I Would Prefer Not To: More on TypeKey | Main | Again with the Monkeybars
March 23, 2004
People Considered Harmful (TypeKey Edition)
Some quick "Post-TypeKey FAQ" linkage. I'm leaving aside the technical commentary:
Mark Pilgrim: TypeKey? You Blow Me:
The first fact to consider is that TypeKey is the wrong solution, because it's centralized. This is more of an axiom, really, and not open for debate. Microsoft Passport is centralized, and that was axiomatically bad, so this must be like that, and bad. Also, something about Microsoft, and patents. So this must be patented too. The logic is inescapable. OK, TypeKey is not actually from Microsoft. But SixApart is obviously trying to become Microsoft, and by 'Microsoft', I mean 'successful'. Software companies should never aspire to success; they should be run by megalomaniacal multi-millionaires who donŐt need the money.
Steve Kirks: "TypeKey is the lock on the door of the Echo Chamber."
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"Now any comment registration system will keep me out of a weblog, and TypeKey is no different than a local system. I'm not making a statement against TypeKey, now, as much as I am against comment registration; against a growing trend that I'm seeing within the weblogging world to put up barriers and filters around our spaces so that we may control not only what's discussed within our writing, but within the comments we attach to our spaces. "Combine this with never linking to contrary viewpoints, or disparging same based on some group affiliation or at the behest of some A-lister who we're sucking up to, and eventually we can still the voices and if we're successful enough, the people speaking will lose heart and just go away and leave us alone."
and
"I guess I and all the other troublesome, negative, critical, contrary, rude, nasty, vicious, and dissenting voices that you see as graffiti on the wall will be gone, and though we can write in our own weblogs, we'll never be part of the conversations. Free to speak, true; but not to be part of a discussion; on the outside looking in through the window at the party, trying to be heard through the thick panes. After a while though, shouting in the street gets discouraging and disheartening, and perhaps some day we'll just be gone for good.
"Just think, though: when we're gone, you won't need TypeKey. That's great, isn't it?"
I don't think TypeKey will prove to be quite the secret decoder ring exclusion deathray the hottest rhetoric is making it out to be. People truly horked about weblogs with maintainers they perceive to be too restrictive should consider putting up YAB (yet another button) next to the offending site's entry in their blogroll, like this one:
Use it to convey the one way street the prospective reader will be setting foot on when she follows the link. Bloggers with a censor's urge or two will be that way no matter what and regardless of the tools available. The most the rest of us can do is help each other steer clear of these conversational dead ends.
Related Pudding:
- I Would Prefer Not To: More on TypeKey
- Passport Comes to Frogtown? Quick Jotting on Discussion Censors, etc.
- People Considered Harmful
Comments
Weird. Personally, my only interest in comment registration isn't about controlling content, but about an additional level of authenticity to the reader-contributed content. Especially with people like local officials posting now and then, I'd like to have a way for commenters to register their names/email, since as MT stands now, anyone could post claiming to be anyone they wanted. With a simple registration system requiring clicking a link a reader receives through their given email address, there'd at least be a slightly-increased sense of authenticity.
I just need it to be local, not centralized.
Posted by: The One True b!X at March 23, 2004 11:10 PM
I doubt most people are slobbering at the prospect of banning posters they don't like.
OTOH, we've all got stories of the board moderator who lost his head and started banning people, or the thin-skinned blogger who alternates between slashing assaults and sudden memory-holing in order to make people responding to his nonsense look like idiots.
My main takeaway from two years at LinuxToday is that the readers/posters begin to take a definite proprietary interest in the community they form. Monkey with them too much, and they'll bite back or, if they think they won't get any satisfaction, they'll just migrate elsewhere. Any major website that takes advantage of the apparent e-z banning TypeKey offers too readily will suffer a horrendous user backlash. Minor sites with too heavy a hand will die.
The ones that don't die we've now got an icon for. ;-)
Posted by: mph at March 23, 2004 11:33 PM