Nia Dark and Lovely, a Black Escort in London

There have been howls of protest as web gurus try to banish bad behaviour, from the blogosphere.

I have to confess that I do not feel strongly about this. I guess because I am not a fan of bad behaviour.

Perhaps it was inevitable. When two leading internet pioneers came together this week to propose a set of guidelines that would filter out offensive and abusive comments from blogs, they were met by a torrent of offensive and abusive comments.

The text that has got the collective bowels moving of these and many other bloggers is a draft set of rules on introducing the concept of civility to the blogosphere. It is the combined work of Tim O'Reilly, inventor of the phrase Web 2.0 to describe the next generation of interactive communications, and Jimmy Wales, founder of the communal encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

They have posted a seven-point programme that would attempt, they say, to address the plethora of abusive comments on the web, while preserving the free spirit of the medium. Point one of the code is that anyone signing up to it would commit themselves to a "civility enforced" standard to remove unacceptable comments from their blog.

Unacceptable is defined as content that is used to abuse, harass, stalk or threaten others; is libellous or misrepresentative; or infringes copyright, confidentiality or privacy rights. Anonymous postings are also to be removed, with every comment requiring a recognised email address, even if posts are made under pseudonyms.

Point six encourages bloggers to ignore "trolls" making nasty comments that fall short of abuse or libel. "Never wrestle with a pig," is the advice. "You both get dirty, but the pig likes it."

To back up the code, they propose a "civility enforced" badge marking sites which subscribe to the guidelines, and an "anything goes" badge to denote those that do not. The proposed guidelines can be interactively amended by web users, until a final version is agreed.

The draft guidelines have prompted wide debate with varying responses. Dan Gillmor of the Centre for Citizen Media, a group devoted to grassroots media attached to Berkeley's graduate school of journalism, rejects the need for a code of conduct. He says bloggers require only one simple rule: be civil. To define unacceptable behaviour is to create a monster, he says, as "Who'd be the judge of it? The government? Libel lawyers? Uh, oh."

901am says the idea is the preserve of rabid feminists and professional victims. "Civility is subjective, and controlling what people say and do on blogs can only be a recipe for the decline of the medium and the introduction of totalitarianism online."

Quotes from Howls of protest as web gurus attempt to banish bad behaviour from blogosphere by Ed Pilkington of the Guardian Newspaper.

I can see how opinion may vary over what are unacceptable comments. I guess it becomes tricky when someone other than myself, can decide what comments I post on my blog.

I would prefer it if comments were not anonymous, but I recognise that some people are fearful of identifying themselves.

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting take on this, in his no twinkie badges post, he has some strong views.

Labels: Blogging, comments, guardian, Jeff Jarvis

The more I read about blogs, the more I realise that some bloggers can make an impact.

They have an ability to affect the way some people run their businesses. A good example is Jeff Jarvis, and his experience with Dell, here.

Jeff, clearly has a presence on the Internet, and I believe he has a right to share what happened to him. I believe Jeff sharing his experience with others, prompted Dell to alter how they treat customers.

Then there can be repurcussions. Bloggers who write about their employers, who are discovered and then sacked. Rebecca Blood has an interesting piece about reaping what you sow.She talks about how some political bloggers have had to face the consequences here.

The Courtesan connection has two important posts about Security. He outlines how important it is to cover your tracks here and how to put it into action here. He encourages Providers who write blogs to consider making them invitation only.

Reading all these posts, reinforces the impact that blogging can have on a blogger's life,for me. As well as how a blogger can impact other lives, too.

It is hard for me to gauge who is reading my blog. Occasionally, I have readers contact me, who are not comfortable leaving comments on my blog, for various reasons, sharing how a post has impacted them.

Food for thought.

Labels: Blogging, Courtesan Connection, Jeff Jarvis, Rebecca Blood, security

Something to look forward to on an Outcall. Thankfully, I have not had this experience yet, and hope I never do. The sad part of this story is their guests followed them home.

An American lawyer and his wife are suing an exclusive London hotel for millions of dollars after they were left with a most unpleasant souvenir of their trip to the capital. Sidney and Cynthia Bluming booked into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park last May expecting luxury, pampering and relaxation. Instead they found themselves nibbled for five days and nights by legions of bedbugs who inflicted hundreds of bites on them, leaving their skin red, swollen and itchy.

The ordeal did not end there. The tiny creatures embedded themselves in the Blumings' luggage and clothing, hitching a transatlantic ride to their Manhattan apartment, where they continued biting the couple until they fumigated their apartment and replaced their clothing, bedding, luggage and personal effects. According to their lawsuit, the experience left the Blumings traumatised and haunted by the fear that some of the bugs had survived to prey on them as they slept.

Sam Jones and Agencies for the Guardian Newspaper, Unwanted guests.

An interesting post by Jeff Jarvis who says Size does not matter it is who views your content.

Just when we were getting used to it, the page view has been declared dead. There are many reasons for its passing, having to do with how web pages are now made and how web content is now distributed. But there is one seismic implication to this - in media, mass is over. Size doesn’t matter.

In a world of so many choices, the audience care about trust, taste, relevance, usefulness, not ratings. And advertisers care more about targeting, efficiency, engagement, branding and return on investment. These are better measurements than print circulation or broadcast ratings or online page views. And so now, publishers, advertisers and technologists must catch up and change their yardsticks for success yet again. It is time to measure quality over quantity.

Jeff Jarvis Guardian column death of the page view .

Have a good weekend.

Labels: guardian, Jeff Jarvis, Occupational Hazards

The internet speeds up the dissemination of not only information but also misinformation. So what are we to do about this? Regulate? Legislate? Complain? Ignore? Or respond?

The internet can be better at corrections than old media. A fix can be attached to an error where it occurs, and many online denizens pride themselves on confessing missteps faster than their print and broadcast counterparts. But the internet can also be worse - online, errors can spread wider faster and take on a longer half-life. I wish we had a technical solution - that everyone who linked to an incorrect article could receive an alert and correction.

Should blogs subscribe to a code of conduct? I don’t think so (and neither does Toulmin). Again, blogs are mostly just people in conversation and I don’t wave a code when I talk to my neighbours and friends; I know that my integrity rests on my credibility. On the other hand, when I argue that bloggers who commit acts of journalism should enjoy the rights and privileges of professional journalists, how can I say that they should not suffer the same regulation? Well, for me, that’s easy, because as an American first amendment absolutist, I bristle at any attempt to regulate speech.

And I do fear that in their efforts to protect truth, legislatures, courts and self-appointed industry watchdogs could chill speech in new ways. If the people fear retribution without the legal resources that the owners of presses have, they will either shut up or hide behind the anonymity the internet allows. That would be a tragedy.

We need to recognise that the internet alters how media operate. Blogs - whether written by professionals or amateurs - tend to publish first and edit later, which can work because the audience will edit you. In this medium, stories are never done; rather than turning into fish-wrap, they can grow and become more factual and gather new perspectives, thanks to the power of the link and, yes, the correction.

An interesting post by Jeff Jarvis, read more, for the full story.

I am not comfortable with blogs subscribing to a code of conduct. I write what is on my mind.

Why should that be restricted?

What do you think?

Time magazine's "Person of the Year" awards were started in 1927, since when there have been some pretty dodgy winners, Hitler among them. They clearly should not be taken too seriously, other than as a subject of mild end-of-the-year controversy. The 2006 winner, though, has troubled me for reasons that go well beyond mere dissatisfaction with the verdict. The winner was "You" - that is, us - and to make sure we got the message, when we look at Time we see ourselves in a mirror embedded in the cover. Actually, the You is not quite all of us, merely those of us who have contributed to the growth of the internet and all it contains - for instance blogging and participating in YouTube, MySpace or other "user-generated" sites.

Time's editor, Richard Stengel, commented: "You, not us, are transforming the information age." That was a profoundly depressing statement, as was the fuller citation explaining the reasoning: "For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game ..."

The misguided and misleading use of the term democracy in this context, and the manifestly incorrect claim that You have conquered the professionals, are bad enough. But my main objection is wider. The Time award and the reasons for it promote what I believe to be one of the most pernicious and disturbing philosophies of our age, extolling the cult of what is often patronisingly referred to as the "ordinary" person. I emphasise immediately that if I use the word "ordinary", it is in quotation marks - it is not to suggest inferiority or any comparison with an elite of extraordinary people. The philosophy I object to, which the internet's information explosion has fostered, is that the "ordinary" person is as - no, even more - important to the dissemination of knowledge, information and opinion as the expert or the professional.

It manifests itself in various ways, here and elsewhere. South Korea has a news website, OhMyNews, that uses "citizen journalists" to provide most of its material. It has some 40,000 non-professional contributors; they are, of course, untested and unvetted, their submissions unchecked, their motives unknown. The reader of the website can have no idea about the accuracy of the information on it; yet it is one of the main sources of news for South Koreans. Nor can entrants into the social network sites for the young, such as MySpace, have any real idea of the genuineness, truthfulness or hidden motives of their fellow joiners; and it is impossible for the web's operators to monitor who registers. Not surprisingly, meetings engineered over the internet have caused anguish and tragedy as well as happy associations.

Then there is the proliferation of - though they don't yet call them that yet - "citizen reviewers". Hardly a newspaper here (this one included) is free from readers' opinions on the holidays they have taken, restaurants they have dined at, films they have seen and so on; it seems that no cultural or leisure activity escapes being assessed by "ordinary" people.

A few months ago the usually reliable Routier Guide to good, honest, affordable English eateries folded. People were no longer buying such guides, we were told. Instead, they searched for places to eat on various websites carrying accounts by people who had chosen to make public their dining experiences. A favourable opinion on a website by, say, a DS of Bristol (who may well be, a recent survey revealed, the chef using a pseudonym) takes precedence over a balanced review of a meal by a trained, independent inspector.

How long can it be before professional critics and reviewers - people who know what they are talking about, who perhaps have had years of experience in their field - are jettisoned in favour of "ordinary" people's views? After all, the expert costs money; the amateurs come free. Why do we need our own film/restaurant/book reviewers when hundreds of cinemagoers/diners/readers are only too anxious to tell us what they think? But Time's assertion that those working for nothing are "beating the pros at their own game" is nonsense. They are providing a different service, an opinion based not on expertise and experience, but on their less tutored feelings. I am not saying that the amateur's view is less legitimate than the professional's; but it should not be given some sort of mystical prominence.

Looking at the information revolution as a whole, the greater participation by You has been a benefit. But the movement is losing its sense of proportion. It has become too successful, too cocky. The role played by those who possess special talents, skills, knowledge, training and creativity should not be undermined by the desire to include the remainder.

We all deserve an award this year says Time Magazine. But what's so great about "ordinary people". An article by Marcel Berlins of the Guardian newspaper.


I can see what Marcel Berlins is saying. However, these days when I go to restaurants, on holidays, or to hotels. I tend to read reviews by professionals, and ordinary people. I have sites like trip advisor really useful. I can see that Marcel is saying it has become too cocky.

I wonder whether the professionals are feeling threatened by the ordinary people?

In this industry there are no professional experts. I guess there are people on review boards who write multiple reviews, who are respected by some, as they are prolific reviewers. However, they are ordinary people in my view. I would not consider them experts.

The internet has changed the way in which I work. I have used paper advertising, on one occasion, and it did not work. The internet seems to enable easier access, in my view.

I have witnessed clients on messageboards start threads on escorts, which are pretty negative, and the escort has either retired, or come back reinvented. The speed in which information can be shared, and disseminated is amazing. I agree with Jeff Jarvis, if the information is incorrect, who will edit. On review boards, or messageboards, it can be really political, and some people do not stand a chance, and in effect, their business is affected. It may be that some members have clout, and are able to say what they want, when they want.That is the part that I have difficulty with, sifting out the truth.

In all the kerfuffle that surrounded the arrest of Tom Stephens this week, there was a certain inevitability to the media locating his profile on the social networking website MySpace. Before the page was closed down, it was possible to see that, alongside Stephens's professed admiration for Hong Kong Phooey, he boasted eight online "friends" including the MySpace administrator, Tom. Yesterday, those eight "friends" were already attracting attention, and acquiring all manner of unpleasant comments on their sites. It was, perhaps, a cautionary tale of friend-making in MySpace.

For the uninitiated, MySpace friendships work a little like this: you have your own MySpace profile, which details your hobbies, interests, photographs and videos and has links to your "friends'" profiles. People become your "friend" by submitting a friendship request to you, or vice versa. Some of these requests will come from people you already know in the real world. Others will be sent by strangers. They may want to be your friend because they are, in a broad, sweeping manner, asking everybody to be their friend. Or they might have read your profile and identified you as a likeminded soul who shares their love of Five Star. Either way, you can approve, deny, or simply ignore any friendship requests you get.

How do you know who your "friends" really are? An article by Laura Barton of the Guardian.

I read this article, and it made me think. I get so many requests from other independent escorts to be included on my links page, on my professional site. My policy, is that I will only link to people that I have met, or consider friends.

I read on messageboards that some members will not write reviews, because they have major fears of being traced, if something were to go wrong, and it would get back to their wives. Clearly, if you use a handle, and email address that is not connected to your real life, I imagine it would be hard to be traced.

An example is with the recent Ipswich arrests, phone records were traced, and the individuals were contacted.

What is your view?

Labels: Blogging, Internet, Jeff Jarvis, News, Reviews, security