Think think think…

Pete (former CS-ED.org participant, homepage) has made me think. The post that inspired today’s post is here.

I know he is busy, and had a feeling since SIGCSE that he might drop his blog for a while (you know you’ll be back!). That’s cool. No worries there, no hard feelings of any sort. But on his way out, he make a point that requires some thought. Several points, actually. And I will give my simplest answer to each of these, but the issues are complex, so the simple answers don’t really suffice. In short, the thinking and discussion shouldn’t end with this post.

1. First, he raises the question of association: does what I say, on my weblog, reflect on the other people with weblogs at CS-ED.org?

   The answer I want is NO. I’d rather that these weblogs are at most united by the fact of who we are (people involved in the computer science education enterprise), not by any political, religious, or other beliefs. I set a bar for inclusion under the domain name, nothing more.

   Unfortunately, that isn’t something that is being achieved.

2. Another question is that of content: should there be some limit, or guideline, to what is and is not permissible in any given weblog on CS-ED.org?

   Within some gross parameters, I want to say NO again. The domain is hosted at Indiana University Bloomington under the auspices of the Computer Science Department. This implies that we must, necessarily, obey Indiana’s rules regarding acceptable content on the web; these are the standard University guidelines you see everywhere: no porn, no MP3s, etc. I can live with that.

   What I have a hard time wrestling with is the content of the blogs: why should I, or anyone else, self-censor? Carrie’s biggest argument is in keeping with this theme: my weblog is arguably about CS-ED related information, and therefore should remain true to that. Or, at least the posts should pertain largely to my personal experiences as a Ph.D. student engaged in the discipline. She also raised the point that, as one of the initiators of the enterprise, my voice is somehow “attached” to the domain. I don’t feel that way, but perhaps I should?

   If I can’t write about politics, I certainly can’t write about faith and religion. This is dangerous, at best. What about choice of first language in introductory computer science courses? Last I checked, within computer science education circles, this qualifies as both politics and religion. Perhaps that’s a bit light, but really… who hasn’t had their head bitten off by a language zealot at one point or another, or wondered what the ramifications of publishing an opinionated paper might be? Politics, in otherwords, seems inescapable… but I digress.

Let me give a picture of where I want CS-ED.org to go. I see it as a place where services pertinent to the community can be hosted. Weblogs was one idea that was easy to implement. The next tool I want online is a proper “recently updated” service. See weblogs.com as an example of what I mean. Every weblog out there can “ping” this site whenever it is updated. I’d like to create a service for any CS educator out there with a weblog, anywhere, so they can ping CS-ED.org and be “part of” the community. Put another way, requiring people to have a weblog on-site to be part of the network is a very unweblike idea. Allowing anyone with the right tools to play along, anywhere, opens the door for more voices and dialog very quickly.

And what happens then, when someone in that extended community isn’t always on-topic? Do they get removed from the “recently updated” list? If I want to be able to post about things outside of my immediate work, do I need to find another place to do it?

At the end of the day, I feel like this kind of censoring is appropriate for mailing lists and newsgroups, but not for a weblog, regardless of where it is hosted. This space, here, is mine, and the idea is that I can express myself here without fear of censure. Recourse, maybe, and backlash of various kinds, but that is my price to pay. Unfortunately, at this time, it’s potentially an issue for other people participating in the project.

I haven’t posted anything because these are still thoughts in motion. I don’t know what the right answer is, and will be pointing people to this post to get input. It’s a hard question, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. (Perhaps I should take the question to BlogTalk, an upcoming European weblogs conference?) And, of course, I could use more input here, via email (jadud at acm dot org) or in comments below. I’d rather the latter, methinks.

Thanks.