Occam’s RazR

Filtering is a delicate balance — an craft, moreso than an art.

Publishing to the internet carries a degree of responsibility. You are accountable for what appears on your site, even the comments made by others.

This is the 800,000 pound elephant-shaped obstacle in the room for big businesses that are considering a foray into new media. When you buy into the conversation, you may get more than you bargained for. The more people involved in your community, the more risk you carry about what they say. You do have options:

• Require registration
  onerous to new users, the paranoid, and those who want to stay anonymous
• Hire many moderators
  whether professional or assigned, an expensive proposition
• Employ content filters
  a low-cost solution, but they are still rather dumb and can lead to “reverse embarrassment”
• Lower expectations

Context is King

It’s not enough to throw in a list of obvious profanities and slurs. Smart filters need to be able to judge the context. Here’s the example that caught my eye from the discussion page of Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, posted December 31st:

ESPN - Conversations: Do the Patriots need to run more to win it all? via kwout

(I would have linked directly to the comment itself, but that feature is not enabled on the comment threads - another necessary tweak for another rant someday.)

Here’s the “offensive” language in action:

ONCE AGAIN, TMQ STARTS WITH HIS PREFERRED CONCLUSION AND THEN COMES UP WITH THE STATS

TMQ is clearly looking for the #### in New England’s armor (so are 11 other playoff teams). But does he have to be so baldy dishonest?

The word blanked out is “chink.” The “chink in the armor.” Yes, in the past “chink” has been a slur word referring to Asians. Somehow, I don’t think the word “slant” has been redacted out of descriptions of the routes run by slot receivers, even though “slant” is also a derogatory reference to Asians.

Your Hidden Prejudices

Some filters are even more dumb. My friend Rob tried to register his blog with Meebo, and got blocked. His blog is named Stuffleufagus. If you look very carefully, you can see the letters f-a-g toward the end of the word. It’s obvious that Rob is secretly trying to promote smoking. God forbid he would ever create a tribute sites to athletes like C###ius Clay or ###lord Perry; or films such as Octo#####, ####tail, or Fun with #### and Jane.

The technology is available to parse these differences. In the Meebo example, it’s an easy fix. In the ESPN situation, you’re looking at a more hefty expenditure in either software, programming, fuzzy-logic training, or just plain-old human moderators. Even then, the creatively profane will find ways to turn the filter into a parody of itself, using characters that look like letters to get around that stupid $#!t.

Lowering the Bar

I’ve deliberately not talked about the last suggestion: lowering expectations. It’s the cheapest and least insulting of the bunch. You simply tell the members of the community - up front and on the way in - that they run the risk of getting their feelings hurt. Which is the grown-up thing to do, even if it isn’t the “marketing” answer. The marketing/PR people will have a conniption if they discovered that a few people allowed a “bad word” on the website to forever tarnish brand equity. There’s no telling, after all, how many real potential clients that represents. (”Real potential.” That’s a good one!)

At the end of the day, corporate sites and communities have a different set of priorities and fears than average idiots like myself. They have shareholders and investors with money on the line. I don’t have a monetary stake. They’ve got massive intangible assets built within “the brand.” The only intangibles I have are the inherent pressures of having my wife (seldom), my mom (likely), or my preacher buddy Drew peeking in from time to time (religiously). And it’s not like I’ve got overwhelming site traffic to deal with here.

Yet - the average person sees roughly the same comment interface on a political forum, on this blog, on ESPN.com, and on his local newspaper website. He is invited to participate and the tools look darn similar. And I’m not so sure he’s willing to cut big business sites the same sort of slack - whether they insult his emotions with the lack of moderation and the leakage of a “non-PC” term - or they insult his intelligence with senseless nanny-state word-blocking. It’s not in our nature to give businesses the benefit of the doubt.

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