipation of the next flight, the next wind, the next moment of soaring that keeps you coming back again. And again. And again.