“Temporarily Offline” or How I came to stop worrying and love my degree programme
(Yes a blatant plagiarism of Doctor Strangelove’s title, but meh… fair use, I claim 
)
Well, seeing as my sleep patterns seem to be fubar, this morning I decided to have a quick look at all the websites I’ve neglected over the past few weeks/month or so and catch up on all the various happenings in the friendly world of cyberspace.
One such site was socgossip.com, a site which is geared towards letting a group of students from the School of Computing compose articles, some with meaningful content, and others a little more “imaginative”. The premise behind this site, IMO, is one of giving the students a non-academic-based forum in which to “gossip” about the others (and I use the term loosely) Most of the postings are syndicated from the personal blogs of the handful of authors, while one or two had authoring accounts on the system itself.
Now when I came to look upon the hallowed writings of my friends a little earlier on (c. 5.30 am - yes, AM!!), I was greeted by a message informing me that the site was “temporarily offline”, pending policy clarification from the School of Computing. “Strange,” I thought to myself.
So, I write about this topic because of the parallels it has with a similar situation that I found myself in not too long ago. Put simply, I wrote about things in my blog which, although were anecdotal, witty, funny and insightful to a Buddhist fashion, in the bigger picture they were quite silly things to write that could have got a lot of people into a lot of trouble (myself included). Initially, when I was first asked to remove the offending posts from my blog, I was near enough consumed with shock, anger, rage etc, and was given advices such as “take a stand”, “fight for free speech” and so on.
I declined to do so, for various reasons, one being that martyrdom really doesn’t become me; another being that if I had chosen to “take a stand for free speech” it would most likely have made changes for the worse in the long-haul.
Now the only reason I bring this to light after so long, is that my decision to “go with the flow” did cause some puzzlement for a few people, and although they knew, and understood to an extent, my reasons behind my decision, I’m not too sure if they could actually relate to the experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wanting to sound condescending in any way, shape or numerical system. I’m hoping for all hope that this temporary downtime was a pro-active move on the part of the site master, as opposed to a reactive gesture to the whims of the SoC. My inner cynic and realist suggests it’s likely the latter, though. My sincerest wish is that socgossip.com comes back online in the near future, as it did give a “portal” to the musings of a rag-tag group of students who all share a common interest.
OK, hopefully I’ve not alienated those to whom this brief rambling concern. I shall soon find out.
Anyways, I must tidy my room now - people are due to arrive at 11am to view the house. So I’ve got 3 hours to get it tidied (cos I’m also at work 12-3, and I’ll need to get ready…)
Laters!
January 10th, 2007 at 1:58 am
I am qualified to give a statement on this one
The site was in fact placed offline in a proactive move by myself while I clarify things with the SoC and the University as a whole. I or any other author on SoC gossip have ever been asked by any party to take down all or part of the site or its postings.
I decided to do this because I have the SoC’s best interests at heart and so I want to have staff on board as well as students. Not necesarily with respect to posting entries, but in supporting what SoC gossip stands for - a collection of SoC related posts and posts by people in the school.
Due to exams I have yet to have the opportunity to clarify things with appropriate figures in the school but as soon as I do I will reinstate SoC gossip as it always was, or with approriate adjustments based ont he outcome of discussions.
The reason for taking the site down was due to a rumour that negative comment on the university or a given school could have negative consequences for authors within the university, and I didn’t want to be responsible for placing authors on SoC gossip in any kind of hot water without clarifying the situation. Once I have clarified the situation I can then pass any message onto authors and allow them to make their own decision.
I hope this helps to differentiate the SoC gossip situation from yours.