I have said Web 2.0 websites (sites where users can actively post and contribute) have a sort of "give a penny,
take a penny" philosophy. For the most part, there are so many people out there that want to help (by giving a penny or writing a cool blog post) than hurt (taking all the pennies or leaving malicious comments).
Because I work for a company that allows people to write to the site, people often say "Zillow should manually police this or that". Of course we do our best to catch any scandalous behavior, but really we leave it up to the community to catch and call out these perpetrators. Truth is, the community can do a better job policing itself than if we went out and hired 100 people to just look for missteps. The same is true here on Active Rain.
This morning, the Web 2.0 police was out in full force and rightfully "caught" someone who has now been "sentenced" to Internet purgatory as her online reputation is now ruined.
Time line of the community at work:
6:22am - A really stupid post is made that attacked someone personally that didn't deserve it (really, not worth reading, although the comments are good)
7:03am - The first comment is made by Jay Thomson which calls the author out.
7:22am - A Twitter goes out to several real estate bloggers - “Wow, My respect for Redfin and Carol D Hian, has gone down signficanty. Good thing these post come back to bite the author, hard.”
9:23am - Jay Thompson writes his own post about how ridiculous this author's post was on his blog. By now there are 9 comments on the original post disagreeing with the author.
10:33am - The Real Estate Zebra is using this as an example of what not to do in the blogosphere.
10:47am - The owner of the website in which the post was made, Glenn Kelman, chimes in to apologize and insinuates author has now lost her job.
Later - Another post about it by Jay at Agent Genius and Sellsius gets in on the action on his blog.
11:25 am - Mummy Dogs is reporting.
11:36am - The Real Estate Coach's Weblog chimes in.
Later- 46 comments later on the original post, and Geek Estate expresses an opinion.
Now this is a pretty extreme example, but an example none-the-less how fast the community catches and calls out wrong-doers. All reputable 2.0 websites make every effort for the community to make such judgment calls.
Zillow : 
ActiveRain: 
Craigslist: 
Trulia Voices: 
Tripadvisor: 
As a community we can police and make sure that information being disseminated is appropriate. We have the power to flag and remove that which is not. And conversely, we have the power to reward that which is particular helpful by Digging It or linking to it.
As a community we can all work to make this Blogosphere a better place!
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Truth is, the community can do a better job policing itself than if we went out and hired 100 people to just look for missteps. The same is true here on Active Rain.
No, that's never been the truth, it's just a convenient excuse for not hiring and training professionals. There has never been a successful internet community that policed itself and those who tried to save money by recruiting members and friends (AOL, etc) also went down in flames.
Meanwhile, local agents are raving about all the time and money they save by using Zillow to preview the surrounding neighborhood (looking for vacant lots, power lines, etc) without having to drive around. You have positives to sell, avoiding responsibility for public posts isn't one of them.
Frank- Thanks for the comment. That wasn't really the point of the post, but since you brought it up...I am going to have to disagree. We have about 5 million people on the site every month that are constantly finding things that 100 trained professionals at Zillow clicking around all day never could. Think about Craigslist. They have millions and millions of people using the site that are constantly flagging things and helping the administration of the site. Think of how many posts Active Rain gets everyday, they couldn't afford to hire people to read them all and judge what should and shouldn't stay up. It would hurt the scalability of the business model, but also, the community likes having an ownership stake in the site, if they didn't, they wouldn't contribute. I do agree however that it is the responsibility of the website to determine how to handle this feedback. A good example is how Redfin acted in this post. That is definitely where a company needs to invest in training and resources to handle these flags as they come in.
Sara - this is an important wake-up call about how quickly this stuff can spread. Twitter is the new Wildfire that spreads word of mouse faster than a reputation is destroyed. I was watching this thing unravel, and was amazed at how quickly it spread. We all need to be ever mindful that whatever we say and publish here can have similar exposure/consequences.
I think that "Internet communities" can for the most part police themselves. No. none are perfect. AR with it's moderators is far from perfect (one only needs to see the amount of blatant plagiarism that occurs to realize that).
There is no way a community of any size could hire enough "police" to be effective. And even if they did, it's likely that imposing such a heavy hand would drive off members, and kill the community.
This post today by Ms. Hian, who is no longer employed by the company she posted for, is evidence that "self-policing" can work.
I just got a comment on my post from someone asking if I felt bad, "for getting Carol Hian fired". *I* didn't get Ms. Hian fired, she did that to herself when she sat down at the keyboard and wrote an utterly ridiculous post. I don't consider myself a "web cop". People are free to say what they want. Just as I'm free to disagree with it.
Wow.Okay, Kris Berg was critical of a company policy (Redfin's) in her blog and Carol Hian attacked Kris Berg personally. Is that the story?
It's one thing to be critical of a company policy, but totally unacceptable to attack someone personally. We do have to help police these posts.
Golly, Ned.
I think I just saw a "no-brainer" hatch!
thanks for sharing
In hindsight, maybe I should have toned down my post. But Ms. Hian's post personally attacked an incredibly caring and giving person. That she somehow tied in the Berg's food drive was (to me) just asinine and was a slap in the face to not only Kris and Steve Berg, but to every man, woman and child that contributed food or helped in the collection of it.
It's entirely possible that I upset some of my readers with my response. But oh well. Any of them that have read my blog for any length of time are used to strong opinion. Judging by the off-blog emails and phone calls I've received, it appears that many didn't have issue with me voicing my opinion. For those that did, I'm sorry if my strongly expressed thoughts offended. But I don't sugar coat my feelings on my blog. Some like that, some probably not-so-much.
It's great that we have the support structure in place to help ensure that participants in this venue behave in a professional and respectful manner. I don't believe that any single site (Zillow, AR, etc.) has the duty to police their site for improper content. I do believe that they have the duty to control improper conduct though when it is brought to their attention.
This is a public forum for open discussion. It is not a place to attack and abuse others because you feel you can get away with it. We can only grow when our ideas are challenged, but we still should continue to live in a civilized community.
Yes Sherry, they could be out meeting actual people and adding them to their databases rather than building online cliques that celebrate their ability to band together and bully anyone who crosses them. This was a pie fight. The worst part is that several agents voluntarily jumped in and embarrassed themselves on their consumer facing blogs. Would any agent print their blog post on this and proudly hand it out to their clients?
There is a place for self-policing, and a place for the professional cops. Craigslist has a tremendous amount of "competitor flagging" that goes on, and there is no reason explicitly given for post deletion. But, on the other end of the spectrum, the referral area here went for a long time being tremendously abused without retribution.
By combining the "everywhere all of the time" users along with oversight by the employees, there is a good balance. Look at the referral area now. Lots of bogus referrals are gone before I can get there.
And I don't have issues with strong opinions. I like strong opinions. But, freedom f speech slices both ways... I think Carol Hian just found out that being free to express an opinion doesn't mean being free from consequences.
Boy, there is a lot of STOOPID that goes on on the internet at times, and this was sure one of those. This is a great lesson to all that what you write can, and usually will, come back to bite you. This one bit hard for sure!
Ann
Dang, you go out and sell a couple of houses and miss all the action. ;->
I agree with a comment that I read on this post. We are all classified as Realtor, which is a professional. Sometimes it makes you wonder if we sometimes tarnish this term?
daniel
Thanks to Twitter, I was able to follow the events today. It half inspired me to do a post on all the anger driven posts I have fantasized about writing, titled: The Posts I did not Post! Of course, I haven't done it. I only had two or three titles & I'd be stupid to include any content!
Self policing works. 5 mil can do it better than 100. I'd rather resources were spent on technology or forward thinking rather than policing! I love what Lane Bailey said: "...free to express an opinion doesn't mean being free from consequences."
For the record - Localism works in Beta form. I imagine it'll Rock when it's officially launched.
Frank wrote: "they could be out meeting actual people and adding them to their databases rather than building online cliques that celebrate their ability to band together and bully anyone who crosses them. This was a pie fight. The worst part is that several agents voluntarily jumped in and embarrassed themselves on their consumer facing blogs. Would any agent print their blog post on this and proudly hand it out to their clients?"
If you are referring to the post on my blog, I couldn't just stand by and watch a personal friend and one that had done a wonderful thing for her community be attacked. It has nothing to do with building online cliques or banding together.
As for bullying, the author of the post that started it all should have expected some repercussion. You don't make baseless attacks and slam someone for organizing a food drive of all things and not expect people to sit there and say nothing.
The fact that the CEO of the company she was blogging for said the post made him "physically ill" is pretty telling.
You're welcome to your opinion that I embarrassed myself by jumping in. I received numerous calls and emails, from friends and strangers, agents and clients alike, that expressed support.
Vigilantes, mob "justice" and preaching is a sign of site going downhill....
I get a kick out of the notion that referring to Redfin as "those freakishly hip fellows" wasn't name calling. Berg threw the first pie in this fight, but since she picked an unpopular target, the clique had her back. I agree with John Novak that with modern technology "we could do some pretty amazing things." Jumping into this pie fight to defend the person who started it was not one of those pretty amazing things.
Frank - Apparently you don't read a lot of what Glenn Kelman (the CEO of Redfin) writes. He frequently refers to Redfin and their employees as "freaks".
"They have become my friends and colleagues at Redfin. We are keenly aware what all the freaks are up to at 2 a.m. in Silicon Valley, because we are freaks too. No one will outwork us." (source -- just one of several)
Some might even say calling someone a member of "the clique" is name calling.
I've got nothing against Redfin, and have said so several times. But questioning a company is different (in my opinion) than attacking an individual.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. I would have had Kris' back regardless. It wasn't Redfin that attacked her (along with everyone else that contributed to and worked on that food drive), it was Carol Hian.
Kris Berg threw the first pie. "I could have a field day with this", "rent a bigger bus", etc. She wasn't "questioning" Redfin, she was ridiculing them. Carol Hian overreacted and embarrassed herself and her employer. You then wrote a post that is now at the top of the page in a Google search for "asinine real estate." I don't think you want to be associated with that combination of keywords.
I've read plenty of quality posts on your blog. Today's rant really doesn't belong among them.
Frank Jewett
Thanks for the play-by-play post of the soap opera. It's a real motivator on how not to behave when addressing your colleagues. I like to tell my friends that if they want to wake up happy they should never go to bed angry, and that a more honorable person will walk away from, and ignore, a bully.
Peace... -David-
I have seen people get a little too wrapped up on the web and then the flame wars start. Self policing is perhaps one of the best way to shame and out a person.
On the second hand, I avoid getting so involved that I think about writing entire posts about people!
wow I caught a whiff of it at some point but had no idea it was such a big deal. I read the "Barbie Takes a Bite (Again!)" and felt it was a personal attack.
As usual I wonder if it is all like professional wrestling.
As to policing community sites: It depends very much on the type of community and what exactly is "policed". Policing of naughty words, spam, heavy self-promotion, bashing, is easy compared to policing whether a home posted as for sale by someone other than the owner, or listing agent, is actually for sale OR whether answers given by non-owners & non-listing agents is accurate-- the reason being that only the owner or LA has access to the facts. If they are unaware of the discussion, they cannot flag it. The community is just not able to police this for the owner. However, this can be easily remedied --but you'd have to write me a check :)
As to the Redfin blogger bash matter, it should not have happened. And this goes to Frank Jewett's point of hiring folks to do some police work. IMO, it is really poor management at Redfin that allows hired subcontractors (writers) to freely publish content on a company blog without any prior review or editorial approval. That's just plain dumb. While the author made a gaff (it happens), the bigger gaff is the company system that let it happen. Hmm.. real estate folks at Redfin not knowing you gotta keep an eye on subcontractors-- makes you wonder what else they're letting slip by.
Followed Maureen's link here from Twitter. I have a big concern. So far, the real estate blogosphere has done a relatively good job of policing itself. Hopefully, since MOST licensees do at least TRY to act professionally, this will continue. But I can give you a huge example of blatant misuse and wrongdoing. The site? You Tube. The powers-that-be have insulated themselves from the community and play favorites with whomever is bringing in the most money. If a video gets flagged enough times, it gets pulled down, even when there is NO reason for t to be pulled! All it takes is enough vengeful people to flag it and down it goes. If this happens on 3 videos, the entire channel is suspended. 2 years of working and building a subscriber base is now thrown out the window.
So far, every change and update I've seen made on the real estate sites has been a mirror action of what has happened on You Tube in the last coupe of years. If you want to know where we're headed, just get to know some You Tubers.
But, like I said, since we're licensed "professionals", hopefully the worst case scenario won't happen. But we all know there are just as many jerks with licenses as there are without.
Oh... it was a paid blogger... I did not know that... I am now reading the comments here... I like Sherry find it all too Jerry Springerish to really spend time reading it all so I do appreciate the Readers Digest condensed version from Sara.
Thanks for the "Link Love" Sara. When I wrote that post I had no idea that it would incure the Wrath of Barry Cunningham, Greg Swan, and the Blood Hound Bunch. I really wanted to stimulate some dialogue about standards in Blogging. I am being told by Barry that I will have an opportunity to debate the subject of standards in Blogs on his radio show. I will keep you posted if and when that takes place.
Thanks again, The Coach
Sara - I followed that thread all the way through to the company retraction. Interesting read - thanks for pointing me in the general direction.
Sara, on the issue of self-policing, lately it has become fashionable in certain quarters to demean those who participate in the self-policing process. This is yet another reason why self-policing is not an effective, responsible way to manage a social network, blog platform, or message board. Thanks!