by Barry D. Liss on October 12th, 2009
My relationship with the Daily Herald’s blog has come to end. Recently the site administrators took two of my posts down for violating the terms of service and banned the user with whom I was arguing. The site administrator said he could have banned me. I think I’ll remove the opportunity from him. I don’t want to make it seem like I have sour grapes; I have enjoyed my time on the blog.
There are a couple qualms I have. If I write them down, perhaps I will be able to relax a bit. First, the user with whom I was arguing is anonymous and he will simply log-in under a different name. In fact, I have reason to believe he did only hours after he was banned! He will continue his vulgar and hate-filled assaults, now without my impediment.
Second, it’s dubious whether or not my comments rose to the level of serious ad-hominem. In other words, my criticisms were hard yet warranted. I challenged him to a public debate. Further, I called him a cowardly, rude, anti-intellectual, reactionary, iconoclast chump. Now, I realize these are not the friendly names one would associate with polite discussion – yet this was a Smashmouth debate. The criticisms hold true – and I stand by those words. He embodied each of these labels. His words were vile and the assaults he employed are well described by my reproof.
This brings me to my third point. I called the site administrator, and he said the WDH didn’t like the escalation of conflict. He was reasonable, as usual. But this is what bugs me – the situation was monitored and people were aware that I was rhetorically lambasted, and they did nothing about it. Had I not defended myself, I imagine the hostile attacks would still be up there. In fact, similar attacks went unnoticed. I don’t mind mixing it up with people who insult others anonymously – it’s part of the blogosphere, and it provides an interesting challenge. But in this case, I felt like a boxer with one hand tied behind his back. Thus, it was a no-win situation.
So here we are. I have logged out of my account on the Herald’s website and do not intend to contribute further. I shall passively peruse, but no longer actively contribute. I need elbow-room to perform at my best. If I can’t authentically defend myself on the WDH site, best I just call it good and bow out. It’s been fun. I’m sure they’ll get along just fine without me – though I imagine the quality of the arguments will be slightly diminished. It gives me the opportunity to start my own blog, which I have wanted to do for a long time. So, perhaps a blessing in disguise.
by Brad Schjoth on August 13th, 2009
As a brief preface, I support Web 2.0 as a global, technological movement in bringing a new voice to actual citizens in terms of how they influence the media and how networking affects daily lifestyles.
There is nothing more evident of how positive this recent shift and trend is than what we saw in Iran just months ago, when Twitter was overwhelmed with news directly from the ground of people speaking to the craziness that was their recent elections. All of this while CNN and others who are trusted to bring the most important topics and events into your home on a round-the-clock basis, sat idle broadcasting reruns with their loafers up on the desk. I am pleased to look back on that event and say that I support this new wave of information dissent, because that was a revolutionary time for millions of people, and they found a voice through a means that would have been unavailable to them just a few years ago.
That said, with the positives there always comes a number of malicious negatives. And unfortunately, the negatives are always much easier to point out and notice. There is a glaring negative that many of you who will read this piece are familiar with, and maybe even frequent on a daily basis. This festering community of barbarians is known as the Wausau Daily Herald article commentators (for lack of a succinct term). This is the cancerous tumor that glows white on the X-ray, when everything around it looks so healthy and peaceful. The rhetoric tossed around in this back-alley street that calls itself a community is so suffocating, it almost makes me rethink my stance on free speech and favor a fascist regime where only I and my confidants control the media.
But I digress, because by presenting this I am contributing to citizen journalism, the exact thing I have and will continue to grumble at in this piece. Then again, what you would typically find in that WDH article comment section isn’t journalism at all, so I suppose that doesn’t really fit within my definition, and therefore it is free game and it shouldn’t be hypocritical at all for me to slam it. Journalism has rules, it has values, and it has an integrity that is so blatantly vacant from the landscape of my victim. There really is no actual term to describe the kind of language, the kind of argument, and the kind of slanderous jabber that takes place at this particular online forum. So, in order to paint you the picture of what you can expect to find within the WDH article comment section, and what I can only assume through this evidence is an accurate depiction of the outright majority of Wausau citizens with Internet access, I will lay out a few biographical portrayals.
Comment one will undoubtedly be placed by a man who owns fourteen guns. He, for some reason, is upset the President of our country is not the preferred color he had hoped for, and is resorting to any sort of hate speech he can muster up now that his brain is working at its peak efficiency thanks to five hefty cups of Folgers or an early-morning Keystone Light. He will try his best to prove to you that the President was not born in the United States, but will do so through Glenn Beck quotes and a Photoshopped digital birth certificate image he found on the Drudge Report or on some tucked away blog that only he knows about, but conveniently holds all the rebuttals to your feeble arguments. He does not like the term “racist” when describing himself, but he likes the suffix enough to attach it to any ideology he heard once that he knows he is supposed to hate, and then make sure he calls you, his opposition, that term on an incessant basis. He doesn’t believe he falls into any stereotype, but he embodies exactly that through his online image, and whether that is a true representation of him in reality, he has no one but himself to blame for that.
The second comment streams down from a Mac user, who believes that Donna Seidel will be the savior of all humanity; and that whether or not he truly enjoys the taste of smoked ham is irrelevant, because he makes the conscious effort to stay as far from it as possible. He dresses only in the finest swag available, ordered from Urban Outfitters. This, however, does not use up as large of a percentage of his salary as you might think, because he drives a Prius, and has his own organic garden that he tends to each evening in his backyard. He would like his government to make all his decisions for him, not just the smart ones that they can intelligently and economically piece together, but every single one of them. And he doesn’t mind paying for their help in making those decisions, because he has the extra cash from driving his Prius. He also frequents the Daily Herald forums slightly more often than commentator number one, because he only reads it online, as to save the earth’s natural resources. He doesn’t believe he falls into any stereotype, but he embodies exactly that through his online image, and whether that is a true representation of him in reality, he has no one but himself to blame for that.
I wanted to change the format slightly for commentator number three, so I asked him to send in an autobiographical passage about himself. The thing is, he sent it in all lower-case letters, spelling “hilarious” with two L’s, and choosing to use “cuz” over the other oh-so lengthy alternative conjunction. Alas, I had to omit it.
The fourth commentator is the bright speck, the glimmer of hope in all of this madness. This is the person who makes me optimistic toward what this technological age can bring to the world, and how it can shape lifestyles. He is articulate, and may fall anywhere within the political spectrum. He may have any range of ideas or thoughts on a given topic, but he spells a large majority of his words correctly, while maintaining to try his best and use proper grammar. He is not the best at vocalizing or translating his thoughts into words, but what can be gathered from his prose is that he genuinely cares about the subject matter, respects the other commentators despite their disrespectful nature, and is generally well-informed on the topic at hand. If he’s not, he doesn’t pretend to be. He makes his points forcefully but with regard to the feelings and opposing views of others. He, sadly, also falls into a stereotype that may or may not be a true representation of him in reality, but, unlike the others, it is not himself who he has to blame for that, as he did not create the unfair stereotype.
In a society where 140 characters is really all you need, and Commentators 1, 2 and 3 bury what Commentator 4 has to say so incredibly deep that Commentator 4 is undiscovered and inaudible, that is where the failings of the Web 2.0/new media revolution come in. The Twitter craze has had the opposite effect of its intention, where we have now found ourselves going back in time to era of cave men. With a limited number of letters, people assume that is okay to exchange articulate analysis and insightful arguments for grunts, incoherent mini phrases of nothingness, and sentences without vowels. That realization is what has me scared.
There is no governance on what goes on at the Wausau Daily Herald website, and it is inexcusable. It is an abuse of the system, and the lack of response on the Herald’s part is simply because they don’t want to lose that community. But what good is it anyway? What are they and the rest of the Wausau area really gaining? No one from outside the argument could possibly declare that 90-percent of the conversation taking place there is any sort of advancement in society, or is even relevant in the first place. The quantity versus quality battle is being easily won by the former, and that is not at all in line with the principles that “new media” employs or strives for. It is crazy, and the paper should be ashamed … almost as much as Commentators 1, 2 and 3.
by Dino Corvino on November 18th, 2008
Do You Know a Deserving Person?
I do not know if they do this yearly, but my good buddy (and Lil Wayne enthusiast) Rob Mentzer sent me this link. The Editorial Board over at the WDH is looking to award someone, anyone, ANYONE…a person of the year title. All you need to do is nominate them.
I think you need to go through a few channels described in this link, but I think it would be fun for the Citizen Wausau community to engage this process. I suppose you could nominate someone here as well, though I am not going to pass it along just in case that invalidates the votes.
So again, the Wausau Daily Herald has opened up the process to all of us, so let us jump in and make our voices heard.
by Shawn Sullivan on May 21st, 2008
I’m a lurker. I like to look at message boards and blogs and just watch. Sometimes, I feel unqualified to add to a discussion, or my points have already been made by someone else. Other times, I don’t feel overly compelled to add to the discourse.
Then, there’s the Wausau Daily Herald Message Board.
I just want to say up front, that this is no indictment of the WDH moderators or employed contributors to the boards. I respect their attempts to mediate disputes and make sure that the entire thing doesn’t devolve into adult third-grade. Unfortunately, at times that seems like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound.
I respect good, honest discussion. I dig the free exchange of ideas meant not to belittle, but to encourage thinking, and, to be fair, you can find that on the boards. However, I find myself continuing to marvel at the level of anger and ignorance that I find on the board, and how, when the two collide, the results can be embarrassingly bad.
Bad, because it continually reminds me that Wausau isn’t as progressive as I thought (or hoped) it was. Bad, because solid ideas get buried under an avalanche of insults, bad grammar and spelling, and statements that seem to be outrageous for the sake of it. Bad, because it seems like people aren’t there to discuss, but to “win.”
Is it me? Am I naïve? Are my expectations too high? I’ll let the CW community chew on this one!
