Disemvoweling: childish, demeaning and passive-aggressive
While visiting Consumerist.com this morning I read that they had made some tweaks on their site, one of which is a new admin tool offering moderators the option of “disemvoweling” comments.
For those not in the know, the practice of disemvoweling refers to removing all vowels from offending comments left by readers, which serves a dual purpose: it makes the comment difficult to read, and it communicates that the moderators are pissed. The creation of disemvoweling is attributed to blogger Teresa Nielsen Hayden, community manager at uber-blog Boing Boing.
While some might applaud this as a clever way to filter disagreeable comment, I think that it’s childish and passive-aggressive. Why not go the whole way and delete the comment? Sometimes the mish-mash of consonants left is so unreadable that it might as well be in code. It’s a form of vandalism, really, and while a site mod is perfectly within his or her right to moderate comments as he or she see fit, there’s just something about this that strikes me as petty.
It’s demeaning, and lowers the community moderator to the same level as the trolls and verbal poop-flingers who are usually the subject of a disemvoweling.It should be easy to decide what sorts of comments are acceptable on your site, and from there identify which ones fall on the far side of the fence. Over here, I hate to delete comments, but will remove those that I feel are racist, sexist, homophobic or threatening in tone. Otherwise, I leave them. Disemvoweling leaves open a third category, a gormless middle-ground that can serve no real purpose but to further feed the trolls.
UPDATE: I was informed by an anonymous source that the GAWKER network (of which CONSUMERIST is a part) adopted the practice of disemvoweling despite many of their bloggers expressing the same concerns that I have. Apparently there was a lot of back-and-forth between GAWKER management and bloggers, with disemvoweling brought in as an administrative tool despite widespread doubts regarding its worth.
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Cow agrees, why not just remove the post?
Because it’s more fun to leave it and make the person look like an idiot?
Moo!
I think that it skates that edge between “censoring commentary” and letting the commenter know that they’ve crossed a line. There’s stuff that is clearly troll-bait, and I agree that it should just be gone, but is the disemvoweling a tool to say, “Hey, thanks for coming to the party and engaging in the conversation, but you’re a little out of bounds on your conversational gambit and maybe you should rethink this line of thought before going any further.”
Y r wrng. Th prcss f dsmvwlng s bth prdnt and nfntly clvr.
I jest…
You could be right, but I’m wondering if maybe saying something like that to the person might be best. Or maybe just ignoring them.
Jeff! Hah!
Much props to you.
How about we start Emvoweling posts?
Hooow abouut wea steart eeemvoeiuliiuang poaeiusts?
Or some random Oulipo technique. That’s what the world needs. A Oulipo transmogrifier.
>> VVVVVVwwwzzzhhhh >> “Your post has been reconfigured for optimal seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy. Please click here to be redirected to a French forum where your post will be deconstructed into its component alphanumeric symbols and then lampooned excessively in bout of recursive linguistic fetishism.”
THAT. IS. AWESOME!!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo
From the same nation that brought you Dada and The Situationists.
Go France!
That was pretty damned awesome; I can’t even imagine trying to write under restrictions. It’s hard enough as it is!
Film makers operate under budgetary restrictions and also impose, at times, constraints such as “hand-held cameras only” or B&W.
The Oulipo transmogrifier reminds Cow of pointillism–perhaps painting big landscapes of words using just little snippets of words?
Moo!
Excellent point. They also have to deal with environmental restrictions, production restrictions (let’s call them “re-envisionings”), and time restrictions.
There are restrictions IMPOSED upon art all the time. And, obviously Oulipo is an imposition of a restriction/restrictions AS art. I was mostly being humorous.
But still. ; )
Hah! Only you guys could turn a little bitch-fit rant I started into a digression on restrictions in the composition of art.
Awesome.
Well, aside from my poor attempt at teh jokey — and after some actual consideration — the best art is probably created under some type of restriciton, whether self-imposed, or otherwise.
Some examples of my personal favorites being the renga, haiku, and syllabic verse. And let’s not leave out those individuals forced to write in secret because their work might be considered treason, or the paraplegic artist laboring with a brush held in their teeth.
Hell, my own recent attempts to use magical realism as form is artistic restriction. You could go so far as to say there is some kind of restriction in all art. If you wanted to split hairs. Which I don’t. I’m off work, I’ve got a nice (cheap) glass of Chardonnay . . . and this could go someplace too heady for me. Heh.
OMG! (yeah, that’s right) T. Cow, your blog is vitamin D-licious!