Insulting spam

WordPress, the host site for this blog, tells me that its software has removed a total of 150,858 spam comments from the posts here. That means that spam comments account for over 90 per cent of all comments submitted. Mostly these are attempts to get the reader (if it got as far as the reader) to click on various commercial (and sometimes unsavoury) links, obscured by text that typically purports to praise the quality of the blog, often in incomprehensible ways (not helped, I suspect, by computer translation); as in this case:

‘Nice answers in return of this issue with firm arguments and describing all about that.’

Sure. But sometimes you get something different, and today an enterprising spammer decided that insulting me might pay dividends. This was his attempted comment:

‘The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesn’t disappoint me just as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually believed you would have something useful to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix if you weren’t too busy looking for attention.’

Ah, who knows, maybe he’s right. He wants you to click on the site of an online therapist, by the way.

The un-networked internet

Here’s an interesting – and crazy – development. If you were to scroll through the posts in this blog, you would find that in many of them I have linked to newspaper reports relevant to the topic. What I didn’t know is that my doing so may have exposed me to a very significant financial risk. Why? Because the newspapers, in Ireland at least, have decided that they own the copyright to the URLs of any articles or items in their publications, and that they are entitled to charge anyone who publishes the URL. Let me be quite specific: this is not about an unauthorised reproduction of a newspaper article or any part of it; this is about mentioning the URL link only.

So for example, yesterday morning one Irish newspaper published a report on a heatwave in Australia. If you want to read about it – or since we have Australian readers here, if you want to verify its accuracy – you can find it right here. Go and have a look. But because I have just given you the link, I have, apparently, infringed that newspaper’s copyright and am now liable to be sued. More particularly, they may claim I should pay them €300 for providing the link. How do I know all this? Because the body representing Irish newspapers, National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI), recently decided to take action against the charity Women’s Aid (of all people) because the latter had on their website linked to newspaper articles about them. Thankfully the charity is being supported in its defence pro bono by Dublin solicitor Simon McGarr.

If you think this is mad, then you are absolutely right. If we all have a copyright to URLs of sites we control – and it’s not just newspapers, obviously, who have websites – and if we can prevent others from mentioning these URLs by demanding stupid money before allowing them to do so, then we can bring the whole internet crashing down. The URL link is the heart of the world wide web; take it away, and there’s nothing left. This could become a particular issue in the academic world, in which the free exchange of internet links has become an important tool.

For the record, NNI have claimed that they would only want to prevent the commercial use of such links, but that’s nonsense because their chosen target, Women’s Aid, clearly was not in the business of commercial gain; and the charity did not reproduce any of the content of these newspaper articles, just the URL. NNI say they have no objection to the ‘personal’ use of internet links, but what on earth does that mean? Is my blog post here ‘personal’?  In any case, on what basis would anyone think that they owned a copyright to a URL? Or do I also have rights in relation to my postal address? Can I charge anyone who lists my address for whatever purpose, or indeed those who put it on an envelope? Or can I charge anyone who sends me an email for using my email address without my permission?

Of course, maybe I’m going at this the wrong way. I’ve just calculated that there have been, since June 2008, just under 6,000 links on other websites to this blog. Should I perhaps be writing out bills to the tune of €1.8 million? And by the way, roughly €7,000 worth of those bills would be going to newspapers who linked to my blog, in the run of their commercial business.

I am a genuine supporter of the quality Irish press, who do a great job and maintain some really good newspapers. But this particular move is beyond silly.

Blogging

This blog is now nearly three and a half years old, and has attracted over a million hits. During that time I have published 1,802 posts, and readers have made 12,580 comments on these posts. Something new has been published here pretty much every day since June 2008.

It may be time for a change of pace, or else I shall have published every thought in my head, however vacuous. I have therefore decided that, for now, I shall only publish a post once a week, on Tuesday mornings. If something startling happens on other days about which I feel moved to comment, then there may be additional posts on those days. I may also from time to time publish links to news items or comments elsewhere that may be of interest to readers. So keep looking in…

This space does in any case remain open to all, and if any reader would like to share (non-libellous) pieces here, then I shall be happy to publish them, on any day of the week.

Many thanks to all of you for your attention, which I genuinely appreciate and value.

Exit strategy

Next Tuesday, I shall be embarking upon my last month (at least for the time being) as a full-time resident in Ireland. In a few weeks I shall be taking up my post as Principal of the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. I shall maintain a base in Ireland and will visit regularly, but inevitable I shall be less informed and my more immediate interests will focus mainly on Scotland.

It is my intention that this blog will continue, but if it is to maintain a significant Irish higher education dimension (alongside the Scottish one that will now be developed) I shall require help. I am hoping that there may be a reader or two here who will be willing to assemble Irish stories and comment for the blog from April 2011. I shall also be inviting guest bloggers who will contribute from time to time. Some posts from other parts of the world will also be welcome from time to time, and those interested in contributing should let me know.

If any reader is interested in joining the team that will, I hope, be running this blog, please contact me at F.von-Prondzynski@dcu.ie

Happy Christmas!

May I wish all readers of this blog a peaceful and happy Christmas, and a New Year with promise and fulfilment. My warm thanks to all of you for being here, and a special thanks to those who enrich the blog with their comments – which I always appreciate.

Herbert Park, Dublin, on Christmas Eve

Blog management

i hope that readers of this blog will believe me when I say that I strongly believe in the free expression of opinions and abhor censorship. It was always my hope that all shades of opinion would be welcome here and that it would never be necessary for me to restrict comments in any way.

Sadly this has not proved possible and today I have had to restrict the ability of one reader to make comments. I feel that in some respects this represents a failure on my part, and I apologize for it. I felt I had to take this step as other readers were telling me they now felt intimidated from posting.

I hope that readers will understand this regrettable step.

Presidential blogs

As many readers of this blog know, I started writing it when I was still President of Dublin City University. The first post was published on June 5, 2008. Over the following 24 hours 2 people read the post, and nobody commented. In fact, only 11 people read the blog during the first week of its life. After that I started alerting people including DCU staff, and numbers grew (though not anything close to current levels). At the time I had a vague idea that I would use it to communicate with my staff in DCU, give them an idea of what I was up to and what I was thinking about, and give them an opportunity to comment if they wished.

Projects often have a life of their own. On a Friday the 13th (June 2008), the Irish Times ran an article on the blog, and that day I had 253 readers. It is a significant multiple of that now, and the blog has long ceased to be focused specifically on DCU. There are many readers from (as far as I can tell) all over the world, and not all of them are in, or even have a connection with, higher education.

I am not alone as a university president blogger, though it is not a large community. In these islands, as far as I am aware, there are two other presidential bloggers: the Vice-Chancellor of Salford University, and the President of Athlone Institute of Technology. Salford’s VC publishes posts once a week, whereas the Athlone President’s posts are more sporadic. In both cases there are not very many readers’ comments.

I am not aware of any other blogs in these islands, but in Australia there is the always interesting (and sometimes controversial) Steven Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University. His topics are topical and eclectic. There are usually some comments, but apparently we get to read only some of them:

‘This blog is moderated because not all comments submitted are publishable – over 254 posts since 2007 we have received more than 4,000 comments, many of which have been rejected because they are variously defamatory, obscene, unintelligible, disguised spam, ad hominem attacks or off topic. Some also are of such a technical nature that they would be best communicated in, say, direct emails to the VC’s office.’

In the United States there are many presidents who blog. In most cases, such as this one, the purpose of the blog appears largely to be the dissemination of university news and announcements. Others may be more discursive, but even then (as here) comments are often not invited.

There are some risks you run as a blogging president: the ‘foot in mouth’ risk – i.e. that you’ll say things you really shouldn’t say, even if it’s true; the ‘boredom’ risk – i.e. that everyone quickly discovers that you really don’t have much to say and drift away; the ‘it’s running away with me risk’ – i.e. that you become so engrossed in it that it takes up time that should be spent on other things; the ‘audience’ risk – i.e. that the readership of the blog grows beyond academic circles, and that you don’t really know how to address them coherently;  or the ‘nobody is listening’ risk – i.e. that you set out boldly to find that nobody is following,m and that you have few readers.

What, in my view, is the secret of success? Actually, I am totally clear in my mind on this: the difference between a dull blog and a fascinating one is the quality of the participation. Comments posted on the blog prove someone is engaged by it, and this makes all the difference. Academic discourse should be participative. To achieve such participation, you need to show that you welcome it, and you need to address topics that generate a bit of heat from time to time.

My view of presidential blogging, after two and a half years of experience, is that it is an amazingly useful tool if handled right. I have no regrets (yet…) about going down this path.

Still haven’t found what you’re looking for?

As long term readers (bless you!) of this blog know, every so often I take a look at what search terms people have used to find the blog. My main purpose in doing this is to see what kind of audience I am reaching and what’s on their minds. But often I find myself rather bemused at what gets people here.

So for example, over the complete lifetime of this blog 202 people found it by searching for ‘curvy women’ (and longer term readers will know why). I rather doubt that those who came here via that route went away satisfied. More weirdly, 79 people found this blog by searching for ‘my hopes’, which apart from anything else is a rather weird search term: what were these searchers expecting to find that would help them?

And here are some other recent search terms that led to here:

bibdesk (I don’t even know what that is)
what’s with sophocles and oedipus? (good that I am getting the classics…)
jail for politicians
what is effective and continuous? (well, what is?)
there is no reason (sounds strange I know, but can anyone guess how that got the seeker to this blog?)
removing nervous lecturers
the vamp of inchicore (eh?)
what am I paying for?
where do all these young people go?

Where indeed!

Finding the student voice

It has become a common argument that, as tuition fees return or at least are being discussed, students will become more demanding; if they are paying, they expect to see some service. As a theoretical perspective that sounds reasonable enough, but the experience of higher education systems with fees doesn’t necessarily bear this out. On the whole, the student voice has not become louder or more demanding.

And actually, that’s a pity. These days students are generally so focused on navigating their courses and coming out with a good grade that they don’t spend much time arguing about university policies – not even catering, for heaven’s sake. Even where they have representation on decision-making bodies, they often do not use this very actively. There are of course exceptions to the rule, as for example in the attempts here and there to stop Bertie Ahern speaking on a campus, but frankly these little outbursts are of no great significance in the scheme of things.

Over my time as President of DCU I spent some time thinking about why this might be so. One possibility is that we – meaning the universities and their students – have arranged student representation on a kind of ‘social partnership’ model, which in the end simply parachutes student representatives into what are essentially staff discussions, which may not always be of direct significance to them. It’s not that I think we should discontinue this – I don’t, emphatically – but rather we should become more skilled at making the students’ narratives a more recognisable part of the university communications.

One interesting experiment in this context is being conducted in Arizona State University, which now runs a student blog page on its website, where new students are given an opportunity to write about their experiences, and thereby perhaps highlight what is good and not so good about the university and their programmes of study. There are no doubt also other ways of giving space to student voices and encouraging them to engage in constructive critique. It can and should all be part of the earning experience, and perhaps will encourage students to take an active part in charting the direction of their university.

The next phase

As some readers of this blog may already have heard, I have been appointed to the post of Principal of the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. I shall be taking up the appointment in March 2011. For those who may not have visited it, Aberdeen is an extraordinarily beautiful city in North-East Scotland, and the university has established a magnificent reputation, indeed having just won the accolade of Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year. So as coincidence would have it, I am moving from this year’s Irish University of the Year, to the Scottish one. While of course I shall miss DCU, I am looking forward to the challenge and excitement of RGU, and to working with some extremely talented colleagues.

Judging from yesterday’s traffic on this blog, I suspect that we have already acquired some new Scottish readers, who are most welcome. During the months ahead, I shall continue to publish posts on higher education in Ireland and elsewhere, but you may find a Scottish angle emerging in some of these posts. I do however intend to keep at least some of the focus of this blog on Ireland – in equal measure with Scotland eventually  - and I may in due course seek a co-editor  from Ireland so that the Irish items remain accurate and up-to-date.

Some of you have already emailed me in the course of yesterday, but to all of you, whether from Ireland, Scotland or elsewhere, I would like to convey my thanks for your support and for your interest in this blog.