The Philstar.com Feedback Section

Apologies for the long absence in this little blogspot of mine. Aside from my usual glacial pace of writing, I was dabbling with my other interests in the Internet, one of which I'd be writing about in this entry...

A few months ago, the online edition of the Philippine Star made a site upgrade, as seen in the new layout and features, one of which is the Feedback Section. Now before I proceed to the bone of my contention, a quick glance at the sidebar would show that Philstar is my preferred source of Philippine news. A big reason for this is how they present the news and opinions: the two do not mix. The opinions stay in the opinion section and the news stay in the news section, with the former never influencing how the latter is presented. Yes, this balanced reporting could be boring, but at least it gives me less hypertension unlike the other "leading" newspaper out there that seems to thrive in creating sensationalized titles (to grab a buyer's attention?) and selective exposition of facts (this I cannot explain without malice). Curiously though, it's the other paper that's preferred by the "intellectual heavyweights" in the academe and blogosphere.

The bloggers' preference for the other newspaper, especially in terms of linking to its online edition, may be due to the fact that it has a better archiving mechanism while Philstar's archive is incomplete. One more peeve I have for Philstar is that they do not upload the article photos online, which reduces the impact of certain picture-heavy columns especially in the Lifestyle section. But I understand that these two may be due to system limitations, where further upgrades would need a significant chunk in the budget.

What I'll be ranting about is the newly-introduced Feedback Section of Philstar. This feature is truly a bold pioneering move of Philstar and it ups the ante for online Philippine newspapers. Every day, the site registers around 50-100 comments (and even more whenever there are hot topics like the Philippine elections, the Basilan ambush and the Philippine Basketball Team). Commentators come from the middle class conservative people (of course readers have the same mindset as the paper they read) as well as OFWs. There is a gaping absence of leftist commentators, though. I wish there was one, so that I may see them clobbered by the overwhelming conservative majority who can be equally intense in their vitriol!

Even if Philstar is the pioneer of adding a feedback section for their articles, it can easily be surpassed because of two major shortcomings: lack of true interactivity and dubious moderation.

The first reason stems from the impression that the columnists and reporters do not read their work online. Of course they have their complimentary copy of the paper, and if ever they go online, e-mailed feedback would already keep them preoccupied. Ultimately, they do not seem to have the time to log on to the site and reply to the comments of their articles.

If that is not frustrating enough, the second reason is a real can of worms that may:

1. Provide doubts about Philstar's true intentions. Are they really about "truth shall prevail," or are they just like the other newspapers, only with contrasting agenda, just as the cynics of Philippine media have always insisted?

2. Provide another proof of their declining competence (the competition boasts of technical superiority in terms of proofreading, for instance and, as mentioned above, designing websites) especially now that the great ones like Max Soliven and Teddy Benigno are gone.

The Feedback section actually has two levels of moderation. The first one involves an automated censorship of certain keywords in English and Tagalog deemed inappropriate for use in an online newspaper. Aside from the usual cuss words, strong words denoting mental incompetence like stupid, idiot, gago and gaga are replaced with asterisks. The funny thing is, every instance of the keywords, even if they are just substrings of other words, will get censored: for instance gagawin would become *****win. Thus, one would have to mentally uncensor to get what the commentator meant. The automated censorship code seems to be works of amateurs and can be easily circumvented by using Leetspeak, which, fortunately enough, the present crop of commentators are not yet sophisticated enough to adopt.

If one gets past the auto-censor, there is a second layer of moderation that should in theory be the most superior method of moderation available: human moderators. At regular intervals, mods scan the comments and delete those violating the editorial policy, namely comments that are irrelevant to the article, duplicate comments, and personal attacks.

Now it so happened that for August 4, 2007, most of my comments were deleted while some survived. It gave me an opportunity to check the human moderation of the Feedback Section. Below are the details that led to my can-of-worms conclusion above.

Let's start with the two that survived:

Two suspects in the Marines ambush surrender

• Said that this new development is a joke
• Defended another commentator that was critical of the military and sounded like a Bangsamoro propagandist and challenged the critics to go ask any soldier on their opinion. (I sensed he/she was just dismayed and was being sarcastic by taking on an online persona of a Bangsamoro propagandist, but of course I may be wrong and he/she truly was a propagandist. Ah, anonymity, that's the beauty of the Internet.)

RP students show strong performance in an international math contest

• Remarked how the popular culture does not have high regard for math and science and thus no incentive for politicians to push for R&D. Ultimately the grown-up whiz-kids will then move to places more appreciative of their talent.

Then, for the fun part, we have the deleted comments:

Salvage victims

• Noted that the comments preceding mine were appreciative of the vigilante attacks.
• Remarked sarcastically (probably not detected by the mod) that their statements were surprising and may cause more bleeding to the bleeding hearts out there.
• Also said that I got their (the previous commentators') point and that (rather than antagonize them) I would prefer to see this kind of comments as symptoms. (I deliberately ceased completing that statement because I considered it harsher in full: symptoms of a breakdown of law and order. I guess the mod deemed what I've written as harsh enough.)

Bulacan bank robbery

• I merely remarked on the stupidity of the robbery gang leader: he was wounded in his escape and went to a hospital. Of course the cops were waiting there to arrest him. He's not supposed to be ignorant with this police tactic because he was himself a cop and I wondered aloud how he could have been accepted to the force in the first place.
• Was it deleted because I wrote it in a lowly type of Tagalog one usually hears in TV Patrol?

Controversy over Atenean foreign players

• Picked on the Blue Eagle's flair for drama due to its usual close games and that this is what might have made them a favorite of Studio 23 (for the ratings).
• Asserted UE will win the championship unless something like the Great Upset of UAAP 2002 should occur.
• Insinuated that the Archers expected a win, that's why they pushed the protest only after the game (why not halftime, right?).
• By the way, I didn't introduce myself as an Atenean. I abhor playing the Blue Card when stating my opinion because it just might put color (pun intended) to the current discussion on the table. But what if I did--just to save this comment? Nah, not worth it.
• My main beef here was that other comments more vicious in attacking DLSU (stating outright that they are notorious cheaters, KSP, dense or egotistic), but they had survived deletion. I was actually dismayed at the sudden strictness with my comment as I had noticed that highly charged threads (like the ones I've mentioned earlier) wrought with inflammatory statements, name-calling and one-upmanship were generally left alone.

Jessica Zafra's Young Star article about her dream

• She was asking readers to interpret it for her--heck, she even shared her mood and other background info to establish the dream's context.
• Commented that if she wrote this in a blog, I could have supplied her with an interpretation. But since it was a newspaper article, and that she had her own blog and might probably not read the comments in Philstar anymore, I would not bother doing so.
• Took a swipe at her blog-like writing in a newspaper and the fact that she's won't be reading the comments, but I still I don't see these as personal attacks.

Come to think of it, maybe I'm just taking this deletion thing too personally. It does not help perhaps that the handle I use allude to its competitor. This might perhaps caused the moderator for that day to consider me a marked man. But anyway, because of this incident, I realized the importance of having my own blog, my nook in cyberspace, my Ivory Tower where I can indulge my armchair columnist tendencies.

By the way, happy 21st anniversary, Philippine Star!

Edit: What a shame! The entry is about a newspaper yet I found lots of grammatical errors in it! That's what happens when I write and publish a post with remarakable "speed." Oh well, what can I do? Unlike a newspaper, I have no editor here but myself.