Boing Boing was one of the first things I read every day, and not just because it was near the top of my RSS aggregator. It really was a “directory of wonderful things.” Now I’m not so sure. The group publication has disappeared some of its writings. The Boingers call it “unpublished,” but any reference to a former friend of theirs has been purged from the website.
On first glance, this seems like a petty personal dispute that got out of hand. But let’s bracket that part of the issue for the moment. The reasons behind the unpublishing appear to be trivial and petty, even silly. But the unpublishing itself is a much more serious matter. So let’s separate the the why from the what, ignoring for now the former and focusing on the latter.
Unpublishing, self-censorship, external censorship, and redaction all have serious implications for the still-emerging internet media space. Call it the blogosphere, citizen journalism, little-j journalism, amateur journalism, or whatever you like. Attempts to codify the ethics of the medium have been made—most notably by Rebecca Blood in 2002—and are the generally accepted consensus.
This is especially problematic for a website like Boing Boing who has collectively and individually outspokenly championed the causes of freedom of expression, transparency, fairness, and openness in all media and business in general, and online publishing in particular.
As an aside, the term “unpublish” is indeed unfortunate. Movable Type, the content management system that runs the Boing Boing website, uses the term to refer to the status of articles that exist in the database but are not available for public view. It’s possible that the Boingers used the term as a quick shorthand reference to what actually happened to the articles in question: they were given an unpublished status. Teresa Nielsen Hayden, a Boing Boing moderator, makes just this argument in a 1 July comment. If that’s the case—and at this point it’s hard to say because Boing Boing‘s credibility has fallen off the meter—it’s indicative of Boing Boing‘s carelessness with regard to the matter; an average reader can’t be expected to know the underpinnings of the software used to run a website.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, speaking for all the Boingers, claims a “big difference” between unpublishing and censorship. That’s like Bill Clinton’s definition of “is”—a distinction without a difference. But more important is the opaque and blatant attempt at negationism. One of the Boingers removed the material “a year ago” without notice or explanation. And indeed, no mention at all was made until the Los Angeles Times blogged about it.
In a comment, Boinger Xeni Jardin writes, “we didn’t want to pay to host them [the unpublished articles] on our blog anymore…. This is not Wikipedia or the New York Times…. When new information becomes clear, or someone’s behavior changes, sometimes a creator of work reconsiders what aspects of their personal creative work they’re proud of, and removes them from public view.”
Boing Boing has been at the forefront of establishing the credibility of the emerging independent internet media space, so this position is disingenuous, and, well, laughably so. Boing Boing is exactly like Wikipedia or the New York Times when it comes to issues of credibility, responsibility, transparency, and fairness.
What makes this especially abhorrent is that Boing Boing has continually and effectively agitated for issues like openness, freedom, and transparency in all manners of publishing. Boing Boing‘s collective recent actions are emblematic of that against which it so effectively railed. Its credibility with regard to these important issues is seriously, perhaps even irreparably, dinged.
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