Here’s the thing: though I appreciate the opportunity to flag spam blogs (splogs) on Blogger and thus alerting the powers that be to where their pure blog waters are muddied, one has to question how “The Wisdom of Crowds” differs from the famed “mob mentality” that did in Julius Caesar.
The most recent feature upgrade to BlogSpot is the “Flag As Objectionable” feature placed tidily at the top right of any blog you may encounter.
“This feature allows the blogging community as a whole to identify content they deem objectionable. Have you read The Wisdom of Crowds? It's sort of like that,” reads the
explanation of the new feature.
While they acknowledge that “one person's vulgarity is another's poetry,” they go on to leave it up to the blogosphere to self-govern, collectively deciding who is, in effect, censured by banishing them to the Mantua of blogspot.com. It is unclear how many votes are required to earn exile from the Dashboard and the Next Blog promotions.
Concerns about the feature have been addressed in an updated Blogger Buzz post. It is asserted that blogs will not be removed because of “ballot box stuffing” where one person repeatedly or accidentally flags a blog. Multiple votes from the same source are trackable.
The other major concern was that blogs would be removed from BlogSpot after enough (how many?) flags rolled in. Blogger says nothing will be removed, just “delisted.”
But what hasn’t been addressed by Blogger is exactly why it feels that trusting the masses to decide what is objectionable is the way to go. Are these the same wise crowds that roasted witches at the stake in Salem? The Group Think that doomed the space shuttle Challenger? The same wise crowds that went into histerics after accidentally seeing a few seconds of musician’s breast on TV?
This is loaded with potential questions that should be addressed. Who defines what is objectionable? Is this like the MPAA rating system where too many “F words” will push an impassioned (albeit potty-mouthed) blogger into an adults only category?
I’m not sure if I like this idea in its entirity. Maybe changing it to “Flag As Spam,” or “Flag as Porn,” would be more useful with less equivocal guidelines for “wise” masses.