Colin Walker - Latest Comments in Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

colinwalker — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:27:12 -0000

Thanks for all the comments. Rob, the post wasn't intended as an attack on what you did or did not intend to do but as observation on the shortcomings of tbe situation. FF do need to take some steps to resolve the issues around removing data. The difference now to the old bbs days is that people are now far more aware of what IP actually is.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Robin Cannon — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:33:39 -0000

Whole thing strikes me as a bit of a storm in a teacup. I'd never even considered my ownership of comments on FriendFeed or other blogs, certainly I'd never felt like it was hugely important I maintained rights over them.

On FriendFeed, if the original item is deleted from the feed then it makes sense that the comments are removed also. Otherwise it's a discussion with no initial context, which is frankly just going to clog things up and confuse. And ultimately there'll be a natural selection in any case so that users who do try to abuse the feature, and delete things to remove the comments...well their posts will just end up being uncommented.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Guest — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:17:39 -0000

I offer a different view of what transpired yesterday evening. http://friendfeed.com/e/4d7...

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Shey — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:39:20 -0000

I see your point -- but I still think the user should control the content they created. If they want to delete their thought, the should have that right.

It would be great to have a export solution to get around that though, so commentors could keep an archive or backup their comments.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Carsten Pötter — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:21:43 -0000

You have a point there. :)

Just one more point to consider, though: Let's assume you wrote a thought provoking article which stirred a lot of discussion on your blog. However the majority of comments were made via systems which reserve the rights to commenters. Suddenly most of them delete their accounts, the systems go bankrupt, whatever. The discussion on your article will be worthless then.

Maybe there is a solution to the problem already. I don't know.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Andrea Hill (afhill) — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:20:15 -0000

Another difference? At the time I was probably posting as "geekgirl0821" or something similar. Nowadays many of us want "our content" associated with our names rather than a cryptic screen name. It's that whole idea of a personal brand.. but just like a brand may not be able to control everything that people say about them, perhaps we as individuals need to recognize a limit to our control.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Shey — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:08:26 -0000

Blogging as we know it is changing. More and more bloggers are realizing this.

Does it mean we need to shut down blog comments completely? No.

Can we still accept distributed conversations and encourage keeping comments on the posts? Yes. Colin has done just that by adding Disqus and the FF comments plugin. The comments get to stay here on the blog and the reader still gets to manage his/her own comments -- win-win in my book.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Rob La Gesse — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:37:35 -0000

Oh, and to clear up one more thing - I was NOT trying to "control the conversation". I WAS trying to control where I participated in it - and I did not want to do that on FriendFeed.

I've been using Social Media since I ran dial-up BBS's in the early 1980's - I am not naive enough to believe that any conversation can be "controlled".

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Rob La Gesse — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:34:29 -0000

My comment policy is clearly marked in the Terms of Use page on my Blog. FriendFeed did not make their comment policy as clear - and in fact did not even notify me that removing my feed would delete all related content. Should I have "expected" it to delete associated content? I don;t think so. Should they have warned me that associated data would be removed? Yes, I think they should have.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Michael Beck — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:18:34 -0000

Right on! And nobody referred to their posts as "their content" at that time, either. Interesting watching this shift in terms of how we think about what we contribute to the Internet.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Carsten Pötter — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:22:29 -0000

You can't do that on most blogs. If you have commented you can just sit and watch what will happen next. Yes, you make the reservation "especially if its not on his blog", but what you're saying here essentially means the end of blogging as we know it today. You can close comments completely on blogs with that point of view. Blog post here but comments on disparate sites which are owned by the commenters.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Laurentiu — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:26:23 -0000

man, this is strange, very strange.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Shey — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:51:23 -0000

Because the blogger doesn't own my comment. I do. My comment = my content. I should be able to edit, delete, and manage my own content however I see fit. How can the blogger own something that I wrote? Especially if its not on his blog?

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

colinwalker — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:44:31 -0000

Is there not a difference between comments made in a service like FriendFeed rather than those made directly at the blog?

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Andrea Hill (afhill) — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:44:25 -0000

Remember bulletin boards? You would discuss something on a board. You could remove your own comments, but administrators could also remove or edit comments, or even a whole thread. I don't recall this sort of concern of "ownership of intellectual property" at that time.

Re: Conversation ownership and the FriendFeed backlash.

Carsten Pötter — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:29:53 -0000

I completely agree with svartling. As a blog author I reserve the right to delete comments, e.g. spam, harassment,... Though, also Rob Diana is right, discussion was always fragmented. That's why we have trackbacks and pingbacks, right?

While I am an advocate of data portability, this has to be discussed some more, I guess. It's not all black and white.