News notes

A thread on MonroeTalks.com is asking questions about Monroe Publishing Co.’s policies on moderating the forum.

I enter this kind of discussion with reluctance. I don’t want to stifle debate, especially on a topic so close to my heart. I’ve spent more than 30 years defending the First Amendment and believe passionately in free speech.

But some questions have been asked that deserve answers, or at least as close as I can come.

I appreciate the story on Twitter that French Fry posted. It highlighted the similar issues that all discussion forums and social networking sites deal with. How much to moderate is a challenge.

Too little and you lose your forum to people on the fringes. Mainstream folks don’t feel comfortable and leave. Too much and you lose virtually everyone, because who wants Big Brother looking over their shoulder.

We try to moderate as lightly as possible. Weeks go by without any posts being deleted or any users being admonished. I don’t keep records, but my sense is that we average about one incident a month that requires intervention. And sometimes that’s just a minor change, like removing a phone number or e-mail address from a post.

I’ve been asked to talk at national and regional conferences about how we manage MonroeTalks.com because it’s somewhat unique in the country. We’ve been able to create an online community that is more active and more responsible than most.

I really don’t know why we’ve been successful - luck is certainly one possibility. But I tell these audiences that I believe there are two reasons:

One, we moderate very lightly, and at the same time encourage folks on MonroeTalks.com to self-moderate (by that I mean both moderate your own posts before you push the button, and users correcting each other when they see inappropriate material).

And two, we benefit from the small-town atmosphere of Monroe County and the general sense of civility that comes with small town folks. In short, there are a lot of nice people in MonroeTalks and they tend to treat each other decently.

After I gave a talk in Washington, D.C. this spring, the man who moderates the Houston Chronicle’s talk forums came up to me and said, in effect, “Congratulations on MonroeTalks, but it wouldn’t work in Houston. People just aren’t that nice.”

Several people have made reference to their belief that local politicians control how we moderate MonroeTalks. They also seem to think that local politicians control how we edit the Monroe Evening News.

Mention that at City Hall, or the county courthouse, or the offices of our state legislators, and you would get some laughs. Certainly, many local movers and shakers try to influence our reporters and editors. Some call regularly with complaints or concerns. We always listen carefully and politely. Sometimes we do what they ask. But only if we think it’s the right thing to do for our readers and our community.

Actually, there is a kind of double standard when it comes to moderating MonroeTalks. That’s because, whether for better or for worse, our legal system has a double standard when it comes to libel. One set of rules apply for public officials, another for private folks. So when a topic gets critical of a public official, it’s unlikely we’ll step in. They’re fair game. But when a topic is critical of a private individual or business, we have to be careful. If someone can prove they’ve been defamed - and it’s not true - they can sue for libel.

That’s why we didn’t do anything to stop the long threads on MonroeTalks that involved back-and-forth discussion between City Council member Brian Beneteau and supporters of former Zorba’s/Jefano’s owner Jeff Fraunhauffer. Both would be considered by the courts to be public figures - Mr. Beneteau because of his election to the city council and Mr. Fraunhauffer because of his arrest and conviction.

When we delete a potentially libelous post, we’re not just protecting ourselves - we’re protecting the person who made the statement. The Internet Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1996 and updated several times since, protects the provider of a discussion forum from being sued, as long as they don’t moderate too heavily. In other words, if we generally keep hands off, except when someone complains, we can’t be sued. The person who makes the statement can be, however.

That’s one of the reasons we moderate very lightly. We don’t want to “take control” of the forums. If we did, we would be liable for the content.

Editorial Page Editor Tom Chulski and I discussed earlier this week the challenge of finding something for the editorial page each Memorial Day.

We’ve both been in the newspaper business more than three decades. That’s a lot of Memorial Days.

Yet because we’ve written dozens of editorials on the topic of why Memorial Day is important, that doesn’t make the holiday any less relevant. Each year it’s just as important as the year before.

And since we’re currently at war, the holiday takes on even more significance.

This year, the task was made easier by Carleton resident John Durbin, who sent us a timely and well-written guest column reminding people to put aside their picnic baskets and turn off their television sets long enough to celebrate the holiday. It will appear in Sunday’s Evening News.

Oh, and Monday there will be an editorial from The Evening News, celebrating the patriotic men and women who have sacrificed protecting our liberties and reminding all of us that we have a responsibility, too.

This weekend, I have lots of yard work to do. And a few games to watch on TV. And I’d like to see the Indiana Jones movie. And we’ll probably fit in some grilling.

But we’ll make sure we set aside some time to think about my father, who served in Europe in WWII, and my wife’s father, who served in the Pacific, and our nephew in Iraq, and several other friends with children in harms way serving their nation.

I’m wrapping up a family vacation that was a little different this time.

I’ve been on vacations with my family at the beach before. But this time three of the five women were pregnant.

My two sons’ wives are due next fall, as is my daughter. Our number of grandchildren will double, from three to six, between August and December. There is a sort of symmetry involved. Our oldest is having her third. The next oldest is having his second, and the youngest is going to be a daddy for the first time.

There were four generations gathered together, because my mother joined us, too.

So what made this vacation so different?

Unless you’ve experienced it in person, you have no idea how many details there are involved in pre-, during and post-birth that need to be discussed.

And some of the details are, well, fairly personal.

But when three pregnant women are related, and gathered with their mother/mother-in-law and grandmother/grandmother-in-law, there are few inhibitions holding back the details, which get discussed over and over again.

I’m not complaining. I learned a thing or two. 

And you know that saying about how pregnant women have a sort of glow about them.  It’s true.

All three of them were beautiful, radiating with the joy of new life. 

And for all the complaining about nauseau and cramps and restrictive diets, it was wonderful being part of their lives for a few days.

An average story on monroenews.com gets anywhere from 500 to 2,000 page views.

Bigger stories get 3,000 to 4,000 page views, and occasionally a story will top 5,000 page views. The entire site only gets about 40,000 page views a day, and the most we’ve ever had on a day was 55,000.

So imagine my surprise when I glanced at the Web stats yesterday and saw our traffic for the day soaring above anything I’d seen before.

At 5 p.m., the site already had  50,000 page views and was projecting to top 80,000 for the day.

“What could be causing that,” I said to myself. I didn’t know of any big stories.

So I checked the individual story stats, and there it was. The story about a truck called King Kong by its owner - a very unusual truck, to be sure - had already topped 20,000 page views and the number was growing by the minute.

By this morning, it’s over 35,000 page views - more than the entire site gets on some days. And the monroenews.com Web site topped 82,000 page views for May 6 and was headed for similar numbers today.

So, what happened? It didn’t take long for me to figure it out. It’s called Fark.com.

If you’re not familiar with it, Fark.com is a Web site devoted to unusual stories. It’s kind of an on-line version of “news of the weird.”

Someone sent the King Kong truck story to Fark.com, where it was displayed prominently among their “Not News” stories of the day. As of mid-morning today, 28,500 page views on monroenews.com were referred from Fark.com.

In addition, another 11,000 page views were created when people clicked on the photo of the truck, to see the larger version.

It’s fun to have a local story get noticed on a national Web site, even if it’s only Fark.com. But that’s generally not where our traffic comes from.

Most visitors to monroenews.com and MonroeTalks.com come from the local area. We know that from their IP providers, which our system keeps track of.

Links to national Web sites create some one-time excitement. The last time we had a story go national - before yesterday our most page views ever - was the traffic stop of three University of Michigan football players last May when drugs were found in the car. That story received 14,000 page views, most coming from national sports Web sites.

I love it when things happen organically.

Both in the garden and in the real world.

Doug Russeau is a gardener who knows a lot about organically growing things. He’s spent his life working in nursery and landscaping businesses.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when he starting sharing his gardening advice on MonroeTalks.com, other users began to take notice.

When “The Shepherd” talked, they listened. And eventually, someone suggested that Shep ought to have his own blog. It became a draft Shep movement.

Starting this weekend, Shep has his own blog on Blogsmonroe.com. I’m sure he’ll keep talking on MonroeTalks.com, too. But his blog, The Backyard Gardener, gives him his own spot to answer questions, offer advice and chat with other gardeners.

Shep, who is Doug Rouseau in real life, hopes to use a question and answer format for much of his blog. We’re setting it up with a prominent spot for folks to ask questions - through an e-mail link to Doug.

Of course, The Backyard Gardener isn’t our first gardening blog. All Things Green, by Judy and Bob Dluzen, has been around since the early days of Blogsmonroe.com. Together, the two blogs will give local gardeners a great resource.