No, folks, I've not stopped blogging. I have, however, been quoted out of context (without being identified, I might add) in an inside higher education article about academic blogging, and the author asserts that I have, in fact, decided to stop blogging because the strain of my pseudonym was too much to bear.
Note to author: try reading the people whom you choose to quote, reading them carefully even. Yes, I have stopped blogging in my old space. Yes, I now blog here. Under the same name. The name that I created for blogging. My alter-ego, if you will. And don't use me to support your argument that blogging, particularly pseudonymous blogging, is too serious, or at least not "serious" in terms of "postmodern play and experimentation" in a way that you deem appropriate for the genre. Dude, I AM experimenting. I AM playing. You just weren't invited to the game.
(Postscript: I'm not sure which irritates me more: being quoted out of context, being quoted without being identified, or being quoted in the service of an argument that I find less than convincing. I suppose it's a toss-up, really. And I'm not linking to the author's blog because I don't want to give him any more traffic. I don't think he deserves it.)
12 years ago
36 comments:
this blog is fun.
I *thought* that was you being quoted. I was pissed off for you, too, but mostly because you were uncited!
I'm trying to resist getting pulled into this one, but Jeff Rice has really pissed me off, and his quoting you out of context is only making it worse.
I'm really starting to think that this guy is committing one of the cardinal sins of argumentation: manufacturing a position, reading all available evidence through the lens of that position, and regarding any evidence which clearly doesn't support said position as "outlyers."
Which is to say that I don't think he's read much of ANY of the blogs he's so dismissive about: his writing-off of the whole Tribble debate was especially galling. I think he's just embraced the Animal Farm-like doctrine "Real Name Good, Fake Name Bad" and dipped in and out of pseudonymous blogs only enough to misquote and mischaracterize them.
I like his taxonomy of pseudonyms: hip-hop, Hollywood, post-modern, and "serious". It's baffling, really, as if the post-modern persona can't be "serious" or the "hip-hop" pseudonym has nothing to do with "postmodern play" or whatever that phrase was. I don't know "Anonymous Professor"s blog, but did anyone else notice that other blogs he mentioned are mostly hosted by female personas? Anyway, the distinction between seriousness and experimentation is bewildering.
De-lurking to say this blog is fun and informative. I am an aspiring academic and I've learned a lot about dealing with students and balancing the personal and the academic.
After scanning his main page, I find his material neither interesting nor informative. Linking his real name to his rather grating blog voice will not do him favors in the future, I imagine.
From Crazy's response to the ed in question: "I also think that it fails to take into account the way that a person who does not specialize in rhetoric and new media can get oneself into trouble for experimenting with this new writing form instead of doing her “real writing.”"
For me, your response really hits the nail on the head - especially for someone like me in the sciences.
And what everyone else here is saying is right too. Just because we aren't posting pictures or whatever he means by "experimentation" doesn't mean that we aren't experimenting everyday as writers. I try out new styles/topics all the time, and, hell, you experimented with moving spaces. He just doesn't seem to get it.
hmmm...he seems to have really gotten my goat up.
Oh, holy hell, c-m. His pretentious little "oh-so-playful-yet-oh-so-serious" blog and the attitude that went with it was annoying enough, from what I saw of it, but your story puts it beyond all doubt: this guy is a real jerk.
It occurs to me that Mr. Rice takes himself even more seriously than most of us take our blogs.
c-m: WOW. Being a woman just on the cusp of the academic job market myself, I don't doubt you for a second, which is almost kind of depressing. You pinpointed the catch-22 that Rice's little made-up schema presents when you acknowledge the fact that both blogging and academia are inflected by larger gender imbalances: women academics writing outside their specialized fields are accused of being either not serious enough ("children", "crazy"), or too serious (not playful or postmodern). So his central term, "serious", is totally slippery. He's defined it in such a way that it's good when masculine (mature, sane) and bad when feminine (not experimental). Anyway, this is all a way of getting at the fact that I think there's no way of pleasing this guy - or apparently, of getting him to listen to you - because, to re-use Dr. Crazy's game metaphor, he's stacked the deck from the get-go. Ugh. missscarlet.
would this be an instance where a letter to the editor would be in order?
coyote librarian - I think there's more postmodern play (and giggles) in your comment than on Mr. Rice's blog. Teehee!
C-M How utterly horrible. I can entirely see this happening, and I'm glad that you stopped over here and told your story, as much as I know even that is a risk. Wow.
And re: is it time for a letter to the editor.... Hmm.... I did leave a comment over there, but maybe I should use this to make my own leap at stupid inside higher ed fame. Of course, I'm sure I would be disciplined by the commenters for whatever I'd say, so I'm not sure what good it might do.
I saw the misquote, Dr. C, and thought he had no idea what he was talking about. I love your response here, and am horrified by comp-mafia's story. From the little I've seen of the blog in question, Rice has a real problem with pseudonymous bloggers, and I think he's just downright mean about it. I suspect that he gets so bent out of shape about anonymous blogging because he's so "serious" about his own blogging (which he is! I don't know what he's talking about about ludic playfulness and so on), that he's afraid us anonymous folk will make him look less legit or something. Without, of course, recognizing that we're not all writing about new media and don't all want to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Grrr.
Hey, wait a second... putting together something c-m said, and stuff on the blog: doesn't this mean that Rice cited his girlfriend's blog as one of the ones that fits his model of "non-seriousness"?? Does anyone else find that slightly cheesy?
Cheesy, disgusting, you know, it seems like six of one and a half dozen of another.
What New Kid & Dr. Crazy & all have said. I thought it was just the usual "come see my blog" post at IHE. You know the argument:
1. Here is what blogging is/should be.
2. Here is why everyone else is doing it wrong.
3. Here is why my blog stands alone in its brilliance, "ludic" qualities, etc.--and if you don't believe me, why , I'll devote an entire paragraph to praising myself and explaining to you why I'm right.
Heya all - he just posted a really dismissive post about "all those crazy people in an uproar about what really was a minor point about anonymous or pseudonymous writing." I left a comment over there. Here's what I wrote:
"I'm not going to say that I've read all of the responses to your piece around the internet, though I've seen some. My sense from those I have read is that people were irked by the piece because it appeared that you didn't take seriously what some are trying to do with their pseudonymous blogs (a), that you didn't seem to really read them before judging them (b), and that they basically didn't buy the argument that you make about "seriousness" vs. what you deem to be "play." (c)
For my part, I was ticked off that you quoted me without identifying me as the author of the quote, that you took the quote out of context for your own ends, and that you didn't seem to have read the post from which the quote was taken. In fact, the post that you quoted from was about how I wasn't quitting blogging, but I suppose had you identified the quotation that you would have had to deal with the pesky problem that I had not decided to quit blogging because the weight of my pseudonymity was too much to bear.
At the end of the day, I'm over it, but I'm not sure that your dismissive tone regarding some legitimate criticisms about what you wrote does much to make your case stronger. For example, if you wanted to know who I am, I'd tell you. But I'm doing something different with my blog than what I do as a "public intellectual," and so it doesn't make sense to collect it under that particular "name of the author." My blog is not a professional document, though it is a document that relates to my profession. This makes perfect sense to me.
Finally, I agree that this question of access to writing (scholarly, creative, whatever) is an interesting one. I'm just not sure exactly why it relates to all bloggers who choose to do so under a pseudonym. Also, related to the comment above about the way that the novel caused anxiety as a genre similarly: Lots of women writers wrote novels under pseudonyms in the 19th century - did you ever consider that many of those who choose to write blogs under pseudonyms are also women and that there may be some correspondence between these moves, although they are 200 years or so apart from one another? Should we dismiss George Eliot because she didn't write as Mary Ann Evans? "
I wonder if it will stay up or whether it will mysteriously disappear. And yes, I know I'm an ass for fanning the flames of this, but I need a distraction from my primary distraction, which is the whole dating thing. Don't even ask about how much grading/writing I've got to do.
turns out that IHE was the one who took the citation of me out, or so Rice says. Interesting.
He also seemed very defensive in response to my comment, which I hope I smoothed over. I mean, looking back now, it was a little bitchy, but that's because I thought he had intentionally not cited me and that he had used my words to say something that I didn't believe or want to say. Who wouldn't be a little bitchy in those circumstances?
I'm going to go comment on his recent post when I have more time (class in 6 minutes!), but I still think he's missing the point. It's not just that we're all defensive because he's saying that anonymous blogs are bad (though honestly, I think he is saying that); he's saying anonymous blogs are bad because they don't allow authors to be positioned in a way that allows readers to evaluate what they right. Which ties right back into his "academic" and "professional" purposes for *his* blog. It feels like yet again he wants to fit all blogs into an "academic" model - that they're all following the same academic enterprise. And I just want to say again, THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M DOING. So therefore, I'm not worried about positioning myself as an author in the way he discusses. So his comments about access - well, access is an interesting and perennial issue with new media like blogs. But I don't think that writing under a pseudonym reveals some great terror on my part about access *to my professional work,* because YET AGAIN, this isn't my professional work.
(Sorry, not yelling at you, Crazy! 2 minutes to class so I better go even though I'm sure this comment doesn't make sense...)
evaluate what they "write", I mean...sorry!
Comp-Mafia's story is highly distorted. As one of Jeff's "buddies" who tried to engage Comp-Mafia in good faith, I came to believe that it was Comp-Mafia who was not acting in good faith during that discussion. Comp-Mafia will, of course, tell you that I wasn't acting in good faith myself. All sides left that discussion feeling wronged. That's worth noting.
And, yes, Comp-Mafia was mocked -- not by me, but by others. Comp-Mafia, however, fails to note, or maybe never realized, that mocking happens on Jeff's blog. Jeff is himself mocked there. In short, Comp-Mafia entered into a community whose practices Comp-Mafia didn't understand, Comp-Mafia missed the cues that were offered, and, from my perspective, Comp-Mafia inisted we adhere to Comp-Mafia's rules, and when we didn't, Comp-Mafia got increasingly spiteful.
While I'm willing to accept that the whole incident was a series of tragic misunderstandings that spiraled out of control, I've never been convinced that Comp-Mafia wasn't a troll looking for kicks. Comp-Mafia claims that's not the case, but, you know, a troll would make such a claim. What I do know is that while Jeff supposedly knows Comp-Mafia's real identity, Jeff has not revealed it despite the fact Comp-Mafia has repeatedly attacked in many forums in ways that could harm Jeff professionally. In other words, while Comp-Mafia seems more than happy to actively discredit Jeff whenever possible, Jeff has not acted to discredit Comp-Mafia professionally. By not revealing Comp-Mafia's true identity, Jeff has shown much more restraint than Comp-Mafia has. One has to ask, who is acting in good faith here? Who's being victimized? And who's doing the victimizing?
Because I've known Jeff for years, it may be that I have a much better sense of the perspective and context from which his argument emerges, but I have a hard time believing I've read the same piece as many of you. I might note that in his last paragraph, Jeff writes:
"Yellow Dog is not a model, but one effort to think about a new medium while actively working with that medium."
And he writes, "Serious bloggers might take heed of such writing and think about how their own sense of seriousness limits their interaction with the new medium of weblogging. As Roland Barthes famously noted, there is a pleasure of the text."
As I read it, Jeff is not trying to tell people what to do, and he's not trying to tell people how to blog. Nor do I read him as attacking those who do not blog as he does -- Hell, I don't blog as he does, which is something that I think many people seem to be reading into this piece. Nowhere do I see him write "Thou shalt blog as I do" and nowhere do I see him argue that there is only one way to blog. As I read it, he's offering a vision of what blogging can be, and he's suggesting that we might want to step back and think about the new options and the new potentials for writing that blogs offer us. If that vision isn't of interest to you, so be it? Blog how you want. It's your blog. Your text. Your pleasure.
First, let me apologize to jenny for any implication that she's only cited because she's slept with someone. I realize that my comment definitely comes across that way and while that wasn't precisely what I meant, I'm sorry that I left that implication open. I didn't mean to suggest that your blog doesn't do what Rice suggests that it does (that is, that you don't merit being cited in such a context); I wouldn't know, I haven't seen it. I would suggest only that there's some conflict of interest in bringing up the blog of someone you're emotionally involved with. Obviously in academia this gets complicated - if two romantic partners are working in the exact same field/sub-field, yes, it's hard to avoid citing each other. I guess personally I'd prefer to avoid getting enmired in that, and it didn't seem strictly necessary in this case.
John - I'm not going to comment about the comp-mafia thing because obviously I don't have enough information. But I think it's important for Rice to realize that in writing his piece for IHE he's stepped out of his own community with its own practices, into another one, and whether or not he meant to say "Anonymous bloggers should blog more like me," I think the fact that many anonymous bloggers read it that way is inescapable, and can't be avoided by saying, "that's not what he meant." Well, he may not have meant it, and maybe anonymous bloggers are all simply way too defensive (serious!) and have to get over ourselves, but especially given the Tribble affair, his comments appear in a context that anonymous bloggers may see very differently from other bloggers. Just want to point out that this doesn't automatically make us wrong - we may have reasons for seeing things this way.
Oh, quick addition: Rice may not be saying that there's only one way to blog; but he's certainly saying that there are ways NOT to blog, and he lumps anonmyous bloggers wholesale into that way NOT to blog.
Wow. Well, first of all to Jenny, let me apologize in the same spirit that New Kid did.
To the others... well, feel free to hash out whatever here. I don't know what I think about all of this, but, as I said over at Rice's, I'm over this whole thing. At the end of the day, I'm happy with my blog, I know what I'm trying to do with it (and with my pseudonym) and it is serious and playful and real and not-real and thoughtful and sometimes stupid and mundane. It's an experiment for me, and it's playful and fun for me. So, at the end of the day, what Jeff Rice thinks is playful or serious or right or wrong doesn't really matter to me or to the people who read me, right? I do think that I get what he was trying to say about the medium of blogging, but I think that because of the way that he treats anonymous blogs (as he calls them) or pseudonymous blogs (as most people who write them call them) as something that's bad for the medium and dismisses them all out of hand without considering people's non-fear-driven reasons for having pseudonyms, I think he's created a community of people who are going to resist anything that he's trying to say about blogging generally because they feel specifically misunderstood or misrepresented. If anonymous or pseudonymous blogging wasn't germaine to his "real" point, I wonder why he brought that into it, you know?
At any rate, I've got a bunch of stuff I should be doing as well as much boy-craziness to which to attend, and, truthfully, that's a hell of a lot more important and interesting to me right now than this debate. That's not to say that I won't come back to the debate, but I think I'm taking the weekend off from it at least.
Ok, just when I say I'm done with it, I did leave another comment over at Rice's. I had to chime in to support New Kid in her comment. If you get over there to read it, let me know whether you think I'm characterizing our (my?) side of the debate appropriately. I really feel like he just can't see the other side of this argument because he's so invested in his own position. The thing is, I DO see his side of the argument, but I think it's a highly problematic way to decide how all blogs should work because 1) I don't want to use my blog as a professional vehicle and 2) because I'm not a comp/rhet/new media person so i really can't justify using it as a professional vehicle. It's not that I'm "afraid" of being found out; it's that it's nobody's business that I keep this blog unless I want them to know about it because it's not part of my professional work.
I don't know. I'm babbling because I don't want to grade.
About Jeff's citing Jenny's blog: Jenny received the first Kairos award Best Academic Weblog, presented at the 2004 Computers and Writing Conference (it was for Jenny's old blog, "Stupid Undergrounds") and Colin, the other person Jeff offers as an example, won the second Kairos Best Academic Weblog in 2005. So, in other words, Jeff wasn't just citing his friends. He was citing the two people our field has recognized for their blogging work. I don't expect you all to have known this, which is why I mention it now.
And, finally, I'll give my two-cents worth on the issue of blogging anonymously or publicly. For the record, I have three blogs, two on which I blog under my name and one on which I blog under a pseudonym.
When you start critiquing by name other academics and their work on your blog, you blog becomes academic work whether you want it too or not. That's the nature of academic critique.
I only see this as a problem when one critiques a known identity while using a pseudonym. It's not, I want to suggest, ethical. If I feel like ranting about something on my pseudonymous blog, I do so in highly vague terms and I don't name names or identify specific texts. I do so because I don't think it's ethical to do otherwise.
And this thread is a perfect case in point. There are a host of ad homonym attacks against Jeff Rice made by academics whose identities are unknown. You are, in effect, engaging in a smear campaign from the shadows.
Whether you like it or not, by publicaly critiquing an academic's work on your blog, you make your blog part of your academic work. It's something worth thinking about.
Hello Comp-Mafia. I see that in your summary of our exchange, you still insist on ignoring my argument and that you continue to persist in mischaracterizing it.
Let me just address two brief issues here. You write: "He also knows that I have have NOT “attacked in many other forums.” That is an outright lie -- and slander, at that."
Excuse me, but you attacked Jeff on my blog (I deleted that, which I know you know, and yet, I've never been accused of censorship), on Alex's blog, on Jenny’s blog, on your own blog, and here. That’s five places that I know of. And you've continued to do so long after everyone else went stopped talking about the issue (here, for instance). If I'm slandering you, please sue me. You do know where to find me.
My point stands, however. Jeff has treated you with much more respect and restraint than you have treated him.
But should it be a surprise that the Comp-Mafia would do anything other than use the pseudonym as a bully pulpit? The pseudonym quite openly expresses your intentions. You're a troll. You're a cyberthug.
Your pseudonym says it all.
John,
Thanks for your comment re: who he cited, though I will say that in choosing the pseudonymous blogs that he chose to cite he didn't seem to use similar criteria (there are pseudonymous blogs that have been award-winning or award-nominated). I think this actually gets to a point I'm really interested in. I see what you're saying about it being potentially unethical to talk about a named academic when one is unnamed. For example, if I were to say that Jeff had plagiarized or were a bad teacher or something (which I'm not saying - I'm just doing a for instance) - something related directly to his identity as a professional. The thing that is interesting to me, is that I'm not sure that in his blogspace he's clearly performing AS a professional. Yes, his professional name is on the blog document BUT I would suspect that he doesn't expect the blog to "count" in the same way that he would expect a book to, and I suspect that he doesn't put his blog posts through the same kind of revision. I'll go further: I would expect that the inside higher ed piece didn't receive the same kind of care as does his "real" professional work. If that is the case, I am not convinced that his "Jeff Rice" identity in Blogistan is any more sacred than mine as Dr. Crazy. Basically, I might contend (though I'm just working through this idea here so I'm not sure here) that the "Jeff Rice" of the blog, while bearing a relationship to the "real" Jeff Rice or the "professor" Jeff Rice, is its own separate thing.
And here's the thing: If he misrepresents "Dr. Crazy" in a post or article or whatever, is the fact that "Dr. Crazy" is an online identity something that means she can't set the record straight? Just because she doesn't have a name that he acknowledges as "real" or an identity that can be authenticated with a curriculum vita? To about 500 or so readers a day, "Dr. Crazy" IS my identity. I'm not entirely sure why that counts less than the identity "Jeff Rice" or why that identity doesn't have the right to name names about somebody else's blog.
At any rate, I'm thinking about all of this, and I think it's interesting.
Dr. Crazy, I completely agree with your last comment. Yes, Jeff Rice is named and I'm not, in the professional sense. But when he writes about blogging, he's writing about a community in which my pseudonym contributes and has some meaning, cultural capital? - it's how people know me and refer to me. It's built up a reputation of whatever kind. So in that context I feel perfectly comfortable commenting on other people's comments on the subject. (And pseudonymous/named regularly mix and mingle in discussions of the blogosphere and characterizations of what blogging is like, about, etc.) I do not comment on research in my field under my pseudonym; I suppose where the divide may lie here is that blogging etc. is much more connected to Jeff Rice's actual area of research than it is to mine. But I agree with Crazy that his posts/comments about blogging are doubtless not playing the role that a book or peer-reviewed publication would in his tenure reviews. So in that sense I don't see this as "smear" campaign because I don't see it as commenting on his livelihood, so to speak. I don't see it as "academic discourse" in the same way as materials that people submit for tenure - I see it more as the conversations that go on in hallways, offices, sometimes conference sessions. I realize, now, that Rice may see it differently, which would explain the different perspectives - I just wanted to clarify my own perspective, so readers can perhaps understand why I responded the way I did.
This has been illuminating. I just want to add that I said on New Kid's blog that a blogger had been outed over at Jeff's blog. I meant C-M. I now have read her say that she revealed her identity to him rather than, as I understood it at the time, he finding out her identity and revealing it. Just wanted to be clearer about what I said what I said over there.
Also, Collin just posted a response that I personally find helpful in this discussion.
http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/seriometer_spik.html
I thought Collin's response was awesome, but I tried to comment over there and it wouldn't let me because it said the comment I left had "questionable content." I'm couldn't figure out what was questionable, so I gave up. I suppose I can paraphrase here, though, that I think that IHE may actually be to blame for all of what we're talking about here. One of the things about "access" related to IHE is that I've never noticed a substantial change in my readership based on being linked to from IHE. There is a spike for that particular post, and then the people are gone again (for the most part). If that's the case, then people don't get a sense of my blog at all or of the community of bloggers of which I am a part. They only get the piece of me that IHE finds tittilating or controversial enough to like to. (For example, I've noticed that I get a lot fewer links from them now that I'm in my new blogspace, now that the voice is less "hardcore.")
Anyway, Collin's post is really nuanced, and while I'm not sure I agree with everything that he says, I also think that any and all interested in this conversation should check it out.
Regarding blogging as academic captial: This is, to some extent, a disciplinary issue. In our field [the field that Jeff and I share], blogging does carry with it academic capital. (More on this in a moment.) But, the truth is, blogging and other online activities carry academic capital in most, if not all disciplines.
We all know about Ivan Tribble. We all know about the search committees that google candidates names. We all know the stories of how blogging and other online activities might jeopardize one's chances at tenure. My pseudonymous bloggers, some of you included, cite these as real issues to be concerned about. This stuff works both ways, both positively and negatively. Like it or not, it's academic capital.
In our field (call it computers and writing, digital English studies, new media, digital rhetoric and composition), blogging under our own names does gain (and cost) us real academic captial, captial which can and does manifest itself in things like requests to speak publicly, in getting published, in getting jobs, and even in tenure. And this is the case even when we set aside the fact that we blog to get feedback on our ideas from our peers, the fact that we blog as research, and the fact that we blog as part of our pedagogical practice.
When we blog under our academic identities, when we write letters to the editor of a newspaper identifying ourselves as an academic, when we put up personal web pages that contain our syllabi and our academic work, when we speak publicly at a local school or before a state legislature or at a conference, we write a guest piece for a trade publication (which is what IHE is), we are engaging in academic work. Whether or not there is a direct relationship between such work and tenure isn't the point. Academic capital is about reputation.
And inn our field, at least, we can draw direct connections between invites to speak on other campuses and publications and even requests to apply for open positions based entirely on the public work we've done in online forums such as blogs. I'm a perfect example of this. As a graduate student with as of yet no substantial publications in the field of computers and composition, I've been paid by other departments and by conference organizers to speak about digital issues, I was appointed by the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English to a nine member national committee (the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication), and I've been appointed to the editorial board of Kairos, one of our field's major journals. All of this happened because of my online activities, activities which may or may not "count" directly in my getting a job or, later, getting tenure. While a hiring committee probably won't read the email archives of discussion lists to see what I've done, they'll take notice of the honors I've listed above, and there's a direct connection between those honors and my online activities. It's all academic work. It's all academic capital.
So, consider, too, that people who have not read Jeff's piece have been willing to attack Jeff here and elsewhere based not on the substance of what he wrote, but on what has been written here. This discussion is getting linked to by other academic blogs, and people here are posting attacks on other academic blogs. All of that, rightly or wrongly, equates to negative academic capital for Jeff. Some people who have not read Jeff's piece (to say nothing of people who have misunderstood Jeff's argument (I may be wrong, but it seems that while anonymous bloggers see it as an attack on anonymous blogging, non-anonymous bloggers see it as arguing something very different -- clearly the piece is problematic in this regard) but have read this and other threads attacking Jeff have join in these attacks. And, like a game of telephone, mischaracterizations are being made, which are being taken by others as truth.
These attacks, because they're being made against a person who is using his real name, carry negative academic captial. When they're justified, fine. When they're not, that's, at best, unfair. And when these attacks are being made by people who's own academic identities are safely protected behind a pseudonym, this becomes much more problematic. Intentionally or not, you're having an effect on someone else's academic capital while at the same time assuming no risk towards your own academic capital. Hence the reason I see it as unethical.
I'm not arguing or suggesting this is anyone's intent. For the most part, I don't think it is. But whether or not it's intended, the consequences are real. We're all trying to figure out blogging and what it means to blog as an academic regardless of whether or not we consider our blogs part of our academic lives. What I am suggesting is that in an economy that is driven, at least in part, on reputation or personal value (on "face" to use the traditional anthropological/sociological term), whether you intend to or not, you're taking an active role in that economy when your words or actions carry with them the potential of effecting someone's reputation.
And that's why I think that if you're going to engage in critique of an active academic, if you're going name names and address specific texts, whether or not you do so using a pseudonym or your real name becomes an ethical issue.
Ok, I can see what you're getting at here John, but I would then say that perhaps it would make sense for people who blog with the understanding that it has very real professional consequences not to "link" - whether in the form of quotation or referencing - to those who might retaliate. I'm not blaming the victim here - I freely admit to (and apologize for) saying some petty and stupid things in response to the use that was made of my writing in that article that Jeff wrote. But I'm sorry - if you call Dr. Crazy out, Dr. Crazy is going to talk back. If that's a problem for a person, then it would make sense for the person not to call out somebody with a pseudonym. I know that's not all of what you're discussing here, but I thought I'd state for the record that I feel like my gripe with the IHE piece was completely legitimate, and I think that to say that I've got to shut up because I have pseudonym as my online identity is ridiculous.
Yes, comp-mafia, I'm out to get you. I used my amazing powers of mind control to get you to post here in a forum you to be hostile to Jeff.
No.
My problem with you is that you continually insist on being the victim and refuse to acknowledge that there are two sides to this story. I've acknowledged, even here, that you felt wronged. But I felt wronged by you as well.
I noted that you were mocked. I noted that I'm a long time friend of Jeff. And I explained the situation to everyone here (including, I was hoping, you), that from my perspective, you entered into a community, demanded we conform to your practices, and got hostile when we did not.
The fact remains, you wouldn't find yourself needing to deal with me if you hadn't engaged in what is clearly an ongoing smear campaign against us here.
Finally, you claim that your email wasn't threatening. I read the email on your web site, and what I read was that you planned to write a scholarly article about the exchange, an exchange, I do not believe you really understand. Hell, I know that I don't understand who you are or what role you think you were playing in it, but I do know that you're characterizations of me and my motives have been as off base as you claim my characterizations and motives of you are.
So, others and I find you threatening to tell your story in an academic journal under the guise of a case study. From my perspective, from my understanding of how you want to characterize the event, and how you have been characterizing the event here and elsewhere, I can only assume any treatment of the subject will resemble what you've written here, which is to say, seriously flawed.
And yes, you posted a comment to my blog, and I considered it an attack on Jeff, so I deleted it. You can characterize it as you want, but I read it as a comment made with the intent of trying to curry sympathy from me and disdain for Jeff. In fact, if I recall correctly, you were upset over the "metacommentary" you saw on Jeff's blog when he was trying to discuss the issue in objective terms without using names. What I found highly ironic at the time was that you had been engaging in vicious "metacommentary" about me at your blog for days. To date, I have not blogged about you except in direct response to comments you have made. You, on the other hand, we're publicly attacking me -- mischaracterizing me and my arguments -- on your blog.
If Jeff really wanted to censor you, he would have deleted the threads to which you and others have linked. He hasn't. So, maybe, just maybe, he started deleting your posts because you had worn out your welcome. (Just speculation on my part, I've never asked. I do know that I deleted your one post on my blog because I had no desire to let you continue your attacks in my space. One should also note that I never attacked you on your blog, nor did I ask you to stop attacking me there either. Your blog, your space.)
So yes, I regard you as a cyberthug and a troll. You, after all, brought all this up here when there was no reason to do so. You chose to publicly attack an individual's reputation while hiding behind your own shield of anonymity. My problem isn't with your anonymity; it's with the way you unethically attempt to cause harm to others while hiding behind your anonymity. At one point, I believed you just didn't understand the issue, but over time, I've been forced to believe that you know exactly what you're doing.
Whether or not you consider yourself a troll, your motives are malicious in nature. What about my motives, you ask? Yes, I'm attacking you. I'm being malicious.
The difference between us, between you and I, is that until now, until you posted here in this forum, I haven't engaged you other than on Jeff's blog. You, on the other hand, seem to have no problem attacking others where ever you think you might find a sympathetic ear.
And, you're right, troll isn't the right word for you. But cyberthug is. You may have created comp-mafia as a joke, but you've done a good job adopting the ethical practices of your chosen identity.
Dr. Crazy writes: "I know that's not all of what you're discussing here, but I thought I'd state for the record that I feel like my gripe with the IHE piece was completely legitimate, and I think that to say that I've got to shut up because I have pseudonym as my online identity is ridiculous."
Oh, I do believe you have a legitimate reason to take issue with the IHE piece. Maybe you and Jeff, or maybe you should ask Jeff, to consider adding a correction to the piece. As you know, Jeff has admitted to the mistake.
And as for the opinion that because you use a pseudonym you need to keep silent, I'm not saying that and I don't read Jeff as having said that (I know there's disagreement over how to interpret Jeff's piece). My point is that the use of pseudonyms brings in a whole new level of concern for all of us when we engage the academic. We need to figure it out and it's something we need to be aware of. Speaking publicly, either while using our real identities or a pseudonymous one, has consequences and we need to think about those.
What I'm not saying is that anyone here is intentionally trying to act unethically, but rather, that there are ethical issues we need to consider, and we need to make sure that when we adopt the freedom of pseudonymity (and I do mean we because I have a pseudonymous blog as well as two non-pseudonymous ones), we aren't unintentionally ignoring these ethical issues. We need to figure out how we can all engage each other in productive ways that perserves both pseudonymity for those who want it and academic capital for those who want that.
I must thank you all for this discussion. These are the issues I was trying to get at with Comp-Mafia back in the middle of Jan. when everything went to hell. I wasn't yet able to articulate it nearly as well as I am now (and I'm not sure I'm yet articulating it as well as it should be).
John, thanks for your comments about academic capital - I understand the distinction you're drawing here. I think you're right that I underestimated that, because of the what blogging means to me and the disciplinary differences that you point out. I do think that choosing to write in the public sphere of a trade journal like IHE opens one up to precisely these kinds of problems, but I get what you're saying.
New Kid writes: "I do think that choosing to write in the public sphere of a trade journal like IHE opens one up to precisely these kinds of problems, but I get what you're saying."
Oh, I agree. While I'm just as guilty of not doing this as anyone else, we ought to think about reading such pieces generously ("with the grain") as well as reading them aggressively ("against the grain"). Even most "bad" pieces offer something of value.
Likewise we ought to keep in mind that both IHE and The Chronicle change titles, remove citations, and edit pieces for their own editorial purposes. Why they do this, I don't know (The Chronicle, one could imagine, might need to fiddle with the length of a piece or it's title for space reasons, but IHE presumably has no such constraints). I've heard this complaint for a few different people now, so it's something we might want to keep in mind as well when we read such pieces.
Comp-Mafia:
No, I'm not out to destroy you.
If I were out to destroy you, I would have posted entries about you on my blog like the posts you've made about Jeff and me on your blog.
If I were out to destroy you, I would have posted attacks on you on other people's blogs, as you've done here.
If I were out to destroy you, I would have challenged the attacks and mischaracterization of me made on your blog.
If I were out to destroy you, I'd be challenging and attacking your comments on other people's blogs.
I only challenged you in this thread because your post here was designed to fan the flames of anger. You were acting as a provocateur, and I called you on it.
My first post was not overly hostile. In fact, I acknowledged that you were not treated nicely and that you had legitimate reasons for feeling upset, but that your characterization and understanding of what took place is very one-sided and not accurate from my perspective, just, as I'm sure, my characterization and understanding is one-sided and inaccurate from your perspective). You chose to get nasty.
You're the one seeking to destroy others, Comp-Mafia. You're the one engaging in the smear campaign against me and my friends. Usually, I just let it slide.
But not this time. In trying to fan the flames here, you went too far, and I called you on it.
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