As long as everyone's able to leave their yard now...

[[This post has helpful insertions to provide context and avoid misunderstandings -- in other words, I would hate for the blogworld to have to think too hard.]]

Well, I'm over the 11,000 mark for Google search results on my name and death threats.

And, this evening we have a goodly and rising tally of 448 for my name and hate speech.

[[fact and references added as hyperlinks]]

Isn't that interesting. Seems like something that might just piss you off if you weren't such the politically savvy marketing blogger and chariman of women's good will that I am proported to be...

[[insert tongue-in-cheek tag]]

Say, if you had been on the receiving end of hate speech online and didn't call a committee to lay blame and shoot the band before they could fire their first drummer.

[[uncomfortable rim shot]]

Try being a race mixer in the south, 21 years of marriage and a beige baby. Then talk to me about yards and safety and hate speech.

[[note self-empowerment through use of race-mixer term]]

And tell me if it would make you a little perturbed, if, say you never even mentioned somebody outside of your own blog, and there they were in the press saying you been doing bad things on another blog you didn't care much about, hardly read, only laughed once inappropriately about that Oprah thing, be4 the nasty words.

[[sad emoticon, chuckling emoticon, confused emoticon]]

You know what Johnny Carson used to say: "Women, they don't forget. Memories as long as Google. Boys, you can count on it." Or maybe that was me.

[[intentionally profound]]

What card is that again? I'm losing count. Race card, illness card, woman card, victim card... Doctor, lawyer, justice of the goddam peace, where are you? Gag me, hang me, shoot me. I still come knockin' on the front door of your cult to say "HI! Do you love me yet?"

[[metaphorically speaking]]

Do you want to talk about mean?

Would someone like to talk to me about mean?

[[rhetorical questions]]

About women silencing woman? About PTSD triggers, about who it's convenient to hang our hangups on? Sucks to have to go back to the source. Hurts back there. Baby, don't I know it. But we gotta go. Pull that barb out at the root--that's the only way to get through it.

[[trauma psychology -- look it up]]

Might make you think there's more to the story. Makes me think. Makes me think about being bullied into cliques I'm not hip to. Makes me make you, and you are made, understand, I never signed on to your story, but I'm there now.

[[so to speak]]

You coulda hired somebody else.

[[I mean, really.]]
...

community guy on community stuff

community guy's got a ton of info on:

Safer User Generated Content Campaigns

If you are of the safe-sex school, that means you should comdomize yourself before writing a politician.

badumpbump, crash!

Okay, even if i don't like the UGC lingo, the tips in the post are worth a read for those establishing or running moderated communities--or any kind for that matter. Jake points to a whitepaper that goes into detail: Six Techniques for Safer User Generated Content (UGC) Campaigns, focusing on six key, and often under appreciated techniques. I like the tip to enlist users of a community in moderating it.

4. Enlist your users – most site users want a positive experience. Given the opportunity, many of them will help to protect the safety and quality of a project. Enlisting users can not only help moderators, but can engage users in the site itself. Make sure to develop tools and processes that make it easy and rewarding for "good" behaviors to help protect against the "bad" behaviors.

As the community lives a hopefully long and healthy life, the natural evolution is for the participants to define levels of moderation, and to ignore or oust the assholes, to create and enforce what's acceptable and what gets you shot behind the barn.

(if only!) ;-)