School Superintendent Discovers the Joy of Trolls

Clayton Wilcox, superintendent of schools in St. Petersburg Florida announced that he was ending the blog sponsored and run by the St. Petersburg Times after deciding that

the lies, distortions and mean spiritedness of some - was not worth my time or worthy of this district.

As far as I know, Mr. Wilcox was the only superintendent of schools in a large school district to dive into the blogging world, and it's a shame that things went awry. For that I blame not the superintendent, or even the dimwits who took the opportunity to post hateful and idiotic comments under the cover of anonymity. No, I blame the webmaster of the newspaper for doing a poor job in creating a system that would have allowed Mr. Wilcox to be successful. Let's review shall we?

The fundamental problem with blogging that involves people in authority is that you should expect there to be other people on the sidelines throwing rocks. It's human nature. So when you establish the sort of forum that allows people to do their rock throwing anonymously, there is going to be trouble. That's why a little thing called Robert's Rules of Order has been around so long. To provide ground rules for public forums and meetings of all sorts. In the physical world we expect there to be some order to things and procedures to follow.

Certainly, there is great value in having an open forum for a school leader to ask for public input. In listening to a recent podcast of Ed Tech Coast to Coast one of the panelists made the point that blogs for district administrators and even school board members can provide a great way to get out the story of the good things happening in area schools, as it appears Mr. Wilcox was attempting to do. Instead, he was barraged by the types flame throwers (called trolls) that are all too common in the world of online newsgroups. Finally fed up with having to delete those comments, and then the comments complaining about the deletion, Mr. Wilcox has thrown up his hands and walked away from the whole thing.

To me, this seems a lot like a situation where the teacher has lost discipline in their classroom. Instead of giving up, what's needed is a firm hand and a clear set of expectations. And consequences when the rules are broken. That's the sort of thing that teachers are taught, and there's no reason that the same principles can't apply to blogging.

First, there have to be procedures. Before you ever really work on all the rules in a classroom the first thing you teach your students is how the fundamental day to day things are done. How you expect them to enter the classroom. What they are to do when they first arrive. How you will begin the class. Every little detail of what is expected of students is drummed into them in the first few days of school.

The same goes for the world of blogs. Do you want to post a comment? Fine, we welcome that, but first you have to tell us who you are. Anonymous postings have no place in a public discussion at this level. Sorry, but this is my blog and I make the rules. If you don't want to follow my rules and procedures, you don't have to be here.

Secondly, there have to be consequences. Just as a teacher would never allow a student to disrupt a classroom by acting out, we won't allow you to distract from our discussions. If you are unruly we will start by deleting without apology what you said. If you are continuously unruly we will take steps to block access to the blog for your computer's address. Yes, we can do that, and we will.

And no, we won't engage in a discussion of why your comment was removed or why you were banned. Those are the rules. Live within them or find something else to do with your time. We have things that we want to discuss as concerned members of our community.

Now, the thing is, all of that can be done electronically when the administrative features of the blog are established. The first thing to do is to establish a registration procedure. In order to comment you must first register, and your registration information has to be verified with a real e-mail address.

Secondly, if you have something to say then you'll have to accept our system of comment moderation. If your comment is on topic and appropriate for our discussion we will make it public. If it is not, then it will not appear. Just as teachers steer classroom conversations to topics that are relevant to the lesson, we will control the discussion so that everyone is heard and that it is done in a civilized manner. That's all. It's not censorship, but the simple application of rules that will govern the behavior of the group that has gathered electronically.

Yes, some people won't like that, but so what? Some kids in the classroom want to lie on the floor and kick their legs when they don't get their way.

That doesn't make it something that should be tolerated. Just something to deal with. In the classroom it's up to the teacher to take control.

In the blogging world, it comes down to having procedures and rules in place that will bring order to the discussion. And since the folks at the St. Petersburg Times failed to do that when getting Mr. Wilcox's blog set up and ready for him they are the ones that really are to blame for the ultimate failure of this blogging experiment.

Via Ideas and Thoughts from an Ed Tech