Chris colin writes about how Heather Champ and the flickr team figure out how to define inappropriate content and how to handle it (via Marc’s Voice).
“The essence of Champ’s job, she says, boils down to defending this imprecise but holy ‘spirit of Flickr.’ Indeed, imprecision is an art here. The list of community guidelines is an assortment of lawyer-vexing instructions like ‘Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don’t be that guy,’ and ‘Don’t forget the children.’ If you’ve spent any time online, you instantly recognize these to be meaningful and clear edicts. Champ is only half joking when she says her is responsibility is to keep things from ‘encroaching on Flickr’s serenity.'”
“People become disassociated from one another online. The computer somehow nullifies the social contract.” It’s great to see a someone reminding folks that the social contract is still relevant online.
Wonderful information. I always thought that filtering out unwanted content was just the job of a heartless system.
It’s calming to know people with a heart, programmed that system.
I totally agree that the computer has given everyone the notion that technically ‘no one’ is on the other side. Yet our notions of whether someone IS on the other side, and how worldly-knowledgeable we need to be, keeps shifting from case to case.