UPDATE: Both Kevin Smith and Southwest have made more blogs on this situation. Please see the end of the entry for the links and updates.

Many people have probably heard of Southwest’s controversial Customer of Size policy. And a lot of people have probably heard of the recent issues with Kevin Smith getting booted off of one of their planes for (according to them) violating this policy. Kevin laid out the entire story in a recent SModcast, but here are the highlights.

Kevin Smith is flying to Oakland for the day. He buys an extra seat because they are cheap, and he prefers not to have someone in the seat next to him. (I think anyone that has been on a plane can understand that feeling.) On the way home, he arrives early and asks to get bumped to an earlier flight, which is pretty common with Southwest. He gets put on standby for an earlier flight, and gets on it. However, there’s only one seat available for him, as it’s a nearly full flight. No problem, he says, I only really need one seat. He gets on the plane, buckles his seatbelt (no extender), puts the armrests down, and is approached by a flight attendant. The flight attendant pulls him aside to say that the captain has deemed him a risk because of his size. Despite falling within Southwest’s policy, he was not allowed to fly. Kevin tweets about it, and here we are.

If you’ve met me in person, or maybe seen photos of me, you know that I’m a large girl. This is a complex, and sometimes emotional situation, that I think has 3 separate facets. I want to look at it from all three.

The Policy

The idea behind the policy sounds logical. You paid for a seat, you should have the space that you bought. It’s to make sure that other people are safe and comfortable. But while that sounds good in theory, there are several problems with it in execution.

First, I do think it’s discriminatory. I fly a decent amount (~25 times a year) and I have had to endure a lot in those flights. Just yesterday, I flew from JFK to SFO and sat next to a young man who had a wild time the night before. He smelled like booze and was clearly hungover. I’ve sat next to people with really bad body odor. I’ve sat next to drunk people (both that boarded the plane drunk and got drunk on the plane). I’ve sat next to chatty people who won’t shut up. I’ve sat next to babies with dirty diapers. I’ve sat next to kids who can’t sit still and smear jelly and other sticky snacks all over the place. I’ve seen people in wheelchairs, people who have casts, and other medical ailments. The point is that while some larger people do take up more than one seat, there are other behaviors, situations, and physical issues that also make people take up more than their allotted room, make passengers uncomfortable, and pose potential safety issues. Yet there are virtually no policies about people in those situations. And the policies that do exist focus on behavior (such as getting drunk before boarding a plane), not on physicality (people using crutches, etc). Large people are easy to spot, easy to single out, and don’t garner as much sympathy from people as someone who needs a wheelchair or crutches. We’re easy targets, both physically and morally.

And if you’re supposed to get all the square inches that you paid for, what about people who recline their seats? Seriously, I’ve had people in front of me recline their seat so far that I could do dental work on them. I’ve nearly had my laptop screen destroyed by people who recline suddenly and without regard to what is going on behind them. Their seat encroaches on the space I paid for, so by the same standard as the Customer of Size policy, the recline function on all seats should be disabled. (I actually do hate when the person in front of me reclines their seat, and I do think it should be disabled. But I know lots of people who vehemently defend their right to recline their seat. Probably some of the same people who would defend Southwest’s Customer of Size policy, which is interesting.)

Second, the policy leaves too much open to personal interpretation. It’s just too subjective. Many people fly on Southwest and are never approached by anyone asking them to buy a second seat or checking to see if they fall within the Customer of Size policy. And then one day *bam* they get hit with it. Whether they violate the policy or not, it starts with one employee’s judgement of that person, and whether to talk to them and investigate their size or not. A policy that starts with individual judgement cannot be uniformly enforced.

Third, and something that thin people probably don’t notice, is that not all seats, not all armrests, and especially not all seat belts are made equally. All three of the planes listed on SeatGuru (a site that helps you pick the best seat on the plane) show that the seats in the back of the plane are narrower than the seats toward the middle. What if a person fits in one of the seats toward the middle, but ends up sitting in the back of the plane and gets kicked off because of it? The armrests on exit row seating usually don’t lift up, and are instead a solid piece of plastic all the way to the bottom of the seat. This can make the seat narrower by a few inches. For some people, this is the tipping point. Finally, and the thing that is so wildly divergent, is the length of the seatbelts. It can vary from seat to seat on the same plane. I’ve had times where I can easily buckle the seat belt, and times where I struggle. You just never know what you’re going to get. I have an extender that I take with me just in case I need it simply for this reason — you just never know. But if your policy is predicated on seats, armrests, and seatbelts, how can that policy possibly be fair when all of these things vary depending on what seat you are in?

The Social Media & PR

Let’s turn from the policy aspect of what happened to how this is being played out online. I first learned about it because I follow Kevin Smith on Twitter. He was obviously angry and the tweets were hard-hitting and coming fast. As the main Twitter person for the SEGA US team, I know what it’s like to have angry customers coming out of nowhere on Twitter. I also know what it’s like to have that situation be something you didn’t know about, can’t control, and/or can’t discuss. So I have empathy for the woman that was on Twitter duty for Southwest when this thing blew up. I will say that I think she did a great job, quickly letting people know that she had seen the tweets, that she had read them all, and that a VP would be following up with Kevin Smith personally. (Whether that actually happened or not is another story. Last I heard, he says he has not been contacted.) But so many companies’ first instinct is to clam up and don’t say anything. No comment… a resounding silence while they scramble to work up a statement. Southwest jumped right into the fray to let people know that they heard and were aware. So thumbs up from me to Christi Day, the Southwest Twitter person, as I think she handled the situation as best she could as it was breaking.

Unfortunately, that’s where my thumbs stop pointing upward and start pointing downward. Southwest then issued a statement (I don’t really think you can call it an apology) on their Nuts About Southwest blog. Straight from the title, I think it’s a little disingenuous. I get that Southwest likes to be quirky and put personality into what they do. But there’s a time and a place, and this is not it. Making a joke upfront just says that you don’t take the situation very seriously. Especially when the joke is somewhat of a negative play on the person that you’re supposedly apologizing to. Yes, Kevin Smith’s character is of Silent Bob. But using “Not So Silent Bob” as your headline implies that he’s being a loudmouth… which is true, but probably not an insinuation it’s okay for Southwest to make. The rest of the statement is just a classic non-apology apology. It’s a “We’re sorry” followed by all the reasons that what they did was right and justified.

I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes there, obviously. I am friends with Paula Berg, who until recently was the leader of the PR/blog/community/social media team at Southwest. She is a good and reasonable person who is very knowledgeable about this stuff and really does care about customers. So I do know that not all Southwest people (or at least former Southwest people) are bad. I also know what it’s like to have to stand behind a company statement or communication strategy that you don’t agree with. So I don’t assume that Christi Day (who wrote the Southwest blog entry and manages their Twitter feed) wrote or agrees with that blog, even though her name is on it. I’m guessing that the statement was scrutinized, agonized, modified, and approved by several people before being given to her to post. And it’s a shame, because it’s a sharp downturn from the positive (well, as positive as it could be) trajectory that she started on via Twitter.

I hope Southwest can go back to a proactive, people-oriented, customer-centric path in resolving this issue. I’m not sure that anything they could do would make Kevin Smith (or lots of other people) fly their airline again, but they have got to try. Stop trying to defend yourself and start making bold moves to take care of your customer, and by extension all of your fans and customers.

The Personal

Anyone who has met me in person knows that I’m a large girl. So I understand all too well the emotional and personal aspect of this issue. I have never been subjected to Southwest’s Customer of Size policy, but honestly I try to avoid Southwest because I figure it’s just a matter of time before I’m asked to demonstrate that I fit within their policy.

There is no one way to be fat. It’s easy to lump all fat people together as the same thing, but it’s just not true. My wife is about the same weight as me, but we carry it totally differently. I have wide hips. I generally wear tops that are 1-2 sizes smaller than my pants. I never have problems with things fitting over my neck, shoulders, or arms. I always seem to have a hard time with things fitting over my hips. I am pear shaped, and I carry my weight on the bottom. My wife is apple shaped and carries a lot of weight in her arms and upper body. She worries about necklaces being too small and sleeves being too tight. Consequently, although we weigh about the same, she rarely has a problem with seat belts and arm rests, and I am more likely to. Even in the fat world, we come in all shapes and sizes.

In his podcast, Kevin Smith said that as a fat person, you have to navigate the world differently. And it’s so true. You always have to think a few steps ahead. And almost nothing is as easy or simple as it should be. I am constantly aware of my size — getting into a car, riding a crowded bus, or trying to get in an elevator. There’s always a thought of disaster in the back of my mind. What if I sit down on that chair and it breaks? (I saw it happen to someone once… they sat down on a wooden folding chair and it crumbled to the ground. My heart broke because I know that’s the nightmare scenario.) Even simple things like fashion are complicated, because there are only 4 stores in the entire city of San Francisco where I can buy clothes. So if I’m told that I need something at the last minute, even if it’s fairly basic, it’s a mad scramble to find it. If I show up to an event and someone hands me a T-shirt to wear, there’s a good chance that it will be too small. (Especially when the largest size is a large.) It’s just always something.

When you’re not dealing with that, you’re dealing with people constantly judging you. It honestly gets a bit tiring to hear how if I would just put down the Big Mac and pick up a carrot everything would be fine. If it was that easy, don’t you think we would all do it? And just like there’s no one way to be fat, there’s no one way to get there, either. Yes, some people do over eat and under exercise. But some people (like me) have medical conditions that lead to larger frames. Some people (like me) have genes that pre-dispose them to being overweight. Some people have had to take medicines that cause weight gain. I shouldn’t need to pull out the medical condition card to make it okay or excuse my size. And people really need to stop assuming that I’m fat because I eat an entire buffet table twice a day. I’ve had people moo at me when I’m exercising. I’ve had medical technicians take my blood pressure 5 times in a row because they just can’t believe that it’s lower than the standard for normal. I’ve had waitresses passive-aggressively bring me diet soda when I asked for regular. Some days, it feels like the whole world is against you, and it’s not paranoia if they really are after you.

If we’re going to focus on health (which I think we should), then let’s do that. But the first step is to get rid of the ridiculous notion that skinny = healthy. As big as I am, I have none of the medical conditions that one assumes I have because of my size. As I mentioned, my blood pressure is below the standard for normal. My cholesterol is fine. My blood sugar is rock solid. Except for a few minor things (that are in no way caused by my weight), I’m healthy. But I’m not skinny. If I stopped eating, started purging, or got addicted to crack, I could get skinny. But would that mean I’m healthier? Uh, nope… I’d be less healthy. We need to focus on helping people be healthy regardless of their size.

This opens the door to a whole other complicated set of issues. I won’t get into them here, but they include access to healthy food (something my friend Kristie just did an amazing video/blog on when she tried to find healthy food in her district in Boston), designing cities and neighborhoods to be walking-friendly instead of relying on cars, and eliminating discrimination in health care. I am lucky that I live in a place where I have access to fresh organic produce and the money to purchase it. I live in a city that’s fairly friendly to walkers and outdoor exercisers. I have health insurance and can pick a doctor who listens to me and understands me. Not everyone is so lucky. If we really want to solve the problem instead of just bitching, judging, and pointing fingers at people, these are the things we need to start working on.

Finally, there’s the issue of dignity. Kevin Smith said this in his podcast, and it really struck a nerve with me because it’s so true. As fat people, we are constantly being put down, made fun of, and generally told how awful we are as people. But when you’ve been humiliated — be it from someone mooing at you on the street, a chair breaking under you, or getting kicked off of an airplane — you have two choices. You can go in the bathroom and cry, or you can own the moment. And at the end of the day, for your own sanity, dignity, and self-esteem… you HAVE TO own it. I know that it can’t be easy for Kevin Smith to share his Southwest story, no matter how much he makes jokes about it. I heard the story at the end of his podcast about the girl he sat next to on his flight home and it broke my heart, too. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see news stories, comments, and headlines about such an embarrassing and humiliating moment, and about something so personal. It reminds me of Joy Nash and her great series of Fat Rant videos, particularly from the video below. She said that fat hate is one of the only forms of prejudice where the people being subjected to it think they are getting exactly what they deserve. And it’s so true.

I know that this was somewhat of an epic and wandering tome. But it’s a complicated issue that needs to be dealt with from a few different angles. I hope that Southwest revises their unfair and poorly implemented policy. I hope they get back on a customer-centric communications strategy that gives them a chance to turn this into a huge positive for everyone. I hope that people start focusing on issues of health instead of just painting all fat people with the same brush of ignorance. I know that the internet affords anonymity that people use to say whatever mean and hateful thing wanders through their mind and out their fingers. I ask you all to please be better than that. Please treat others with the dignity and respect that all people deserve.

Update:

Southwest rep Linda Rutherford finally reached Kevin Smith to talk about the issue. Unfortunately, from what I can tell by reading the blogs on both sides, Southwest is closer but not quite there in terms of making it right.

Kevin’s blog says that Linda did actually sincerely apologize, and admitted that the situation was handled poorly. He says that she also told him that the pilot did not single him out as a safety risk or ask that he be removed from the flight. She said she would update the blog, and all he asked for was that Southwest admit the mistake that they made, and tell the truth that he was not “too fat to fly”.

Linda’s blog says that the captain did not make the judgement call to remove him, and that their staff made a “quick judgement call” that he “might have needed more than one seat”. But she never says that they were wrong, or that he was in fact NOT in violation of their policy. (Something that would have taken ~ 30 seconds to verify.) And then basically reiterates their policy again, and that they stand by it. Like Christi earlier, Linda apparently started off well, and then couldn’t quite stick the landing. All Kevin wanted was for Southwest to admit that they were wrong, and say so in public. Which is really not that much to ask.

Remember earlier when I talked about dignity, self-esteem and needing to own the moment? I think we can all agree that Kevin Smith has a healthy self-esteem and confidence. And he’s not been shy in owning this and discussing it. But I suspected how much it hurt to talk about this experience and have it splashed all over the news, even though it was important. Well, Kevin ends his blog entry talking about “grasping at dignity straws” and how this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Even for someone as self-confident and self-actualized about his physical being as Kevin is, there are still deep-running emotions here. These types of situations leave lasting scars.

I’m going to be presenting at NewComm Forum 2010! My session is on April 21st and is about corporate uses of Twitter. If you’ve been thinking about coming to the conference, which is April 20 – 23rd in San Mateo, CA, I’ve got a discount for you.

Just use this link to register, and enter code NCF141, and you’ll get an extra $100 discount.

I hope to see you there!

But the program that helps us grow the most, and most community managers are interested in, is Free Stuff Friday. It started as a way to get rid of swag that was for older games that was just going to be thrown away, as it had little PR value. We started rescuing these items because we couldn’t bear for them to be thrown out. We needed to do something with all of this, so we started the Free Stuff Friday program. It’s been wildly successful, and has gone from a way to get rid of stuff to a planned part of our strategies.

How the Giveaways Work

The SEGA Twitter feed is run by the community teams in the US (that’s my team) and the UK. We each update the feed during our normal business hours. In order to make the administration of the giveaways easier, as well as give more opportunity for people around the world to participate, the US and UK team alternate Free Stuff Friday weeks. Last week’s giveaway was done my me during US business hours, and tomorrow’s giveaway will be done by the UK team during their business hours. There are generally 6 prizes per day. For each giveaway, we’ll tweet an item, a number, and a phrase. For example: “Giveaway! Sonic the Hedgehog T-Shirt, size L. 5th person to DM “Sonic rules” wins!” And, as you would expect, the 5th person to DM “sonic rules” to us will win the shirt. We follow everyone who follows us, so all of our followers can send us DMs.

Where We Get Stuff From

The items that we give away really come from all over. Some things were created for promotional use and we get some of those. Sometimes we partner with other organizations, and we get free items through that. (For example, in the video I have below, I’m showing off some shirts and coupons that we got from Chiquita through our partnership with them on Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll.) Sometimes we get samples and other items from our licensing group, who handles relationships to get Sonic on a t-shirt, for example. We sometimes give away copies of games. We also sometimes pick stuff up on our own to give away. For example, one of our community managers was in Chicago over the winter break and found some old SEGA Visions magazines at a retro games store there. So he bought them, and we gave them away. As you can imagine, we get a diverse pool of prizes because of this, but I think that keeps it fresh and interesting for our followers.

The Preview Video

To promote the week’s giveaways, my team makes a video each week to show off what we’re giving away. It’s also a chance for our community to see and hear us, and that makes us more human. We’re not the big bad faceless corporation, we’re people.

We generally do the videos in one take. This is mostly because I am not a very skilled video editor. But it’s also because the video is supposed to be a little homemade looking. It’s not supposed to be a slick, shiny trailer-style video because that might make it seem less authentic. We generally leave the camera running while we are setting up and deciding who is going to say what about which item. We’ve captured some really funny moments by doing this. Then we film the main segment, where we describe the items. Finally, we’ll leave the camera running while we’re done if we’re still milling around playing with the items or if we’re in need of anything funny.

In terms of editing the video, I use iMovie on my Mac at home. I put some titles on it, put some titles at the end with some music, and add a funny (we hope) bit at the end just to leave people with a laugh. Sometimes they are outtakes, sometimes they are jokes… whatever we had that week.

Here’s the video that we did for last week, and this is fairly typical of our videos.

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We upload these videos to our YouTube account. We also blog them, and that blog link gets sent to our Twitter feed. We were putting the blog link on our Facebook page for a while, but we found that our Facebook fans (at least the vocal ones) had some animosity toward Twitter, so we stopped.

Results

Once we started doing these giveaways, word spread pretty quickly. We started gaining lots of new followers. We’ve been doing these giveaways for about a year now, and we typically gain 500 – 1000 new followers per week. And although I have no metrics to back it up, I feel pretty confident that we get more new followers on Fridays than any other day. The giveaways are a win for everyone — our fans get some free stuff, we have an outlet to create content and connect more directly with our followers, and we have a way to giveaway stuff that’s of little value to the company but tremendous value to our community. It takes just a few hours of my time every other week, and we see tremendous return on that investment.

How You Can Implement This

Not every company has fun T-shirts or toys to giveaway, and I understand that. But nearly every company has a product. And nearly every company has people who are fans of it. Even just your company logo on a keychain will excite people. But do you have free product you can pass out? Can you feature someone on your website? Basically… what can you give back to your fans? I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll come up with a few things you can give away.

Take these ideas and make them your own. Mold them to the needs of your company and your fans. But it’s a way to use Twitter that’s made us pretty popular with our own fans, so I wanted to share this great idea.

Questions?

I am happy to answer questions about our Free Stuff Friday giveaways in the comments, so please ask away!

That said, I do have some updates! First, I’ve added some new speaking engagements for 2010. I’ll be at the New Communications Forum in San Mateo from April 20-23rd, and at the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference in Boston from May 3-5th. To see all about my past (and future) speaking engagements, including quotes from conference participants and video, head over to the speaking page.

If you’re planning to attend the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference but haven’t registered yet, I’ve got a discount code for you! Just use the code SOCIAL10KP when you register for the conference. Hope to see you there!

You’ve probably seen them all over Facebook or Twitter. It seems like nearly every other person these days is calling themselves a “social media expert” with little to nothing to back it up. They have no professional work experience in community or social media. (And no academic education either, because it doesn’t exist.) Their main qualification is that they have a blog, a twitter account, and 500 Facebook friends. It’s annoying, and frankly it’s insulting, to someone like me with over 10 years in the business.

In my reading the other day, I came across a link to this article on Social Media Explorer by Jason Falls. It’s about the explosion of so-called “social media experts”, and Jason’s opinion is that we all just need to get off our high horses and stop being worried about them and what they are doing to our industry. And I don’t think he could be more wrong.

I’ve never really been engaged in a serious business conversation with one of these folks, as I’m usually pretty good at scaring them off once they realize that I actually do know what I’m talking about. But I’ve always imagined the conversation to go something like it does in this video.

Jason opens his article by asking “can we please get off the ego-driven, high-horse pedestal and shut the hell up about “social media gurus?” to which I can only answer… NO. Because this is important.

These so-called experts are giving all of us a bad name. The problem stems from the same problem that caused them to want to hire an expert in the first place. They don’t understand social media. At all. So they don’t know what to look for in an expert. I mean, I don’t know a thing about accounting, so I doubt that I’d make a great hiring decision on our next corporate accountant. So they hire an “expert” that looks good on paper (and the internet), and uses all the exciting buzzwords. And they probably do a few things — make a Facebook page, set up a Twitter account — and that’s it. The company may or may not feel ripped off… but they basically were. These “experts” are preying on people’s inexperience with social media and their fear of getting it wrong (because they’ve seen others do a big painful bellyflop and want to avoid that at all costs).

Jason’s point is that we shouldn’t attacking (or in his words, “whining” about) these people because they are young and trying to make their way in the world. Well, yes but no. In some ways, the influx of “experts” is inevitable because there is huge demand to hire people who are knowledgeable about social media, but there’s no formal education in the field. You can’t (to my knowledge, and I’d love to know about it if I’m wrong) get a college degree in online community or social media. The only way to get experience is to do some stuff ad-hoc (be a moderator on someone else’s forums, for example) or to get on-the-job experience. Take that small bit of experience and combine it with the hiring manager’s inexperience with social media, and you get where we are. So I don’t mind young people trying to make an honest start into the field. In fact, I try to help them along as much as I can. But I think a lot of these “experts” aren’t trying to make an honest start into the field, they are trying to make a quick buck preying on inexperience and fear. I also have an issue with taking on the label “expert” right out of the gate. It was only after 10 years of experience that I started to feel comfortable with that label. Thinking you’re an expert because you have 500 Facebook friends is like me saying I’m a doctor because I’ve seen every episode of ER. It just doesn’t work that way.

So how do we solve this problem? There are a lot of components, and it’s more complex than it seems.

1. Academic education. We need to start seeing actual academic degree programs on an undergraduate level, so that young people can get the background they need to make a solid start in the industry. I have beaten this drum often before, but it’s because I think it’s so important and nobody else is talking about it. The program could probably take from existing business, public relations, and marketing courses, but will need some custom-designed courses. Things like reputation systems and metrics could make for whole courses in and of themselves. Until we start giving people proper education and training for the jobs that are out there in community and social media, they will continue to invent their experiences out of thin air to compensate.

2. Corporate education. Someone, somewhere in every organization needs to know enough about community and social media to make a good hiring decision. They don’t have to be experts, but they need to know enough to spot the actual expert in a field of bullshit buzzword artists. Companies need to stop hiring the first person that sounds like they know what they are talking about because they are so afraid of doing nothing. Until companies stop hiring these “experts”, they will continue to burn companies and sour them on the idea of social media expertise at all.

3. Mentoring programs. Until we do implement the academic programs needed to make this career path sustainable in the future, we need to do something with the new people filling the demand for social media expertise today. Because there is no formal education available in the field, most people’s stories start like mine, with “I fell into it by accident when…”. We all have to start somewhere and climb our way up, and we’re working without a net in this industry. The more experienced among us need to work with people who are just starting out to help them get established, get experience, and get a solid foundation that will serve them (and their employers) well into the future. Until we start sharing our knowledge and experience with up-and-comers in the industry, we won’t have any growth of actual experts in the field. And that hurts all of us in the long run.

4. Certification program. I was at the Online Community Summit last week. During lunch, I was sitting with a group of friends that I do consider to be experts in this field, and the conversation turned to all of these faux experts. One of the things proposed to help solve the problem was some sort of certification system whereby people get accredited as experts (or knowledgeable or whatever) and can use that as currency when interviewing for a job or taking on new clients. I think that this idea has a lot of potential, but also a lot of pitfalls. It would be great to have something that companies and hiring managers can see and rely on when hiring someone. It would also help up-and-comers have something solid to put on their resume. And it’s a decent stand-in for pre-employment education. But who oversees and administers the program? How to they and the program gain the respect necessary for the certification to carry real weight and meaning? These are all things that would need to be worked out.

So yes, I do think that the influx of social media “experts” is bad for our industry. That someone with so little experience calls themselves an “expert” is insulting to the years I and many others have worked in this industry. That companies are falling for their schtick is a big problem. I agree that we can’t be afraid of the new wave of people in this fast-growing industry, but I think that us first-wavers have an obligation to differentiate actual experience and expertise from anecdotal expertise. I also think we have an obligation to continue making the pathway more smooth for others who follow in our footsteps.

I was in the doctor’s office last week (I injured my shoulder) browsing the magazines, and the cover story of The Economist caught my eye. The story was “Sex Laws: Unjust and Ineffective” and it’s an in-depth look at how we classify and punish sex offenders in this country. And, as the title suggests, we don’t do it that well.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I have a BA in Criminal Justice. Although it’s not the main focus of my work these days, I maintain more than a passing interest in the issues regarding the law, the courts, and the prison system.

It’s never been popular to be against sex offender laws. Certainly, no politician could ever get elected (or re-elected) by being against them. But thankfully I am not a politician. And I am, for the most part, against the current laws most states have regarding sex offenders.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of terrible stories about children being harmed by real predators — including Megan Kanka (for whom Megan’s Law is named after) and Adam Walsh. But just as real are the stories of people who are branded sex offenders for what most people would believe are minor offenses. According to the Economist:

A report by Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch, a pressure group, found that at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers.

These are not violent offenders. These people are not harming others. And they are certainly not harming children. Yet most people automatically assume that all sex offenders are violent child rapists and molesters. And why wouldn’t people paint all sex offenders with the same big brush? Their government and laws certainly do. Again from the Economist:

The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous.

Yet there they all are, lumped into one big pile and treated as if they are all the same. And in most states (and thanks to a 2006 law passed by the US Congress, soon all states) these registries are available online for anyone to peruse, map, and generally freak out over. This is also ultimately ineffective. More from the Economist:

Publicly accessible sex-offender registries are intended to keep people safe. But there is little evidence that they do. A study by Kristen Zgoba of the New Jersey Department of Corrections found that the state’s system for registering sex offenders and warning their neighbours cost millions of dollars and had no discernible effect on the number of sex crimes. Restricting where sex offenders can live is supposed to keep them away from potential victims, but it is doubtful that this works. A determined predator can always catch a bus.

So, at this point you’re probably asking yourself why, outside of just stating my opinion, this is on my blog. It’s because of all the hysteria surrounding sex offenders on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. It’s about Facebook removing registered sex offenders from its registrations. Which, on the surface, sounds like a good idea. We want to keep kids safe online, right?

Well, no. Because again, it’s very easy to get on the registered sex offender list for something as simple as urinating in public. And most of the offenses that land a person on the sex offenders list have nothing to do with children. And most of the people on sex offender lists pose little threat.

But it’s more than that. The bias and fear-mongering are right there in the words they use to describe the situation and the reasoning for it.  From MSNBC:

“The message … is [that] Facebook has an equal stake in solving this problem of protecting children,” said Blumenthal, who along with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper has led an effort remove sex offenders from the social networking Web sites.”They have an equal stake in the predator problem and its solution.”

What they won’t tell you is that registered sex offenders make up approximately the same percentage of Facebook and MySpace registration databases as they do the general population. Barring all registered sex offenders from social media won’t protect children any more than requiring someone who was caught visiting a prostitute to live 1000 feet away from a school protects children. But none of that sounds like good PR.

I think we all genuinely want to keep children safe from predators. But we have to do what reasoned research tells us is right, instead of taking the shotgun approach that we have in the last few years. We need to act logically, not out of panic or outrage. Treating all registered sex offenders like lepers and cutting them off from the online world is just not the best way to achieve the goal, and it’s incredibly unfair to the people who get lumped in along the way.

Disemvoweling has been around since Teresa Nielsen Hayden invented it in 2002, although it’s only gained popularity in recent years. The concept is simple — remove the vowels from a profane, hateful, or otherwise dis-allowed comment in order to take the “heat’ out of it. The original post remains, and you can get the sense of what it originally said without needing to endure it in its entirety.

It’s one of the popular tools of moderation, but like all moderation tools, it’s not right for all situations, all reasons, or all communities. A tool is just a tool — what matters is how you use it. What matters more is WHY you use it.

As I was reading Consumerist this afternoon, I came across a story about Hearst telling a blogger to stop using the disemvoweling tool they have on their blogs. What struck me at first was that there was a lawyer somewhere in Hearst making an argument against using this tool. This seemed odd to me, so I clicked the link in their post that went to the blogger’s entry on being told to stop disemvoweling people, to see what his reaction was. What I found was a whole second layer to the story, and the real lesson here.

In his TimesUnion.com blog, Matt Baumgartner discussed why he was told to stop disemvoweling, and why he doesn’t want to do it.

For the record, I like taking away people’s vowels when they have something negative to say about me or someone else.  It feels empowering.  And it’s one of the few joys this blog brings me.  When I see someone get even more angry after they see their vowels were removed, I laugh and then dance around my room.

And, here’s the real problem. A good tool used in the wrong way. Disemvoweling a post for breaking the community standards/rules of posting/whatever you call them. (You do have some sort of community standards, right? If not, get some ASAP.) But taking any negative moderation action on a comment or post simply because they disagree with you or say something negative about you is just wrong. If you are that thin skinned, and especially if negative moderation is one of the few joys you have, then you need to take a step back and decide if blogging/posting/moderating/community management is really right for you. It’s not about revenge or power, it’s about creating a good interactive space for everyone to participate in.

You will get way farther with people who disagree with you and think negatively about you by engaging them head-on in your own space. I’ve seen people start out to be harsh critics and turn out to be raving fans, and all it took was a little interaction and reassurance that someone’s listening.

We all have our bad days and our pet peeves. I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never smiled and giggled as I’ve banned someone from a community because I was so happy to see them go. But it’s about wielding the power fairly and equally, and not getting drunk from the power. Which Mr. Baumgartner clearly has on his TimesUnion blog.

The tools you use don’t matter as much as the people using them.

I’ve just added two new speaking engagements!

In October, I’ll be speaking at the Digital PR Summit in New York City. I’ll be on a panel about measuring your digital PR efforts. Now, I certainly don’t want to misrepresent myself or confuse anyone. I do not work in PR, and never have. I think there can be a lot of overlap between community and PR, but there are a lot of areas where they don’t overlap at all. Earlier this year, I co-presented at the New Communications Forum with Connie Bensen, where I talked about the different tools that we use at SEGA to measure our community efforts, including brand monitoring tools, traditional web management tools, and the stats provided by social media sites. I also discussed some of the ways in which we are limited in how we measure effectiveness. The fine folks from PR News Online were in the audience, and asked me to speak at the Digital PR Summit later this year. I happily accepted, and I’m hoping to share my unique knowledge and experience, and I’m hoping to learn a lot, too.

I am also pleased that I’ll be speaking again at the Community 2.0 conference next year. All of the speakers are still being confirmed, but it’s looking like I’ll be on a panel about the business uses of Twitter (where I hope to discuss SEGA’s Free Stuff Friday giveaways) and I’ll also be doing a solo session on managing multiple brands in community. I have really learned a lot in having multiple people managing multiple brands over multiple tools, and I hope to share some of my learnings.

If you are interested in having me speak at an upcoming conference, I’d be honored! Please look at my page on speaking, and send me an email.

(I know. I work for a competitor to EA, so it might seem like I’m just slagging on them because of that. I assure you, that’s not the case. )

EA has already apologized for the contest, and provided a bit of explanation. I think this is an unfortunate case of having a decent idea, but having a completely insensitive, sexist, ham-handed execution.

Let’s start with the core idea. According to EA’s apology/explanation, they are designating each month until the game launch with a different “sin” theme for the month. July is “lust”. To enter the contest, you need to take a photo of yourself with one of the “booth babes” from the EA booth. You submit that photo, and EA picks one winner to have a night on the town with VIP treatment. From a marketing standpoint, I can see what they were aiming for with this. It gets people to visit their booth, to create content they can use later, it’s interactive, and they get to giveaway a prize that’s going to be desirable to most, if not all, entrants. But as usual, the devil (pun intended) is in the details. Or in this case, the choice of words and phrases.

To enter the “Sin to Win” contest, participants are encouraged to “commit acts of lust” by taking photos with a “booth babe”. (The graphic says “us or any booth babe” but unless the EA staff is wearing bikinis in their booth — something I’m certain I didn’t see — the implication here is clear.) Then you “prove it” by submitting your photo. One winner gets “a sinful night with two hot girls” and “a chest full of booty”.

Like I said, I can see the core idea here. But it’s hard for me to believe that nobody thought this was inappropriate enough to stop it before it happened. They are encouraging their  fans to sexually harass the people they’ve hired to work their booth. If someone thought of it and didn’t say it — that’s a problem. If someone thought of it and said it, nobody listened — and that’s a bigger problem. If nobody thought of it — that’s the biggest problem at all. I know (and have written about before) women in the gaming industry, and how sexist it can be. I wish the line was never crossed, but it’s nice to see some fairly mainstream outrage over this issue. Maybe some good can come out of these unfortunate incidents — to shine the light on, and change, how women are treated in gaming.

Besides the sexist overtones here, there are also heteronormative overtones. They’re assuming that their audience is not only male, but straight males. They’re probably right, but a contest like this is extremely alienating to anyone who is not in that straight male demographic. Not that gays (or straight women) can’t appreciate a pretty lady (just like I appreciate a cute boy), but “acts of lust” is farther than anyone really wants to take it with someone that’s not of their preferred gender.

I understand the pressure to market games well, and to try to give your audience what they want. But it’s so easy to get carried away in that without stopping to think about what you’re actually saying, doing, and encouraging. I hope we all stop and think a little bit more.

I really don’t want to be an alarmist. Lots of companies want to be hip and  ”web 2.0″ and let users create content. But lots of companies are scared of doing so. In the debate between leaving users free to create really cool stuff and restricting their access in case they do something unsavory, I generally come down on the side of the users. Most of the time, they will create really great stuff, and a small percentage will create something you’re not wild about.

You have to hedge your bets as much as you can. This is also akin to “trust, but verify”. Companies can and should let their users create content, but there has to be some sort of moderation plan in place. When the content being created is images or video, you really have to be careful.

This was brought into sharp focus this past weekend for Food Network. They host a reality-ish show called The Next Food Network Star that is a competition to be, um, the next Food Network star. They are currently taking applications for Season 6, and that includes the ability for applicants to upload a video to the Food Network site. Video that is, apparently, not moderated by anyone.

Food Network Humor caught Food Network with their pants down (pun intended). A video entitled “Heating up the Kitchen” was uploaded, stayed up for over 24 hours, and became the third most viewed video on the site (according to the comments on that blog entry). The problem? It was hard core porn.

Food Network Humor caught a screenshot of the video on their site, which was removed from the Food Network site. (They’ve blocked the nudie bits out, but I’m linking to it instead of publishing it just in case you’re at work or are sensitive to this kind of thing.)

I applaud that they want users to create content and upload it to their site. But as a company, you have to protect yourself against something like this happening. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. It would have taken someone extra time to review all the videos before posting, but it’s well worth it to make sure you aren’t hosting and promoting porn to your members. Trust, but moderate.

I’m guessing that someone on their web/community team had a very, VERY bad Monday.