On commenting

Over at This Time, This Space brightfeather has a post today about “Who owns blog comments?“. It’s a longish piece, but worth a read as it presents an interesting perspective on the various issues that surround electronic publishing.

Because I feel it is (at least in part) in response to discussions that have been going on at the Wolfs Howl Forum regarding editing of posts, I wanted to understand brightfeather’s position and see how it compared to mine. Whilst I can’t fault most of what she says, I think I do have to make a few observations of my own. Usually I would have done this as a comment on her blog, but as this is likely to be a long piece, I thought I better not take up all her webspace with it.

Firstly, I have to say that I agree with the basic theme of copyright protection – whatever you write (and however you publish it) belongs to you. No-one else has the right to edit, re-distribute or attribute your writing without your consent. There are those that argue that if your blog publishes a feed then you are asking people to re-distribute it; this is a specious argument that has no grounding in actual fact.

In line with that is the understanding that when you comment on a blog or a forum, no other user should have the right to edit what you have said – provided that what you have said does not contravene previously available guidelines about what is considered to be acceptable. Even if they do edit your post or comment to remove something that contravenes those guidelines (for example, if you’ve been racially abusive), they should include a note in the original comment to that effect.

But there are, I think, two other ideas up for discussion here as well. The first is control over what you’ve written. If it’s a post on your own blog, you never have to relinquish control because you can always edit it. If it’s a comment on someone else’s blog, you lose control the moment you click “Submit” and from then on it’s there for all the world to see whether you like it or not. Posting in a forum thread is different, though, because your ability to edit or delete your posts can vary from board to board.

For instance, at The Wolfs Howl, I’ve recently introduced a five hour limit on editing and deleting posts. I did this (after asking the opinion of other forum members, and after looking into the way other forums operate), because there were instances of posts being edited after they’d been replied to – which then changes the whole tone of the discussion. What I wanted to do was stop people editing or deleting posts after they’d been viewed or replied to, but the software doesn’t allow that so I’ve had to introduce time-limited editing.

The reason I wanted to stop this was because, to me, forum threads are conversations; they’re the electronic equivalent of having a chat with someone. In a conversation you may think carefully about what you say before you open your mouth (or you may not), but once you’ve said it that’s it; the words have been uttered. If you haven’t said it clearly, or if the other person misunderstands, then you have to say something else to clarify. You can’t go back and unsay your original words – they’re gone. Forum threads should be the same way.

The second idea up for discussion is that of reserving the right to change your mind. This, I would have thought, is a given – we all reserve that right, and the right to think differently from each other. I may have misunderstood, but what brightfeather seems to be saying is that because she may change her opinion on an issue at some point in the future, she must retain full control over her published words, wherever they may have been published, so that she can update them. Our whole lives are a continual learning process; today’s popular opinion may be tomorrow’s laughing stock. That shouldn’t prevent us from saying something today. But tomorrow, when we realise that we were wrong… just move on. No need to edit, just say “That was me yesterday, this is me today.”

Electronic publishing is perhaps more likely to throw our old opinions back at us, because of the way in which it hangs around waiting to be re-discovered when an old post gets re-read but what difference does that make? Yes they are your words, and yes you still own them – but that doesn’t mean you still have to believe what they say.

Update: After I published this entry yesterday, I got an email from brightfeather to let me know that I was wrong; her post was not about discussions we’d had over at The Wolfs Howl Forum but was triggered by what has gone on over the last few months at the WordPress.com forums. So, sorry to brightfeather for getting the wrong end of the stick there. I expect that she’ll drop by herself to give us a fuller update in due course.