An online website open to residents of an urban
neighborhood in the northeast U.S. was designed as a way for neighbors to keep
one another informed about everything from yard sales and local performances to
police ticketing illegally parked cars and potential safety issues. It's not
unique in its mission. Many online sites -- either freestanding or through
other social media websites -- have proliferated over the past several years.
As neighbors lives have gotten busier, the sites offer a
way to keep one another informed -- even if some users don't recognize the
names of many of their neighbors doing the informing.
On the site in question, while hundreds of neighbors have
signed up, only a handful are regular users. Others chime in occasionally to
request the name of a good plumber or advertise some gently used furniture.
It's the dozen or so regular posters who have command of the site.
Lately, the tone of the site has been decidedly alarmist,
with posts about roving bands of young kids on bikes or complaints that
children "from other neighborhoods" using the public basketball
courts leave them littered with empty water and sports drink bottles. There
have been posts raising concerns about whether these "outsiders" are
frequenting the neighborhood parks to buy and sell drugs.
Others complain that police don't respond to their
concerns quickly enough. Still others complain when police ticket cars parked
partially on sidewalks because someone called to complain, even though such
parking has been acceptable for years as a way of letting emergency vehicles
pass through narrow streets when necessary.
Occasionally, some complaints strike some users as
inappropriate, especially those veering into concern about "others"
coming into the neighborhood to use the public parks and courts. When a site
member responds to take such a poster to task, this triggers an angry
back-and-forth exchange among the regulars.
What, then, are the majority of users who stay connected
to the site for legitimate news and safety tips to do? Among themselves, many
of these non-posting members gripe about the tone some posts, but is it their
responsibility to challenge any post that seems tinged with racism or
constitutes verbal bullying? After all, whenever someone does post a call for
moderation, the discussion often gets even more heated.
It's good for neighbors to try to keep one another
informed. However, when this results in more alarmist or offensive posts than
useful ones, the value of the site is lessened.
The right thing for the non-posting users to do is decide
whether the information they get from the site outweighs their frustration over
the tone of some posts. If they find too many postings objectionable, they
should quit the site and find alternative ways to get the information they
need.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications programat Harvard's Kennedy School.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2014 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNECONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
4 comments:
Jeffrey,
I have considerable experience in this area. It’s a shame that some outspoken people ruin a good site for other users, driving them away if it becomes too objectionable. If it’s a homeowners association-organized website, the webmaster can require posters to use their real names, which generally results in a more civil tone than allowing anonymous posts. If posts get nasty even then, the webmaster should have the discretion to delete posts he or she considers outside the bounds of propriety. Chronic offenders can lose their posting rights. Residents who object to webmaster moderation can organize their own Facebook sites and have at it without exposing the community at large to the offensive posts.
If ever there was a reason to discourage these types of "neighborhood websites", this is it! These examples of troublemakers who ruin things for the persons who only want to use the site for proper and friendly purposes exposes the dangers of such "agreements". One can imagine outcomes unplanned in the minds of persons only trying to help. Much good can be accomplished from these types of social uses of the computer, but this example shows the unfavorable sides that can result.
Charlie Seng
Lancaster, SC
We live in an age of social media and virtual reality, these sites that allow posts were proliferate in the future and we will simply have to live with it.
Just stop looking as Jeff says. Pretty simple. Go back to 1960 in your mind when none of this stuff happened.
Alan Owseichik
Greendield
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