Few days ago, 12 “old members” of the Newsvine community decided to make a joke at Newsvine. The idea was to write an imagination story to other “Drollhouse” member’s news column. Why to do something?
The first part of the answer is “Because we’re the Drollhouse…that’s what we do.”
The actual joke has been talked about at Newsvine in several articles afterwards, so I do not go to details here. Here are links to few of them written by Firsty, Raveson and by Newsvine co-founder’s, Calvin’s official: Response to Newsvine Prank. This blockquote is from Calvin’s article:
The “joke”: 12 of Newsvine’s most popular contributors carried out a prank, by assuming each others’ accounts for a few hours to write outrageous articles in each others’ names.
The result: Many Newsvine users were duped by the articles and there is a general backlash against those who carried out the prank. A smaller group is currently defending the 12 and saying that all of this was carried out in good humor. At present, the backlash against the 12 has actually caused more of a ruckus than did the prank articles themselves, by dominating the Newsvine front page.
Calvin Tang has made a request, that articles related to prank should not published to all of Newsvine, and because I’m not a member of Newsvine elite, I’ll have to follow the rules. However elitism is such a nasty feature, that it should not be left alone and Newsvine has no control on my own blog, so I can write about it here.
As far as I see, the elitism is a destruction of the social network. There just cannot be a free community with different rules for other members. Every member – new or old – stupid or intelligent, has to have the same rights and responsibilities to write and comment than any other.
Elitism is not a new feature at Newsvine. Some old members have managed to gain a position to be able to brake the Newsvine Code of Honor (CoH), when needed without anyone commenting. And if someone dares to comment, there is a punch of “old Newsviners” backing up each others violations. Other feature is that comments or articles related to certain topics, which feels to be more accepted to “old members” are more tolerated and vice versa, as unpleasant articles are reported more easily, even if there is absolutely nothing against CoH.
Elitism is not just Newsvine’s problem. If the founders of the community are not skilled enough in handling the situation, it is likely to exist.
Social sites should not build mechanisms which support elitists groups actions. One feature is Digg’s bury feature, which allows a punch of users to sink an article, they don’t like. This has created a bury brigade problem at Digg. These kinds of features have been demanded at Newsvine too. No one likes the censor word, so usually other words are used like bury, quality control etc. At Newsvine, rewarding a member with RAV can be seen as a feature supporting elitism. Like in real life, some people are more skilled in handling power than others. The power does not bring privileges but responsibilities. However the opposite behaviour is too common.
Elitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite — a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern [1]. Alternatively, the term elitism may be used to describe a situation in which power is concentrated in the hands of the elite.
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