Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    <scribbled by silly Fri 11 Aug 00 09:29>
  

    

And back to <mnemonic> ... other than writing books, what's next for you?
What are you thinking about? Do you want to stay in New York? 
  

    

I wish I had more to say on that subject. I've been jobhunting since EFF
ended funding for my position in May. Mostly in NYC, but considering
jobs in other parts of the country.
  

    

Have you formed an opinion about the new "purchase circles" feature on
amazon.com? They are eerily appealing in a voyeuristic way, yet they do
feel like invasions of privacy.

The geographic purchase circles seem less invasive of privacy than the
professional or affinity circles.
  

    

There are no affinity circles, actually, unless you count working
together in the same company an "affinity." And while it may FEEL
to some at first impression as an invasion of privacy, "We ensure privacy by
aggregating anonymous data. None of the data is associated with any
individual's name."

I guard my online privacy pretty carefully these days, to the point where
I refuse to sign up with outfits like PlanetAll or SixDegrees that make it
easier for people to track you down online. Purchase Circles aren't even a
blip on my personal radar.
  

    
Some of these companies could be pretty damn small, and I can just see them
looking for the person who bought the large quantities of gerbil-stuffing
manuals to give to all her friends.

No, I don't like this, and if I can get the e-mail address they give for
comments to actually work, I'll be telling Amazon so.  It would be a bummer
to stop shopping there.
  

    
Which brings up privacy trends and assurances in general.

Mike, do you think users of internet services are or can bve adaquately
informed?  How good are the boilerplate privacy statements proliferating
these days in terms of enforcibility by consumers?
  

    

I actually think that the well.com domain would be a very interesting
purchase circle. 

Martha -- just to play devil's advocate here for a minute -- when I as a
corporate employee use my employer-owned computer and network
connections, I have no expectation of privacy. My employer has the right
under US law to read my email, trace my Internet comings and goings,
even capture my keystrokes. Just because I'm an employee. And none of it
would be aggregated -- it would all be specific to me. 

Why, then, is it an invasion of privacy (as you know, I too feel that
way as an initial reaction)? These circles are tracked by domain, is my
understanding. My amazon purchases do not factor into the purchase
circle for my employer because I use my personal email address in my
amazon.com dealings. It only happens when employees use their employers'
facilities.
  

    
What if you have a vanity domain, as many people do?

What if you go to, oh, your pal's office at some small business or charity
and order hundreds of copies of books and videos antithetical to their
image?

I'm unclear on how the domain in the e-mail address as opposed to the domain
of the computer you're logging in from factors into this data, I have to
admit.
  

    

I have looked at the Purchase Circle's feature on Amazon and didn't find it
personally very troubling. I know it's possible to collect the data in ways
that don't invade the privacy of individual buyers to any meaningful extent.
Certainly Purchase Circles for small organizations might raise some kind
of business-espionage problems or something, but I noted that the primary
reading at Apple Computer seemed to be books of business gossip about Apple
Computer, which I found kind of reassuring.

Amazon seems to have been very upfront about what it's doing as well as very
responsive to complaints -- the very model of a good corporate citizen
that's also an innovator, IMHO.

Gail, I think it's possible to make sure that Internet service users are
adequately informed, to the extent that they wish to be informed. (Those
that don't make the effort to be informed can't be informed no matter what
you do.)

What would be very interesting would be to be able to do purchase circles
in reverse -- pick a book (CYBER RIGHTS, say) and find out which (if any)
purchase circles it appeared in.
  

    
Coming back briefly to purchase circles, I note that Amazon's getting its
money's worth out of them:  Business Week this week publishes a little box
listing some, with snide comments.

wg
  

    <scribbled by silly Sat 7 Jul 12 21:38>
  

    
Maybe the kid was looking at Stephen King?
  

    
Bad irony = The audience doesn't get it and is silent.
Bad sarcasm = The audience gets it and is booing.
  

    
Yeah, that's the risk with tone-of-voice based humor in alphabetland.

What's the Stephen King story about?
  

    <scribbled by silly Sat 7 Jul 12 21:38>
  

    <scribbled by picospan Thu 30 Mar 00 12:12>
  

    
I'm sorry to hear of your experiences.  I did misplace and fail to answer
your email suggesting better documentation, an initiative I agree with.
As soon as you pointed it out, I found the week old email and replied to it,
but I know that can't make up for the feeling of being ignored.  

I have been very present in this Inkwell conference recently because I had
volunteered to conduct an interview, which is a commitment of about one
post daily.  I try to be present in several conferences "inside"
particularly since we have not yet hired a WELL manager to take on my old
duties, so it's an overlapping time.  

Since you have pointed me to the <wellcome.> conference, I read your 
post in the topic where the expession "stupid newbie" had been used, and 
I believe you may have been speed-reading there.  That post was 
by <minow>, a new user himself, and he was saying it as a joke, from 
the point of view of requesting a help shortcut to better documentation in 
the web interface, in effect reiterating your request.  However, I don't 
doubt you ran into some crusty folks who are protective of how things are
done.  It's a problem, though it is also evidence that people experience a
sense of belonging, ownership and distinct culture, and we work to choose
open-hearted conference hosts who will balance the sense of their
conferences with the desire to be kind to those who haven't picked up that
context yet. If you feel a host mistreated you, you are welcome to
forward specifics to <confteam@well.com> so we can check it out. 

One other thing you report which I have seen before is that folks asked
you to read a while before posting.  This can be a useful strategy, and it
has worked for some who have been around for years, but it is not
official, and it is not the universal method for figuring out who is a
jerk, what conferences are calm and where there is a lot of thrash.
I appreciate your mentioning that so I can clarify that that is not a
rule, and I'd bet it hasn't even been the way a majority of current posers 
started out. 

The question of host powers and censorship is interesting. There is not
much deletion by conference hosts, and the act of scribbling a post by
another is subject to criticism and peer scrutiny.  However, in some
conferences, off-subject posts are deleted or moved.   And in Independent
conferences, the ones ending with the .ind extension, the hosts may or may
not follow the traditions of the Host agreement.

You might be interested in that document, which is part of the host
manual,

http://www.well.com/confteam/hostmanual/  

The host manual also includes this policy premise:

>Hosts of conferences, in the community interest, may delete a comment, but
>may not edit it. In the event that a user has a comment deleted by the
>host of a conference, and disagrees with the deletion, the user has a
>number of options: email the host and discuss the deletion privately,
>start his or her own topic, post the deleted message in a read-only file 
>with a pointer in the conference, quit the conference, post a complaint 
>in the Hosts conference, or change his or her tack to make the 
>presentation more acceptable within the conference. 
>
>The WELL's administration does not and will not impose explicit rules upon
>hosts governing such deletions. To do that would, we believe,
>undermine the freedom of hosts to exercise their creativity in handling
>their conferences. Hosts are also empowered, under duress, and with a
>warning, to ban a nuisance member from their conference. Nevertheless,
>because hosts are not always present online, or necessarily
>knowledgeable, they cannot be held responsible for damaging comments that
>may appear in their conferences. Responsibility rests with the writer.

Since one person's "nuisance member" is another's breath of fresh air, we
generally work to find places for everyone somewhere within the hundreds of
conferences on the WELL, over time.  But if it doesn't work out, so be it.
Your account will be closed without further charge.
  

    <scribbled by silly Sat 7 Jul 12 21:38>
  

    
You know, there was a pointer to an article by <pdil> hereabouts which
exposed the "online grassroots hype of _Blair Witch_" as a publicity stunt
rather than a grassroot phenomenon, so perhaps it is not the example you
want.

That being said, I love the "hero of homegrown entertainment" concept.
And not just solo creations, but homegrown collaborations, too.
 
  

    <scribbled by silly Tue 28 Mar 00 15:06>
  

    <scribbled by silly Tue 28 Mar 00 15:07>
  

    <scribbled by silly Sat 7 Jul 12 21:38>
  

    
Renegade host Tom Mandel and the WELL's history in WIRED magazine's
cover story of May 1997.
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.05/ff_well.html>
<http://static.wired.com/wired/covers/cover5_05.gif>
  

    
So the WELL turns 15 tomorrow?