Circling the Wagons

A few thoughts in the wake of the Kel Campbell débacle

I’m not a huge fan of community drama — I’ve been through it before and I’m aware of how inconsequential it can be — but I think that the outcome of Kel Campbell’s case might affect how we’re going to live and interact on Medium from now on. So I’ll try to be as comprehensive as possible, and hopefully help further the conversation on the subject by reaching out to those who weren’t involved. This post will try to answer Emily’s original question and make a few points besides. You may skip the first few paragraphs (or not, in case you felt I was inaccurate on some accounts: I welcome feedback).

So, for those who may have missed it…

Previously, on Medium

Beloved community member Kel Campbell wrote a story that dealt with everyday sexism and how hard it is to explain it. I can’t link to it because it’s gone, along with her profile: Kel chose to leave Medium altogether after another community member copy-pasted some of her post and reworked it to make the argument that men are discriminated as much as women. Kel denounced the post as plagiarism and appealed to community managers. After stating that she felt her work wasn’t sufficiently protected, she left.

Update: Kel’s original post is on The Huffington Post (thank you, Lisa Renee!)

What went wrong?

The response to Kel’s post would probably have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been reprised on Athena Talks, the feminist publication where Kel Campbell’s story was originally featured. This gave the story a sort of validation, which offended Kel.
The story was pushed on the timeline of Athena Talks followers and writers, which is how I also noticed it and decided to respond. At this point, Emily told me what was happening with Kel, so I deleted my post. By that time, all hell had broken loose and in the space of a few hours Kel was gone.

Was it really plagiarism?

Kel felt it was, and she has a right to be offended: insulting, patronizing and belittling responses happen all the time on the internet, but it is one thing to find them in your feed, and quite another to see them recognized as legitimate content by a publication that you contribute to. Technically, though, it probably wasn’t plagiarism as such. As Darcy Conroy helpfully pointed out, although the response did use full paragraphs of Kel’s original post, her work was credited as “inspiration”. Though unoriginal and aggressive, the guy’s probably in the clear as far as copyright goes.

There have been cases of outright plagiarism on Medium, which is par for the course if you think about how large the community is and how easy it is to simply cut and paste somebody’s work and pass it off as your own. Some of history’s best and most-loved works of literature are the result of crafty plagiarism. It’s not ok. It’s not even legal. It’s also ridiculously feasible.

But that doesn’t make it right.

Athena Talks founder Linh Dao has issued an apology over the Kel incident, and I say this as constructively as possible: no one can ask Kel to “take back” anything. She had a right to her anger, and good apologies are unconditional. I like Athena Talks and I’m more than happy to have my work featured on it, but this was one major screw-up. It put Kel’s honest, non-judgmental work on the same level as worthless, unoriginal MRA crap.
Internet communities have a long history of silencing women’s opinions and making it all about men. While we all acknowledge that sexism is never one-way — everything that affects women also affects men to some degree — that post was wrong on several different levels, but most of all it sought to diminish and belittle Kel’s opinion by creating a false equivalence. Which is why I won’t link to it here: I will not be complicit in giving it any more exposure.

Where do we go from here?

A lot of people have contributed to the discussion that followed the incident (among others: Heidi Dubrouillet, Hana Leshner, Emily Friedel, Abby Norman, Jim Levy and Ray Delizo), and most people agree that the protection of one’s content is something that Medium management should take very seriously. Personally, I think this extends to making sure that the environment we write in is as welcoming and positive as possible. This is vital to Medium’s growth: if we let it slip into Reddit madness, the community will inevitably lose some of its best contributors. While I understand that Medium’s long-term goal is to feature quality journalism and become the home of relevant, groundbreaking content, the beating heart of the community are its everyday writers, people who take to Medium when they have something to share.

elizabeth tobey wrote a story that goes some way towards helping the community help itself, but gives no indication that Medium staff is going to intervene directly to sort out any controversies.

In this particular case, there isn’t much upper management could have done: removing the content would’ve set a dangerous precedent (remember the Airbnb story?) You don’t really want Medium staff to be able to remove content at will, unless it violates the law, and this story apparently didn’t. Even so, it would’ve taken a lawyer to file an injunction, and under whose law? What laws protect Medium content, the laws of the country of origin of the offended or those of the offender? If Medium is based in San Francisco, is all content hosted on its servers protected by US copyright law or California law? All these questions need to be answered. Radio buttons are not enough.

What Medium can do is provide as many tools as possible to single out disruptive behaviour, and hopefully be more effective than Facebook or Twitter in addressing it: these days, nipples are enough to get you banned from Facebook for days, but racism, homophobia and violent sexism are often not enough to warrant punishment. Facebook, however, is more or less a closed community, something Medium is not and will never be. Medium’s openness is how a native Italian speaker like me ended up writing for English-language publications and is followed by people all over the world. I like it that way, but there are risks involved.

So we circle the wagons.

We’re on Medium because it offers us an emotional experience. Most of us are writers and have had our work published elsewhere; we have blogs, have written books and magazine articles. Nothing compares to the feeling of instant recognition by your peers that Medium is capable of providing at this stage. We need to protect that, and we do so by accentuating the positive and minimizing the negative.

Publication editors must screen content carefully. I edit a few publications on Medium and I’m aware of the danger of simply scanning submissions as opposed to reading through them carefully, or worse, of adding stories that devalue the work of other writers on the same publication. Political publications should be doubly careful of what they publish. Another feminist publication, Femmes Unafraid, has recently been at the heart of another controversy, one that is still going on.

Community members can (and do) look out for one another. I was made aware of Kel’s distress by Emily, via private note: a gesture I found extremely considerate and also very effective in ensuring that the offending content did not get pushed out any further. In similar circumstances, I would probably do the same. Emily’s consideration also highlighted Medium’s best feature, that is the overall kindness and level-headedness of the community here.

We have a responsibility. A modicum of douchebaggery is sadly inevitable in any large community, but there’s a lot we can do as individuals to make sure that douchebags get the least possible exposure, thus making their message irrelevant. Being constructive, never losing our temper when attacked, standing our ground without becoming aggressive are all effective behaviours. Gently pointing out to people that they’re being offensive is also surprisingly effective: a lot of people have no idea they’re being horrible until somebody tells them. We set the tone, we make the rules of our interactions.

“Do not feed the troll”, however, remains the golden rule. Had the offending story not been a direct attack on Kel’s work but an honest opinion piece, however misguided, it would’ve made sense to start a conversation over it. As it was, however, it was best to give it the attention it deserved, i.e. none. Opinions are ok. Mocking is not.

And the takeaway is?

I’m sorry Kel left and I hope she’ll be back at some point: she was among the first people I followed on Medium and she was consistently entertaining, thought-provoking, and often laugh-out-loud funny. Medium needs people like her, and they need to feel safe and comfortable even as their opinion is challenged. That is our responsibility, but it is also in the company’s interest to make sure that this remains a productive and enjoyable environment, one that is good to its most honest and prolific voices.