Engaging in the issues

This post started out as a comment in response to comments on my previous post clarifying a few issues on KBW. However as it grew in length i decided that it would make more sense for this to be a post on its on. Let there be no accusations about hiding in comments. For those of you who have taken time to engage collectively on this thank you. Those who engaged with suggestions an even bigger thank you.

Before i share my thoughts on the issue of the day let me being by saying that vast majority 99% of KBW members co exist happily. Kenyan and non Kenyan. Male female. Diaspora and home. We enaged with each other in a positive way. We get new bloggers applying to join every day, we get emails saying “I’ve heard about this thing called blogging, help me start”, I’ve even had people approach me in a cyber cafe and say “i hear you blog how does it work”. These past few days may give the impression that we as a webring are going through some kind of crisis. That we are on the brink of collaspe. WE ARE NOT. We are stronger than ever, growing as fast as ever, the number of people reading the aggregator continues to grow, the number of people reading all our blogs continues to grow, together we continue to be recognised as a powerful force online. We are doing well we are going places. Let no one tell you otherwise.

Now to the issues at hand.

I assume we all understand now that Acolyte was not removed from the webring. I also assume that no one holds the KBW Admin Team responsible for him misreading or misinterpreting that email to mean that he has been removed from KBW. You can blame us for many things but we can not and will not be held responsible for someone not bothering to read an email properly.

Next to the issue of membership of KBW and appearing on the aggregator. The debate around this has many interesting factors.

There are calls for a formal criteria to be adopted for the KenyaUnlimited aggregator. A kind of “code of conduct” for the aggregator if you will. Most people who are now pushing for a code of conduct for the aggregator are heavily opposed to a code of conduct for the blog ring and blogs in general. I do not follow the logic there.

Secondly, there have been voices raised based on the assumption that being on the aggregator is an automatic right of being a KBW member and if it is not a right then the Admin Team has done a great disservice by not spelling this out. Again i find that whole assumption illogical. Let us follow that argument through to the end. If there is a right to appear on the aggregator, then by extension there must be a right to for KBW to have an aggregator, if there is a right to have an aggregator and since it has to exist somewhere, then by extension there is a right for the webring to have a website. If there is a right to a website, then if we take this argument to its conclusion then KBW members have a right to web developers, have a right to web programmers, have a right to an Admin Team to facilitate all that. Nonsense. Being a member of the webring entitles you to just that, being a member of the webring. How does appearing on the aggregator become a right when it was not even place for a over a year after the webring was started? If you argue that there is a right to the aggregator, who do you have in mind to faciltate that right? And what steps have you taken to ensure that right remains viable? Older members will remember when the KBW home page was a single page on Mentalacrobatics. And If running KenyaUnlimited.com become too expensive in time and/or money then the home of the webring could go back to where it originally started, as a single page on Mentalacrobatics. Would your rights as a KBW member then be violated? This issue of a right or an assumption that every member would appear on the aggregator is seriously flawed.

Here is the other side of the coin. While many of you express shock that there is no right to appear on the aggregator how many of you have raised the issue of the responsibility that goes with the right? If there is a right to the aggregator there must be by extension a responsibility to the aggregator. I would like to hear you thoughts on what those responsibilities may be.

Another argument doing the rounds is that by removing a blog from the aggregator the Admin Team has infringed on the right to free speech of that blogger, some even say censorship. Again i call nonsense. You are free to write whatever you want on your blog. Your speech can be as free as you want on your blog, how does removing you from the aggregtor infringe on that freedom of speech? How has the Admin Team stopped a blogger from exercising that right to free speech? Or are you saying that removal from the aggregator is equivalent to forceably shutting a blog down? If the Admin Team decided to take the aggregator down completely would all KBW members have had their right to free speech voilated? If so, if you argue that the removal from the aggregator = violation of free speech or censorship then what are the responsibilities that come with that right? Why is there so much noise about that right to this the right to that and none about the responsibilities that come with all these mythical rights? If we take the aggregator down from some serious mantainance as we may have to as it has gone haywire recently, would we have violated anyone’s rights? What responsibilities did they take on to ensure those rights?

There are various add ons to the webring which we as the Admin Team work to generate, KenyaUnlimited.com being the best example, our soon to be launched social responsibility project is another. Tools which we have come up with to help turn the webring into a community. No one talks about the “right to having help pages” but the Help Pages are there, no one talks about the “right to have information on how to start a blog” but the information is there, no one talks about the “right to have an open blog” but the Open Blog is there, no one talks about the right to have the Kaybees, but the Kaybees are there. Why is that some of you feel that you have right to aggregator on kenyaunlimited.com but would not argue that you have a right to the blogging information on KenyaUnlimited.com? Why the double standards. If webring members do not have the right to demand that we write help pages for them to assist them set up a blog, if members do not have the right to demand that the Admin Team organises a Kenyan bloggers’ award, where does the right to appear on the aggregator come in?

So why didnt we as an Admin Team sit down and trash out the criteria to appear on the aggregator?

Firstly it was not practical. The KBW Admin Team through out last year launched a wide variety of tools aimed at enhancing the webring. Many of these tools are no longer in use for a wide variety of reasons. For example, old members may remember a time when a full loaded chat room was available on KBW. It is no longer there mainly because after the initial excitement it was hardly ever and then never used. We also dabbled with launching a forum, and in fact set it up and it even reached the testing stage. The forum was mainly aimed at those who wanted longer discussions and who did not like the informality of the chat room. For various reasons the forum was never launched officially. Mainly due to the time it would take us to moderate and administer it. Another experiment we launched was the KenyaUnlimited.com calender which was too be a central events gathering point where member could share up coming events, birthdays, etc. This was hosted on KenyaUnlimited.com for a while but has now moved to an RSS based service which we have now merged with the aggregator.

This list continues and maybe now you can start to recognise the work the Admin Team does behind the scenes to keep this webring vibrant. It would not have been practical to sit down and work out a criteria for the chat room, for the calender, for the forum, for the help files, for the aggregator because; we did not know if any of these ventures would succeed, we spent our time actually building and testing the applications, we could not predict how they would grow. The chat room used to generate the most traffic for KenyaUnlimited.com, then it generated none, the help pages were the biggest draw for a while, the Kaybess as well. It is true that the aggregator has now grown in importance, i know many of you have bookmarked it directly bypassing the rest of the site (you lazy people you!) but back then we did not know that.

The whole issue if criteria and codes of conduct has never been central to KBW. After all the conditions for membership to the webring itself are deliberately broad. Yet without having a “criteria”, without having a “code of conduct”, without having a all these rules and regulations the webring has worked well. That is not to say anything goes.
Here is an example we debated amongst Admin at the very beginning of this KBW experiment:
Consider a new Kenyan blogger joins the webring, after about a month all they post on their blog is message saying “fuck KBW” and nothing else. Repeatedly over and over again. Would you leave them on the webring? What if a blog written by a Kenyan which was full of pictures glorifying rape (and believe me these blogs do exist) applied to join the webring? We concluded that such blogs would have no place in our community. Basically it is all about common sense. Everything does not go. There has been no code of conduct because we deal with each issue on a case by case basis. We believe that this was the fairest way to proceed. Maybe that will change? Should change? But do you really want a code of conduct? Who will draw it up? Who will administer it? How can it be changed? How can in be removed if bloggers 2 years from now decided they do not want it? For example what is the harsher crime? To post heresay as fact or to ignore the facts at all. Would that be in the code of conduct?

Now various assumptions have been made about this latest case and presented as FACTS. Thinker it is dangerous to present information you have come across as fact without clarifying it. We as an Admin Team and I as a person take personal privacy very seriously. Therefore i will not go into a history of the email between Acolyte and The Admin Team. Even if Acolyte did waiver his right to privacy and posted all the correspondence between him and the admin team over several months this would not be the correct forum for me to debate it. That in itself should let you that is not about one post, this is not about so called nonsensical vndettas by Admin Team members. I do not know if you have been in correspondence with Acolyte but as far as I am aware you have not taken any measures to contact the Admin Team about clarification on any of the so called facts. When responsible bloggers such as yourself, as opposed to muppets who join, leave, insult for 6 months and then surprise surprise want to join again, present information in that way it has the ability to cause unnecessary damage to the ring and the membership. Espically when in the same breath you label your post “On Censorship”. Where was the opportunity for the Admin Team to respond to your so called facts? Are you not by exclude one side of the argument engaging in a form of censorship you post seeks to root out? What you presented are NOT the facts. Again the decision is Acolyte’s if he wishes to display all the correspondence he has had with the Admin Team.

KenyanPundit believes our move to protect KenyaUnlimited.com from disintegrating into yet another Kenyan website full of hate as an “afterthought”. Well KP, in a sense you are more right then you know. KenyaUnlimited was an afterthought, when i started the webring i did not know that it would grow into this lovely monster it is today which could sustain its own website. The Help Pages were an afterthought, after we received many emails asking us for the same information we decided to have that information permanently online. The Admin Team was an afterthought after i realised there was no way i could it all on my own, the Kaybees were an afterthought generated by Spidey idea. Even the aggregator was an afterthought as the best example of how to introduce our members to RSS. KP my point is this, afterthoughts are not necessarily bad. Every post your write on your blog and you write on Mzalendo writes appears on one of afterthoughts. Your seminar at the blogging Indaba on blogging may have used information for the KenyaUnlimited Help Pages which are also an afterthought. We will not an attitude of what is done is done. We will remain proactive we will remain vigilant we will always be looking for ways to enhance the webring and yes many of these will be afterthoughts. For example I have just read a comment by Hash suggesting a Digg type approach where members are involved in decisions. Now that is very interesting, it grew out of a comment and could end up as KBW policy. Yet another afterthought.

The webring is not about the Admin Team, it is not about the founder, it is about all of us together working together. Both need each other. Maybe some of you can not see that. You see the role of the members but not the role of the Admin Team. Which is why it hurts me when attacks on KBW and attacks on KBW Admin Team members are initiated, tolerated and encouraged by KBW members. Many of whom when they were starting out blogging were guided patiently and given advice generously by the very same Admin Team they now attack. The same bloggers who write to complain that the aggregator is down turn around and attack the same Admin Team that is responding to their request of assistance. If 300+ privileged Kenyans + Africans who share a common interest (and yes if you are reading this in front of a computer screen you are privileged) can not come together discuss issues in an open and amicable manner, then what is the point the of the webring? We might as well just have individual blogs with no obvious connection and leave it at that. There are many Kenyan places online where you can go and insult anyone you want 24/7. Why bring that here? And more importantly why do you not think that we will strive to protect this space we have created together? (someone intellectually lazy will inevitably claim that I expect us all to agree all the time I do not have to tell you that that is nonsense.)

If you dislike the Admin Team, if you dislike the vision and values of KBW, if you feel you can not engage with Admin Team without insulting the Admin Team, if you constantly attack the KBW project either on your blog in your comments or on other blogs, if you feel you do not agree with what we are trying to do here, if you feel that we are as Admin Team are not mature, sensible and professional enough to separate our personal feelings from the running of the webring, if you feel that debates we have are worthless, the way we as webring members engage with each other is fake, then what are you doing amongst us? Why not leave and show us how you would do it. Because I am not leaving, i will continue to be involved with the running of KBW to the best of my ability before myself and my God. I believe in can build something POSITIVE AND PROGRESSIVE, yes i do not shy away from repeating those words :-).

Someone emailed me anonymously “threatening” to start a new Kenyan webring a new aggregator. We have never claimed a monopoly on Kenyan Bloggers and for crying out loud the RSS feeds do not belong to us (if they belong to anyone at all). Again we have the old, you will never have thousands of members. Quality not quantity is my vision. If we get quality in large quantities even better!

My challenge is this, when you write about the right to the aggregator share with us your thoughts on the responsibilities to the aggregator. When you criticise the Admin Team for the way in which it deals with issues, present a viable alternative that we can look at. When someone writes trash about the Admin Team, engage us, ask us, talk to us before presenting heresy as fact, do not dismiss the afterthoughts, they drive a lot behind this ring. We work well together and we are all part of one team. That is not to say we should not be unique (for crying out loud do we have to spell out each obvious thing?) who wants a blog ring of Mentalacrobatics, i do not! Working together and sharing common values does not mean we lose our uniqueness. I trust that you have as much faith in your convictions as I do in mine.

(Flippin heck 3000+ words! I didn’t know i had it in me! I am posting this in a hurry as the cybercafe is about to close so apologies for not putting in all the links and any typos. If you made it this far here, well done. Go play KittenWar to chill out )