| | Losing Contributors: There Goes the Neighborhood!
Of late more bloggers and vloggers have been announcing their leaving DeafRead. Some cited the influx of CI and oral blogs, others blamed the occasional mean-spirited respondent that "ruined the atmosphere" at DeafRead.com. Mostly, the latter reason referenced DeafVideo.tv.
This is sad, because when good v/bloggers leave, the neighborhood changes character. With some of what's left, I find myself clicking off in the middle of blogs or vlogs in annoyance and vowing to buy a timer so I can better control my derrière-numbing hours in front of the flat screen.
Alternative Deaf-centered Aggregator?
 Don G. recently posted that he is jumping ship and mentioned a coming new aggregator that would be devoted to ASL Deaf issues. If memory serves me right, a similar idea was proposed at DeafRead last year: DeafSide. This clipping from Tayler's website describes it: (Tayler, April 2008)
"Tayler and Jared are announcing a new site that aggregates deaf blogs much in the same way DeafRead does. But there are differences. The blogs will focus on sign languages and Deaf culture. Instead of moderating posts, all posts will be published from selected blogs."
That made me think back to when I met Tayler, one of the founders of DeafRead. The first time was at a forum where he was a speaker and I asked a question: when would Deafread establish DeafSide to concentrate on more cultural Deaf topics? He showed excitement in elaborating on the idea and it seemed that it would be developed soon.
Since then,, DeafVideo.TV demanded a lot of time and support, but a different type of vlogger started showing up: the clubroom bullshitters and gossipy chatterboxes. These people expounded on a variety of topics, usually wasting several minutes in greetings and everyday trivia before getting to the topic. Additionally, meanies would show up to skewer respondents or provoke flaming discussions. Little that was cultural, really, except for some colorful language being thrown back and forth. It became immensely popular so I suppose DeafSide never got the development it deserved.
To be fair, there were serious vloggers that contributed also. Issues were discussed in earnest and valuable points made, alas sometimes to be trashed by backbiters. Personality contests took over in many otherwise great vlogs. I felt this to be a lost effort, because many excellent issues never made it to the Hearing community to be appreciated; as they stayed in our little language community without captions.
The second occasion of meeting Tayler was at an informal breakfast a year later. Tayler told us how DeafRead began as a cross-country collaboration with Jared Evans. It was a remarkable accomplishment despite physical distance and deafness, which was happily obliterated by their use of modern communications via the Internet. The topic turned to how it could be ruined by people using it to tear down other people.
Tayler's normally optimistic personality turned pessimistic. "I was saddened by the mean comments on the question panel." He meant the rolling screen that ran alongside the webcast of presenters during the last Deaf Bloggers Symposium in California. A few used it not to post questions, but to vent, criticize and gossip about the presenters. His disappointment was profoundly evident, affecting everyone else at the table. The others tried to commiserate, sympathetically agreeing that "some could be that way". What could one say? Here was a New Age young Deaf man, discussing his life's creative accomplishments and appalled at how an unthinking few could trash it. The guidelines that were put in place were difficult to enforce, because people differed on their applications.
Tayler's Principles and Today's Realities
Part of the problem is Tayler's vision for a generalist, no-discrimination d/Deaf aggregator with few rules to keep up the positive quality of entries. This allowed in cochlear implant blogs over the past year. One early CI blog was booted off due to an undisclosed commercial connection to the industry. The controversy that caused and the controversy over allowing more CI blogs, their topics about mapping, surgery, experiences in hearing, and oral/aural discussions soon led to other topics about Deaf-on-deaf discrimination, discussions on allowing oral/aural topics, and HOH-centered blogs. As if that wasn't complicated enough, the sometimes unclear guidelines booted off enough d/Deaf contributors to cause resentment and questions about impartiality.
That caused many to feel that DeafRead had become overwhelmed by HOH and Hearing concerns. In Tayler's vision, he saw Deafread as bringing together diverse people into a community. I saw some of this happening already: some parents came forward to support Deaf Culture and express their appreciation of Deaf writers. Other parents exposed discrimination against their kids because they wore CIs. Many HOH and oral deaf shared about being rejected in the Deaf community. We needed to see that. Deaf responders answered to give them support. Some Deaf writers foresaw an atmosphere where everybody is accepted, no matter their language or living choices. Others jumped on them as being too oral in thinking or too Deaf-culturist. A few wrote to blame the historic AGBell for causing this division. The results were indeed mixed.
In the view of this blogger, Tayler's vision might be difficult to achieve--not because people are so diverse, but because of lack of time for reading all these wildly diverse opinions. It also seemed that blogs sparked more blogs of a similar nature...oralist blogs breeding more oralist blogs, not settling at all well with those who had sensitivity from past abuse. So...the pendulum began to swing toward more oral/aural/CI/Hearing concerns. Some might say "just hide those bloggers." That is no answer when individual bloggers write on a variety of topics.
Tayler, if you are reading this, I hope you'll consider either swinging the pendulum back to a Deaf Culture orientation or starting DeafSide in earnest. Or perhaps splitting DeafRead into two areas--one for the medical model and hearing technologies, and one for the Deaf-centric topics.
Diversity and Specialization
 The internet and the magazine stands offer great diversity. You will see magazines specializing in tastes aimed at specific reader groups. There are magazines devoted to home handymen, novice computer users, working mothers, photographers, sewing and quilters, travel in the Northeastern United States, dog shows, weightlifters, and even sailboaters. Go to the bigger magazine displays in bookstores and you will see even narrower specialties such as Photoshop, gun collecting, computer modding and pregnancy. The number of generalist magazines (consider the many that have died over the years) are the same in both stores: just half a dozen.
Don G's announcement of a new cultural blog aggregator might be a response to the widening generalization of DeafRead. Another blog, DeafVillage originated from the booting off of the first CI blog and now offers another "generalist" aggregator with a much greater emphasis on CI blogs. It advertises itself as an anything-accepted, "safe" blogsite. To read it, however, one gets a feeling it is more of a parent-centered, medically oriented aggregator--in truth, a specialized one.
It is time for specialization to come on stage. Deaf Culture is a widely accepted concept that people are still trying to describe, define in different ways and has many different expressions, so it is worthy of an entire aggregator in itself. Whether Don G's aggregator or DeafSide comes on board, or both, it will be an admirable addition to cyberspace and an illuminating resource for parents. In each, I hope there will be an editorial board to screen blogs for the best the Deaf community has to offer. In their editorial policies, individual bloggers could also be advised to screen their respondents to keep it that way.
One criticism in the past was that such a concept is discriminatory. Exclusivist. Maybe even elitist. This is missing the point, because a cultural showcase such as this is intended for expression of a little-seen aspect of humanity, not as an exclusion...there are many generalist and diverging places on the internet and magazine stand for all the others. DeafRead's general aggregator could have tabs for linking to the other websites and not be threatened at all by their competition. How about it, Tayler?
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| | Posted 9/21/2009 11:43 PM - 759 Views - 6 eProps - 18 comments
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