Pandemonium Herald Style
John Martin
Pandemonium, 1841
Oil on Canvas Click
The FORBES Magazine Collection, New York
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Drama and the Second Life Herald have always gone hand in hand, but drama about the Herald is a bit different. Some changes have been made, and as a result Prokofy Neva will no longer be contributing for the paper.
It’s a complicated situation with a lot of moving parts. One part has to do with Prokofy Neva’s particular take on the events in question. Another part is Pixeleen Mistral’s new editing powers. Some would say that this all boils down to communication problems, betrayal, scheming - all the elements of a good drama. Personally though, I think it mainly has to do with Urizenus Sklar (Peter Ludlow) and Walker Spaight (Mark Wallace) publishing this:
This is going to take some explaining. In fact, it’s going to take an epic (read: long) tale to truly explain this situation. Let me pop one of those fancy Wordpress <!–more–> tags in here and then dig into a brief history of the Herald and how things have kind of, well, exploded lately.
A Brief History of the Second Life Herald
Originally there was the Alphaville Herald, a blog about the subcultures in The Sims Online. Maxis (the game’s creators) weren’t real crazy about having somebody making a PG environment look anything less than completely family-friendly, and so they banned Urizenus. He moved to Second Life and started the Second Life Herald. Soon he was joined by Walker as “Editorial Director” and Pixeleen as “Managing Editrix”, and since Prokofy was leaving such compelling comments, he soon became an official “Staff Writer”. These were the “Four Horsemen”, as Uri often put it back then. While they all had different titles, they all basically functioned equally posting content and digging the dirt around Second Life.
This was going on for awhile before I came along. My first blog under the name Onder Skall was Second Life Games, and really I was just looking for a way to promote it. I was taking a really good look at the most popular Second Life blogs and, inevitably, the Herald kept coming up. I didn’t really like it at first. I’ve never been crazy about controversy, and to be honest, Prokofy pissed me off. While the site won me over, I still found myself getting angry at Prok for awhile after I started doing some freelance writing for them.
Writing for the Herald is a little like feeding piranhas with your bare hands. The readers eat up what you write, but they’ll take a few of your fingers too if you give them half a chance. You can’t say anything without being attacked. While many of the commenters offer insight and additional background to articles, there is a huge following of hardcore critics. “Oh, I love that part where you said the sky was blue. What about at night or at sunset or when it’s overcast, dumbass! You suck!” Ah the proudly ignorant; what would we do without them?
Anyhow, I started off writing about games but quickly digressed into other news. Somewhere along the lines my “Onder Skall comes to us via Second Life Games” byline got dropped, and I became an official writer for the Herald… although not at all equivalent to the Four Horsemen. All of my articles were sent in email to Pixeleen, who would then approve/disapprove/edit and post them under her own login. Only the Four could post directly to the site. I never really worried about it - after all, it’s not like we ever discussed it or had meetings, and I appreciated Pix’s editing. She’s very clever and I’ve learned a lot about selling a story through her.
Recently, however, there was a shakeup. I got my own account, but one without posting privileges. This means that I can log in and post my article, but nobody will be able to see it until someone with powers comes by, reads it, and hits the Holy Publish Button. This I barely care about although I imagine it’ll make things easier on their end. Unfortunately this was accompanied by another change: Prokofy’s account was changed. He no longer has access to the Holy Publish Button. Prokofy is no longer part of the Four.
Why did that happen? That’s a whole other story. First, let’s take a peek at this book here because it’s central to the entire issue.
The Sacred Tome
Entitled The Second Life Herald : The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse, it’s a big summary of everything that has appeared in the online tabloid so far. Well, they promise it’s more than that of course. It’s not out yet but knowing those two it’ll probably confront issues of governance and how a quirk in any given world’s design can shape a culture and spawn subcultures.
Uri (Peter Ludlow) has a history of writing really great books. His Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias sparked my imagination ages ago, although I never really made the connection between him and that book until recently. He has a series of other books about language and philosophy and a thriving full-time academic career. That kind of means that, while he did found the Herald, we haven’t seen much of him around there lately barring the occasional brilliant article.
Walker (Mark Wallace) is a net oldbie, having published 101 Things To Do on the Internet (edit: turns out that was a different Mark Wallace) back in 1999 and pitched in for last year’s Second Life: The Official Guide. He’s been busy with his 3pointD blog and tours the conference circuit moderating panels and the like, so he’s written slightly less for the Herald than Uri has lately. Still, he is The Walker. He runs the show. Don’t mess with him. He’ll mess you up man. What, you lookin’ at me? Are you lookin’ at me? I don’t see anybody else… uh… sorry. Back to the narrative.
So they have this book. It’s probably going to completely rock. One of the other things it’s going to do is drive massive attention to the Herald itself, so in preparation for the book’s launch, they wanted to make sure that the tabloid was pimpin’. Publicity for the book would drive traffic to the blog, and the blog had to be set up just right to drive people to the bookstore. Time to do some tweaking.
The Art And Science Of Blogging
Through working with the likes of the Herald, New World Notes, and of course Metaversed I’ve learned a lot of lessons about blogging - not the least of which is that I have a lot more to learn. One of the things about running a really popular blog is controlling the flow of information. You can’t have too many posts pop up in a day or the reader feels overwhelmed. Not enough, and the blog feels abandoned. Too many on the same topic and you look like a one-trick pony. Really hot stories can sometimes derail things, and it takes a bit of effort to become a consistent content deliverer. There’s a balancing act.
With this in mind it makes sense that they wanted to lock things down, but also to inspire their writers to new heights. Handing out the accounts in this way made everybody feel special (well, I imagine it did for a few of them) and ensured that there would be a backlog of content ready and waiting to make the Herald a good experience for all.
It was a good plan, but the down side was that they felt they had to lock down Prokofy to do it. The thing is, Pixeleen and Prokofy had been butting heads over a number of issues and simply weren’t communicating. From what I can tell it was Walker’s perspective that if things were going to work, Prokofy’s content had to be controlled a bit better. See, Prokofy beleives in what he’s doing. He doesn’t just write for the hell of it - he writes because he found something people need to know. To hell with “cool down time”, it’s publish time!
Well, there’s more to it than that, but I’m making guesses on Walker’s perspective when he sent Prokofy the email letting him know that his Holy Publish Button was being taken away.
I don’t care who you are, that’s got to hurt. Here you are working with people, helping to build something, by all accounts being a major draw for the paper and even getting an entire chapter dedicated to you in the upcoming book, and then suddenly you’re kicked out of the club with little to no explanation. That’s not a nice place to be, and there was precious little acknowledgement of that in Walker’s email (which has become a matter of public record since). Here’s how he broke the news:
We felt it best to put all the writers at the same level of authority so as to keep things very democratic and so as not to create any kind of FIC at the Herald, which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is best for all.
Uh hunh. I’m sure he’ll completely agree.
Prokofy and Pixeleen
I mentioned before how I used to really get pissed off at Prokofy Neva. One day a few months back, as I was reading something he wrote and getting more steamed by the moment, a little voice at the back of my head said: “try ignoring the style and dig out the content.”
It wasn’t easy, but it changed everything. I think I went a little pale at the time. Prokofy’s brilliant. Crap. That means I’ve been acting like an ass.
I emailed Prok yesterday and arranged to speak with them on Skype for the first time. We talked for a few hours, some about the current drama, but mostly about writing in general. He actually writes for a living, but in a very different style and under very strict guidelines. When the day is over and he wants to unwind, he does a little blogging and maintains a “stream of consciousness” style typing out exactly, word for word, what the thought is rolling through his mind.
For the rest of us that means we’re dealing with every stray thought, digression, opinion and fact all tarballed together with no buffer at all. You know how somebody didn’t realize you were behind them and let the door swing shut rather than holding it for you, and you thought “you asshole” but didn’t say anything? Prokofy said it and merged it with all of his other observations about you and with the state of hydraulic doors these days.
So it’s hard to parse, and what jumps out at you are these little reflexive (and largely insignificant) jabs that get mixed in with everything else. By the end of the article entitled “Hydraulic Doors and You” all you know is that Prok called that guy an asshole and… something about doors…
… and then there’s Pixeleen Mistral. The Herald owes much of its recent successes to her writing and ability to find the tabloid-style angles on things. There have been a number of times where I’ll read something she wrote and learn a half-dozen things about compelling writing technique. Even if the subject material is completely ignorable you have a good time reading her stuff.
She’s relatively easy to work with although a few things I’ve sent her over time have been dropped into a black hole with no real explanation. That’s really not such a big deal either - just have to assume that the timing was off or the content wasn’t really “Herald material”.
I know nothing about Pixeleen outside of the avatar and the Herald writing. We’ve hung out together inworld once or twice and emailed a bit, but not one tiny little factoid about her real-world life has ever come out. No Skyping, no public appearances, no podcasts, no idea why. I’ve decided to leave them be about it though; everybody deserves their privacy.
Ready… FIGHT!
Pix has taught me quite a bit about digging for stories as well, but that’s where we begin to see the source of conflict between her and Prok. Pix has befriended quite a few people in… let’s say… dubious circles. They’ve argued over W-Hat in the past, for instance, and Pixeleen’s promotion of Plastic Duck’s machinima never sat well with Prokofy considering the history there. (Prokofy and Plastic had been feuding, and then Plastic tracked down Prokofy’s real home phone number and called him, speaking briefly with Prok’s daughter.)
It gets more elaborate from there, but let me preface this paragraph with the comment that my information is coming from Prokofy with no real input from Pixeleen. Recently stories that they had discussed and that Prokofy had researched were suddenly appearing on the Herald written by others. Also there are allegations that one story in particular, written about an individual who complained to Typepad about the Herald libeling them, wildly skewed the facts in their favor and omitted important news.
The details don’t matter. Bottom line: they were disagreeing a lot. Pixeleen, as editor, was trying to maintain… well… editorial control. Prokofy, as staff writer, was trying to get the news out. While this struggle had resulted in some really good content on the Herald in the past, things weren’t going that well. The communication just wasn’t happening.
Then the Walker email.
Prokofy asked for a rollback on the decision.
It was declined.
Prokofy and Walker argued.
Both Walker and Pixeleen invited Prokofy to post chatlogs and emails to his blog, knowing Prok’s proclivity for swearing might not support his case.
The entire thing ended up as a bit of a fiasco.
Urizenus has yet to make a public comment. Probably a wise move.
Not as wise as Uri, I decided to document the epic tale.
“I wish them luck on their future endeavors.”
I’m trying to ditch my day job for a full-time writing career. I have a way to go and it might take me a long time, but whatever it takes, I’m going to make it. Part of my determination is that I love, live and breathe writing. The other part is that I’m exposed daily to phrases like this one: “I wish them luck on their future endeavors.”
That’s corporate speak for “screw ‘em.”
It was a phrase that came up more than once throughout this nonsense, but hey, people are annoyed. Nobody said that genius writers all get along.
To tell you the truth, the “blogging scene” right now more closely resembles the mythological Pandemonium: a layer of hell where everybody is screaming to be heard, desperate for attention, yelling whatever they can completely uninterested in listening to anybody else. That’s the blogosphere these days.
Bloggers link each other much less than they used to. They give each other as little credit as possible. Praise is reserved for those who can help them, or for themselves. Everything reeks of unspoken agendas.
The recent events at the Herald lately show that they aren’t immune to this disease of desperation that’s going around. If the players involved had taken the time to remember that there was a human being on the other end of the decision to take away Prokofy’s Holy Publish Button, it wouldn’t have been handled anything like this. If they had remembered how much the Herald owes to Prokofy’s research abilities, to his guts, and to the stories he’s broken in the past, they wouldn’t have done any of this through email… if they had done it at all.
Here’s a wacky idea: how about you have a meeting. You know, a little bit of group discussion, a little bit of moderation, maybe clear the air and get a group consensus on where the group is supposed to be going? And you could do it before screwing over one of the Four Horsemen?
Of course, here I am complaining about communication problems and I’m blogging about it instead of writing Walker or Pix or Uri about it. So I’m a hypocrite. *shrug*
The blogosphere is sick right now, and this is just one of the symptoms. Without Prokofy Neva the Second Life Herald is half the blog it used to be. The usual trolls and greifers will be looking for a new target too, so who knows how that will pan out.
Here’s hoping the Herald’s bout of Pandemonium isn’t terminal.
Picture of Mark Wallace courtesy of C.C. Chapman.
July 24th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
hi Onder!
(I had nothing to do with that 101 Things book, btw, not sure where that came from.)
Can’t say I read every word of post, but it’s an interesting take, us wanting to lock down the Herald pre-pub of the book. Fwiw, however, that was not among the things we were considering when we made the change that has engendered so much drahma(!). Where the book is concerned, it would definitely be much better for us if Prok were still posting to the Herald, and I’ve continually invited him to stay. The change was never intended to drive Prok away. It was definitely intended to give Pix more control over the flow of stories, but that apparently made Prok so unhappy that he had to leave. It’s all there in the email thread, anyway. I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to pull someone’s post-at-will privileges. (We may differ in that area.) In fact, I unilaterally did this once before, with similar effect. We eventually relented on that one. Our relationship with Prok is not as one-sided as you make out. We both benefit from it, us by getting Prok’s viewpoint in the paper, and Prok by getting a platform he wouldn’t otherwise have. I think we can continue to benefit from each other under the new go-through-the-editor posting scheme, but Prok doesn’t seem to feel that way. 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.
In any case, rest assured that the Herald isn’t going anywhere. It’s suffered much harsher blows than this and continued to come up swinging.
Cheers,
Walker / Mark
P.S. hi Coco!
July 24th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Those things happens. Each media (not only blogs, it is the case for all the media, from smallest local radio-station to the big international TV networks) falls in the pitt of crisis every now and then. Sometimes it kills them, sometimes it makes damage but they survive, sometimes they benefit from the situation. Outcome depends on many things: on stuff, on editors, on the chief, on readers, on luck.
From my last decade and a half I can say only one thing: media is a hell of a job. But, too many people involved in it would never quit that hell for a promised paradise in some “regular” profession.
And Herald… Herald is in crazy corner of that media hell. I am not quite informed about all the people working for SLH, and I just got a bit of insight about internal mechanism, but let’s go through some facts:
- People are not doing regular paid job in Herald. Somewhere I got the info that each article is paid about 1000L$. That is nice game money. Not more not less. But that keeps each author’s writing as a mere hobby. One can quit the article just because there is a sunny day outside. Expected fact for sure, but a fact nevertheless.
- It is the part of blogosphere. Blogging is standing next to “serious” and professional media, but hardly any single blog can stand next to any single newspaper. (There may be some, but you can count them on fingers).
- Those two leads us to the crucial one: Even if people involved are writing or media professionals, they might not behave as professionals in this particular bussines. Just as you said, Prok make his living of writing, but he gives his mind a bit of wind-off at the end of the day. Every single time I was before Prok’s post (both in Herald and on his own blog) I couldn’t get away without imagining what my RL editors would scream. And each of them would scream a lot! I am not saying that Prok does not know how to write. I don’t know that. But, what I see is editor’s nightmare. Or a clear case for a basket and a long “next time, we’re going to do it this way….” talk.
Blogosphere, working not for money but for the love and fun of it (and maybe some fame, promotion or whatever), the overall atmosphere of being in second life make relationships a whole lot relaxed. I just remember those beautifull days of my first life when I was living and sleeping with my editor. Nevermind our private relationship, dead-lines were dead-lines, professional things were professional things. I guess that hardly happens in Herald or anywhere in SL (not counting that couple of empty corporate islands). Why am I mentioning this? Because, in non-blogosphere media editor-journalist relationsip is not like Pixeleen-Prokofy’s, and editor in chief is not having any doubt about giving or taking away the holy publish button. Even if they sleep together. But in blogosphere things are different. And, I suppose, that is good. That is what gives blogosphere that nice scent we all love. On which price? Well, we see it now.
And we’re there to watch. I don’t want to sound corporate but I wish that Herald will go through this. Some tings will be learned for sure.
July 24th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
As a pure example what blogosphere is doing to the people… here I am having to make another comment for I forgot to say what I had when I started typing….
There is no way one (even with all the pulitzers of the world and holy words coming out of his mouth) can go over editor and, even more, the shedule of publishing. One can cut regular program or publishing scheme if the war breaks up right here, or if there is hurricane approaching. Anything else goes to the scheme. The thing that you wrote something that you fancy and find important is your own private business, it has to go with the rest of the content. Even some bloggers knows that. Any respectfull blog (not Herald with more than one contributor, we’re talking about private blogs like yours or mine) have posting frequency. If I said I am posting one article a day there must be a hell of a reason to post another if I’ve already posted that day.
July 25th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Walker - well I’m going to challenge you on some of this, but in email k?
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!
July 25th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
So, dandellion, the moral of the story is…sleep with the editor in RL so they don’t screw you? Sorry, I don’t wish to use that recipe.
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.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
“So, dandellion, the moral of the story is…sleep with the editor in RL so they don’t screw you?”
No idiot! Read it again.
July 26th, 2007 at 8:11 am
It is a small item, but one that I think sums up Second Life is the reference to both Pixeen and Prokofy as “them” when talking about a single character. There have been many times with my talks with Prok that I have wondered if I was talking to the character or the typist. But here are some things which should have been clarified more often in the Herald to keep the peace:
1. Prokofy’s real life job involves a region with many different timezones, so he keeps odd hours.
2. He has a very fast typing speed (I am guessing around 90 wpm, perhaps more) and writes in a stream of consciousness style (translation: can reply to your comment at length in the amount of time it takes most people to hit the “publish” button.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I read it, dandellion, and I got the point. A point that you may not wished to have made, but came through, subsconsiously. Maybe you should think about that.
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.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Wrong again. Before youtry it again (they say third time is a charm) try paying attention to this:
“Nevermind our private relationship, dead-lines were dead-lines, professional things were professional things. “
July 26th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Repeat, I read it dandellion, I hear what you say, and I’m afraid I don’t buy your notions of yourself, sorry. You imagine that deadlines can be deadlines or professional things be professional things — but obviously these things are “helped along” by a private relationship, duh. And that’s my point: your recommendation is to sleep with an editor so they don’t screw you, by ensuring that the personal relationship they wish to have always underlines their understanding of what is “professional”.
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.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:53 am
“and I’m afraid I don’t buy your notions of yourself, sorry. ”
No problem. You are free to listen or not to the other people. Who cares.
August 4th, 2007 at 6:52 am
Great write up Caleb. I’ve been amazed at what’s happened between SLH and Prokovy, and your history and analysis fills many blank spaces for me. It seemed so strange for SLH to have such deafening silence in support of their highest-ranked writer (still listed as such on the SLH masthead).
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
August 4th, 2007 at 10:50 am
oops typo
“..what’s happened between SLH and *Prokofy*”
Cheers