The silence seems a world away from the SLH lauding Prok with ‘Avatar of the Year’, just 18 months ago. Mentioned in that article are some of the bans placed on Prokofy, to silence this dissident, provocative voice. Who would have guessed that following the places Prokofy has been banned, the SLH would turn out to be the place not possessing the cojones to bar Prok, but would instead quietly turn their backs on their star writer?

I am reminded of the way Tenshi Vielle’s piece ‘RL/SL Fashion Faux Pas’ was picked apart by readers a few months ago. Hell I even participated in that, early on, until I sensed that the mob had turned very ugly, and indeed had become somehow worse than the article being railed against. There is no comparison in writing style or subject matter, but the reason I think back to the article is that Uri came into the comments to defend at least the merit of posting the article, and to an extent Tenshi herself.

Similarly Uri, in his article about Prokofy’s ‘ban’ from SLCC ‘We didn’t Want You to Know This, But Agitators Will Be Banned’, weighed into the comments when things were getting very ugly, to reiterate the basis for SLH’s support of Prok. Responding to another claim that Prok was only on SLH as a “side-show freak attraction”, Uri says “As for Prok, he’s here for the signal not the noise. I’m sorry that you don’t find the signal compelling. I do.”

Thusly, unless I’ve missed some post somewhere, Uri’s silence now is the thing that’s keeping my eyebrow amazement indication level at “high”.

Cheers Caleb

What’s sad is that you keep banging on this personal matter as if it is somehow emblematic of your amazing ability to hold a firewall between professional and personal. But it’s not. And it’s hardly to be recommended. An old Russian proverb says (and I’ll put it less crudely): don’t sleep where you work, don’t work where you sleep.

I think Caleb used “them” because he couldn’t think how to refer to Prokofy, he or she, but Prokofy is he, so it should be easy: call him “he”.

The typist and the “character” are all part of the same person. This isn’t some “roleplay”. Many people wish ardently that it were true, that they could “write off” Prokofy as a “fiction”. Your Second Life is your second life. Live it and accept it in others.

I’ve already indicated on my blog what the issues are with the Herald, and highlighted them particularly in this post:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/07/the-voice-of-th.html

I feel there was a long litany of valid grievances:

o not standing up for me when the mob was calling for me to be fired
o giving the mob — griefers, antagonists, and the subject of a very controversial story op-ed space and story space — wrong, wrong, wrong
o never replying or challenging the vicious comments made merely because I posted articles NOT because I fought back — *necessitating* me to fight back
o never making an editorial position to set the tone
o sniping and plotting behind my back
o second-guessing stories and doubling back to re-report stories with decidedly tendentious spins put on them in favour of griefers and fraudsters
o letting me post the first controversial story and be the bad cop, take the heat, then posing as good cop or friend-to-the-underworld while I had to keep taking harassment in comments
o allowing other reporters to make attacks on each other and especially on me, as a punching bag
o recruitment of weak writers
o failure to allow strong writers permissions to post on their own

And on and on. It’s just way too many problems to fix by continuing to *endure it* and never to expose it: that there’s a reason that the people in the comments keep harassing me, and it’s not because I fight back: it’s because the editors fail to edit, manage, and set the tone.

This was made all the more exasperating by the fact that when Uri *did* set the tone in a line or two, he could be devastating to the nasty trolls, and they’d wilt and go away. And that made his failure to act all the more appalling, as well as his call on me to “be a man” and “take the comments” after I had BEEN TAKING them for an entire year, and merely tried an experiment for a week (that was in fact what *Pixeleen wanted to do, by giving writers the right to delete comments (!)*.

Walker also did a 180 degree spin here, first telling me two days before his “policy” not to worry about takedown threats and that he and Uri would gut them out, and saying reporters had to stand for their own stories, but that the editors would handle attacks on the paper — then reversing himself and making everything be vetted by Pixeleen precisely to manage “takedown notices”.

Walker is always his condescending self, letting you know that he didn’t read all of your post — so busy being cool and speaking on important panels in the physical world while us vaporous avatars earn pennies on the Linden’s grid…

And yes, Caleb was right to pick up on the nasty little power-play represented by his email to me. If he and Pixeleen were serious about creating a viable situation, they’d do it by urging me to voluntarily submit controversial stories to Pixeleen, but this would be shored up by Pixeleen herself stopping her passive/aggressive SILENCE and making some editorial positions *in defense of the right of reporters to report* without being chewed to death.

Comments and criticism are one thing; allowing someone to be hacked and slashed to bits day after day, even for stories they didn’t write, and to allow their antagonists to have op-ed pieces and even reporting assignments is just plain vengeful, vindictive — and ultimately weak. It’s what passive/aggressive messed-up people do when they can’t get their petulant and sulky way.

What should have been done, in an ideal world, in a Second Life?

1. Walker and Uri should be more present, and if they can’t be, make themselves editors emeritus, do guest pieces only, and hire people who can really run it. That would mean relinquishing control and turning the chief editorship to Pixeleen, but then also bringing in at least two deputies to handle the flow, since she was always busy in RL. Another very strong editor would be a good idea, frankly.

2. Bring in more strong writers and allow writers like Onder/Caleb or Fiend Ludwig or others and allow them to post directly. There should be a list of 4-6 or more “senior staff writers” who are allowed to post directly. Or call them “editors” but have more than one of them, responsible for certain fields, i.e. politics, government, crime, sex, fashion, games, etc.

3. Get rid of this practice of having fake alts with names like Jimbo Quality or Peppermint Fizz do stories to make it appear there is a multiplicity of voices — these alts are really in fact the editors themselves or a few of the regular writers — the readers aren’t fooled, and they add nothing.

4. Don’t have all the writing queue up to one editrix who is busy in RL and also suffers from passive-aggressive syndrome, and have her vet it, with dozens of stories sitting there (like they’ve sat there now for a day as Tenshi overproduces or this one or that one overproduces or underproduces) but *let people post directly*. Steer the tone and content — do the editing! — by *writing editorials yourself and reporting yourself* — and commission or vetting proposals — not by controlling line-editing. It’s an amateur tabloid, let it be one.

In other words, don’t edit like some really uber old-fashioned old media editor sitting as the king of the hill — even old media doesn’t work that way given the role of editorial boards and deputy editors. Edit by picking reporters you trust to post directly. If you don’t have 4 people you can trust to post directly, you don’t have a newspaper, you have a personality cult.

5. Don’t lurch back and forth with policies, one day saying ‘we will stand up to all takedown notices don’t worry’ and the next day tip-toeing around, giving the girl who threatens you space to write an off-topic and stupid article on nudism in RL thinly disguised as being about SL, and then vetting everything to make sure it wouldn’t make her — or some other half-educated, petty, and vindictive 18-year-old reader mad.

Don’t say “no stepping on other writers for 8 or 12 hours” but then stepping on them after five minutes, and letting Uri always step on them even if he is merely rewarming and linking to the LA Times. Be consisent!

6. Lighten up the incessant coverage of furries, war stories, and ageplay — what has shocked me since I decided to stop posting at the Herald is that instead of gleeful gloating from some quarters like SC, I’ve heard a number of people say, oh, isn’t that a promotion for Prok, not to be posting there among the furry ageplay porn stars (!).

There are actually many *more* scandals in SL if you want to do a tabloid. There was trouble in elf town over free speech; there were allegations of land market undermining by some barons; there was this amazing panel on stockmarkets and then the hacking of the WSE; there are a million stories in this crazy city.

Any of them could take flight if there wasn’t a policy to have more than one story a day merely because that’s all the time the editrix had to absorb it. You could mechanically solve the problem just by moving to two columns and rearranging the layout. You could have headlines at the top “today’s top stories” that link to the typepad web page functions they have now that could then lead to entire other columns for those who want fashion or war or land barons, so the entire readership isn’t dragged along with specialized areas they can’t bear every day.

Well I could go on and on — but it’s not possible when so many things are this badly out of kilter. When trust break down in a virtual world where the avatars are anonymous, where you are a known quantity and everyone can see *your* RL, but you can’t see theirs or judge where they are really coming from, it’s not possible to cooperate. I see that as a real issue, sadly, where before, I didn’t used to.

Finally, I want to take up this mendacious, tendentious, provocative claim of Walker’s:

“Anyway, I’m not terribly comfortable giving a platform to someone who is so abusive to our most important team member, who is Pix. If you cussed out Nick Wilson like that, do you think he’d even allow you to write for Metaversed at all? If you did it at any real-world publication, you’d be fired on the spot. We’ve cut Prok a ton of slack over the years, and very little has been returned.”

1. Um, I’m not terribly comfortable working with such a manipulative *liar* either entirely misrepresenting the situation. How on earth does it happen that someone uses a swear word in an argument with a so-called colleague? It’s because they have done really nasty, manipulative, controlling things — and the words used describe accurately what they have done. It isn’t said in a vacuum. I’m not “abusive” for the sake of being “abusive” — I swear at someone at the end of a very long line of abuse *from them* which I’ve listed in spades. Walker simply steps on that problem, walks around it, ignores it. If stories are poached, second-guessed, handed over to antagonists — he imagines that “doesn’t matter”. If I’m beaten up in the comments, well, that’s my problem, I should shut up, and hey, maybe it should go away.

2. I can’t imagine Nick Wilson ever behaving in the way that Pixeleen has behaved because he wouldn’t have tolerated that level of non-collegiality, back-stabbing, second-guessing, etc. You can’t take this chatlog in isolation from months and months of questionable behavior — the kind that Nick wouldn’t stand for. Nick *moderates* his blog. He cuts out hateful comments. *He gives warnings*. He just *removes* or doesn’t even post stories that are not passing muster in terms of adding to the overall discourse of his chosen topics. NICK EDITS. This isn’t the culture of the Herald, which is to post first, then watch the shit hit the fan and have the story come out in the comments. But *if* the Herald is going to play tabloid and editorial free-for-all, then it MUST stand by its reporters. It can have “always fairly unbalanced reporting” but not allow the harassment of an individual reporter reach the level it did.

3. At real-world publications, there’s never in a million years be a situation where your boss would turn around and take the subject of your article, who has been critically covered and is antagonistic, and suddenly allow them to post an article right on top of yours, without consultation. If Walker is going to invoke real-lifeism here, I’d love to sit down and walk him through all the real-life editorial experiences that I’ve had working in news operations where hard calls had to be made and reporters protected with the stakes far higher than they have been in his gonzo game journalism and techbeat crap. Seriously, don’t even go there with pulling “realifism” on me.

4. It’s me who has cut the Herald some slack, and Walker says it all by implying there is a “we” that I’m not part of — but that I’m supposed to be merely some colourful and non-real avatar who helps provide provocative copy. Allowing me to be savaged in the comments, then doubling back and letting the antagonists have oped and even reporter’s space — this is just completely unprofessional and sectarian.

It’s not just “fairly unbalanced” — it’s fairly juvenile and amateur.

Grow up, make a real paper, or at least have the courage to fire reporters that don’t fit with your biased editorial “line” if you cannot allow them to post directly in a collegial set-up, and live by the trust that on controversial stories they will seek guidance.

What is really so galling about this entire episode is that I *did* obtain Pixeleen’s guidance, clearance, and editorial input on a major controversial story — I *did* cut every bit of slack to the Herald system — and yet I was hung out to dry, and personally threatened with libel action *for absolutely no reason and on no grounds*.

I am not going to forget that for a long time. The Herald has objectively harmed me — and repeatedly harmed me. I will go on forcefully speaking out against this.

dandellion – you make some excellent points. Hmm… just realized I have a small stack of posts in my reader from your blog I have to catch up on!