Being banned

So today I was banned from commenting on the Guardian site (which rather ironically is called “Comment is Free”!) I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s not the first time. But I’ve been assured that it will be the last.

The reason for my ban? Well, the moderators don’t actually provide you with a reason,  you just get faced with a “Commenting has been disabled for this account.” statement where the comment box should be. However, immediately prior to my ban I’d highlighted the large number of posts that were disappearing from the thread. And posted a link to a blogpost about overzealous moderation on other fora.

http://domain-name-lawyer.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/forum-moderators-can-be-absolute-morons.html

Now, the headline of that blogpost is actually “Forum Moderators Can Be Overzealous” which was the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately I didn’t notice the URL was worded slightly differently until after I’d posted it. Oops! Still, an outright ban for that? Seems a tad harsh don’t you think?

Most of the posting I do on the Guardian is on their Tech site (or as it should probably be known, their iPhone site!) The Tech editor is rather obsessed with mobile tech, and in particular with the mobile tech of one particular company based in Cupertino. This leads to the site being massively skewed towards coverage of the iphone and ipad, and any coverage of the competition tends to be superficial and framed negatively.

Unsurprisingly, the editor gets called out for this on a regular basis in the comments, often in well structured, constructive manner. What is surprising, especially in a paper that’s founded and supposedly prides itself on liberal principles, is the way such criticism is dealt with. Multiple posts mysteriously disappear, sometimes with a stain: “This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.”, but more commonly in recent times they just disappear altogether.

As I mentioned at the start, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Below is some of the email correspondence I’ve had with the “Community” team who manage the moderation.

This was the first lot, from last year:

From: beardyweirdy
To: community.suggestions@guardian.co.uk
Subject: Removal of premoderation
15/10/12 19:47

As raised in todays boot up column when this topic was being discussed, I would be grateful if you could
a) remove pre moderation and restore privileges to my account (Beardyweirdy666)
b) provide me with an explanation as to why my posts (particularly from Friday evening and into the weekend) were subject to such censorship
c) explain why I was placed under pre moderation and why posts I made since then have not been published.

I repeat my earlier point that I did not breach the community guidelines or otherwise “misbehave”.

—-

On 17 October 2012 16:57, <community.suggestions@guardian.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Beardyweirdy,
Thanks for getting in touch.

Initially you had a comment blocked for stating that the Guardian coverage of the iPhone 5 was influenced by preferential treatment, which we consider against our Community standards. Point 2 states that:

“2. We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focused argument and smear tactics.” (you can read the Community Standards here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/community-standards)

After that comment was removed you posted consistently about moderation, which as you know as a regular on the tech threads can severely derail a conversation away from the topic above the line. This gave us no choice but to place you into premoderation, point 8 of the Community Standards states that:

“8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic (“off-topic”) then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or comments about moderation, which should not be posted as comments.”

Premod is always temporary and we always restore full posting rights once we’ve seen you’re posting within the standards again, however you have attempted to create new accounts to get around moderation sanctions, which of course is also against our terms and conditions. If you can post without either accusing the Guardian or our writers of professional bias, or complaining about moderation then we can restore your account. Premoderated comments are usually looked at very quickly, often within a few minutes, though sometimes it can take longer. Please do continue to post as normal, and you’ll be back to full rights in no time.

Thanks
Marc
Community Moderator

—–
On 9 November 2012 11:17, e-mail beardyweirdy wrote:
Hello,
Following on from our earlier correspondence (below) my account was subsequently banned without explanation.

Subsequently, after a break, I set up a replacement account ‘LetThemEatStatic’. After using this account for a couple of weeks, it too has now been banned.

I take issue with this. I am sometimes critical of the editorial policy on the Guardian’s Tech section, but I do so in a respectful and considered manner, am careful to always label my opinions as such, or otherwise substantiate my arguments.

I do not believe that I was originally breaching the community guidelines and have had many posts deleted that do not seem to contravene them. You replied in your email to me that my post was deleted because I had ‘stated’ that a review was influenced by preferential treatment. I did not ‘state’ this, I suggested that it was possible and gave a link to an article from another journalist who described why this sometimes comes about and how the company in question are known to encourage positive press in this manner. I do not think it is a workable policy to prevent any discussion or challenge about the articles that are published – it should in fact be desirable to allow robust scrutiny of what is said in, surely this is one of the benefits in having and encouraging comments from readers?

I believe that you have been overly strict in your application of the community guidelines and I would respectfully ask that either one of the two accounts above is reinstated.

I do accept that I breached the guidelines in setting up duplicate accounts, however, I feel that I was left in a ‘Catch 22’ situation whereby it was the only avenue available to be able to continue to post. I understand the principle of using pre-moderation, but it appears to be unworkable in practice. The additional level of scrutiny appears to filter out completely innocuous posts that would not otherwise have been moderated, and furthermore the delays between posting and the post appearing are sometimes so long (several hours) that they effectively prevent any opportunity to engage in the debate. It then becomes rather self-defeating as there is no incentive to write intelligent, considered posts (that sometimes require some time to compose) if the likelihood is that they will either go unpublished or not be read due to appearing buried halfway through a long series of existing posts.

I apologise if I have inadvertently caused offence in any of my posts. I am a long-term (20 years+) reader of the Guardian and would like to continue to engage with you. Any challenges I have made are in fact driven by my loyalty to the paper and my desire to see it upholding the high standards I still believe it stands for. I would be grateful if you could advise me on how I can have one of my accounts reinstated, or if necessary a new one created.

Many thanks

After which, and a further period “on the naughty step” I was eventually allowed to repost.

More recently, I was banned again. This time for including the phrase “Very good” in a post It’s become something of a meme on the site following this review of the iphone 5 where Charles Arthur proudly declared:

The news in May that Google was sidelined as the provider of maps for the iPhone (in any phone that runs iOS 6, to be released later on Wednesday 19 September) caused a fair amount of hand-wringing and worry. Would it be as good? Or would it just use some in-between rubbish?

Don’t worry – it’s very good.

Immediately before people started trying to use it and hundreds of stories started to emerge about the poor quality of the mapping with misplaced towns and weird mapping effects.

That lead to this email exchange between me and my new friends in the moderation team:

On Friday, July 12, 2013 12:55:24 PM UTC+1, e-mail beardyweirdy wrote:
Hi,
I’ve just had commenting privileges disabled on my account ‘beardyweirdy666’.

Please can you explain why and let me know how to get them reinstated.

Many thanks

Jon
—-
On 13 July 2013 15:02, Community Suggestions <community….@guardian.co.uk> wrote:
Hi there,

You indulged in some repetitive mocking of an author. We have banned you for this before and only reinstated your account on the express understanding that you not fall back into that pattern.

Hope you understand.

Best,

Tom
Community Moderator.
—-
On Saturday, July 13, 2013 6:50:43 PM UTC+1, e-mail beardyweirdy wrote:
Hi Tom,
I appreciate you coming back to me, but I’m left rather confused by your response. I was most definitely not mocking the author, other posters were talking about posts being disappeared for simply containing the phrase ‘very good’, I was simply trying to establish whether or not this was the case as it seemed rather draconian and was not mentioned within your community guidelines. If I’ve caused offense to anybody then I’m genuinely sorry, but if I’m being completely honest I fail to see how my posts could be deemed offensive. Being banned seems like rather an over-reaction, especially given that the original complainants still appear to be posting without restriction.

If you would be kind enough to reinstate my account, I am happy to promise that I will refrain from ever using the phrase ‘very good’ ever again.

Yours
Jon
—-

On 14 July 2013 14:49, Community Suggestions <community.suggestions@guardian.co.uk> wrote:
Hi there,

The phrase ‘Don’t worry, it’s very good’ has been used to suggest that Charles Arthur is heavily biased. You know this. You were sanctioned above the other users because: you initiated the suggestions of bias, proceeded to spam the thread with variations on it, and have been banned previously for doing the same.

You are a welcome and informed contributor to the Tech section, and we certainly have no problem with you criticising the content of articles, but we won’t allow this to snowball into sustained attacks on authors.

In this case we are prepared to offer a last, last, last, last chance before a complete final ban. A month in pre-mod. That’s the best you’ll get.

Regards,

Tom
Community Moderator

And now I’m guessing I’ve crossed that “last, last, last, last chance”.

I stand by my view that the Guardian Tech site shows extreme bias towards one tech company. This is unhealthy. It’s not about “hating on Apple” as any dissent is often dismissed by their diehard fans, it’s about wanting to see fair and balanced journalism in a newspaper I’ve read and believed in since I was a teenager. Sadly I can no longer respect or recommend the paper.

By way of illustration, Samsung (the world’s biggest manufacturer of smartphones) recently launched their new flagship phone, the Galaxy Note 3. It got half an article (it was shared with coverage of their new tablet) from a press agency. Apple launched their new iphone models last week and there have been at least 37 articles on them to date. Including this one published yesterday which would be hard to distinguish as anything but advertising copy (admittedly poorly worded advertising copy). They’ve even mimicked the Apple advertising style for the layout and fonts etc.

So, perhaps it’s just as well that I’ve been banned. I’ve only stayed for the community: some very clever, informed, funny and interesting people frequent the comments sections, some of whom I’d consider like friends. The ‘journalism’ on display in the tech section is generally very poor, overly reliant on opinion from a narrow pool of like-minded writers and ‘analysts’, and often demonstrating lack of knowledge and distinct bias. Unfortunately it’s ended up clouding my impression of the paper as a whole, and that’s rather sad.