Comments on: The Number One Reason Why New Orleans Will Not Participate In Social Media

By: Think New Orleans » Online Petting Zoo of Homeless New Orleanians: Another Reason for New Orleans to Distrust Social Media and Hate the Internet

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:05:08 +0000

[...] racist bile coursing through the comments of nola.com exemplify this sort of outlet of rage. This happens because there are no decent people to face. The [...]

By: Alan Gutierrez

Alan Gutierrez — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:32:52 +0000

Dave

I’m sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner. It’s more to consider in the wake of speaking at YearlyKos, which went well, but focused on race. The other speakers are involved in social justice issues. I tagged along, while I really wanted to address the frustration of corruption and incompetences in government, but how do you forget the barricade at the GNO bridge?

Thus, yes, it’s probably a matter of being more inviting than aggressively deleting, although I do promise to delete anyone who makes a comment that is too cheep. No one needs to be in the company of someone who merely wants to get a rise.

The follow up to this post, Dave, it to extend it. To tell the story about the Dempsy development at Canal Blvd and City Park Ave. A short anecdote, where I put my notes online and asked for feedback on a web forum. I got feedback in email. I asked that it be posted to the forum. I gave my reasonings. I was told no. Lakeview residents (white people) didn’t want to post publicly. I went a back and forth, explaining, but what really did the trick was to promise that I wouldn’t allow the context of their contributions ruin their contributions, or put them in company of rabble.

Because, they have to maintain their dignity. They don’t want to have their name caught up in a bitch session on web forum, because they lose their effectiveness if someone can dismiss them as obstructionist.

Which is to say that the aversion to aggressive comments is universal. People do not want to convey their message in a forum where the dialog will degenerate into the same old argument that no one can every win. It is a refinement of “Godwin’s Law”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_Law that I’m fighting.

By: gordon cagnolatti

gordon cagnolatti — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:19:10 +0000

thanks alan and the other bloggers,
i find this conversation very encouraging and informative, please keep improving this media, the potential is boundless. i feel it is important to allow people with strong feelings, whatever the bend, to vent. it also allows independent thinkers a look into how twisted some minds are.
prayerfully the bigots will gain from a relationship, however impersonal, with us.

By: Chris Johnston

Chris Johnston — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:51:04 +0000

Alan, before you mentioned the NOLA.com forums I had never read them. Well, I used them once or twice while I was evacuated but that was an exercise in futility so I never went back.
I strictly moderate comments on my blog and do not allow anonymous comments. This was something I picked up from law student bloggers who were trying to keep snarky, offensive, childish comments off their blogs. Apparently law school has about as much drama as high school, but I digress.
I think New Orleans is technologically about 10 years behind the rest of the country. This keeps people ill-informed, limits their avenues to participate in meaningful public discourse, and I think the local power structure and political machine wants it that way.
Why do you think we still promote a tourism based economy that provides lots of low-paying jobs that require very little education. We need to promote an economy that stresses information and knowledge workers. We have seven 4-year universities, 2 medical schools, 2 law schools, and one community college in the Greater New Orleans area. Where are the jobs for all these graduates? There is not a lack of a skilled workforce, there is a lack of leadership in the community to get those companies to come here. How can a city with so many educational resources at it disposal have the worst schools in the country? I don’t preted to have the answers to these questions but I urge you to think about them and ask yourself “How can I change this? What can I do personally, right now, this second, to make a difference?” and then go do it.

By: Ray M

Ray M — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:02:53 +0000

Yahoo News stopped hosting (or has temporarily stopped hosting; I’m not sure what to believe) discussion forums for similar reasons: All the racists show up. I’ve also noticed that more than a few posters to nola.com stories seem to hail from locales far removed from the city. Gosh only knows how many people who don’t identify their locale are from elsewhere (although I still presume that many are from the city). New Orleans is more than just a tourist resort area to Americans now. It’s a politicized locale, a symbol.

In any case, this would be a great topic for research in the area of political communication, and one that could people like you a great deal about community or political organizing. Plenty of research already shows that people are less likely to participate in politics or their communities if they have to hear about views that conflict with their own too much (or, to put it in Internet lingo borrowed from electrical engineering, the signal-to-noise ratio is too out of balance). Are black people any less likely to participate in neighborhood message boards, etc., all because of the racial invective on display at nola.com and New Orleans’ craigslist page, etc.?

By: Dave C.

Dave C. — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:07:35 +0000

Interesting how fears about bad or no moderation trump fears about idea censorship. I didn’t expect that.

I do think there’s something to that though — I imagine the online conversation areas I use most end up being the ones that aim at and cultivate a specific and stated environment for discussion, whether that’s by empowering the users, having super-users handle it, or one or a few moderators.

By: Think New Orleans » Soft News, Casual Slander, and The Tyranny of the One Newspaper Town

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:19:17 +0000

[...] It helps me understand, however, why people are so cautious. It fits nicely into my new understanding of why people disdain the web as a means of communication about New Orleans and the issues of our recovery. You expose yourself to quick and easy slander. [...]