Jezebel.com: approve me dammit! [by angela]
Jezebel.com, a blog geared towards feminism, empowerment, women keeping it real, and all that good stuff, has recently irked me.
The website, launched in May 2007 as a division of Gawker Media, is one of my favorites. I check it multiple times a day, everyday, and it’s even on my tool bar favorites list.
After reading this article (by my favorite Jezebel author, Tracie Egan) about The Duggar family *shudder* I was compelled to leave a comment. I said something to the effect of “Am I the only one who can’t stand the Duggar family? Having 18 children is basically a form of child abuse because you know some of those kids are neglected and doing heroin without their parents’ knowledge.” Or something like that. After making up a little profile for myself I posted the comment only to find out that “You need to audition to become a commenter. Your comments will be displayed once your account is approved.”
Whaaaaaaat? That can’t be right. A feminist mag telling me I needed to audition to be a part of the fun? I checked out the guidelines for commenting:
Characteristics of a good comment:
•Insight/additional information
•Intelligent critique
•Wit/humor
•Calm, courteous, reasoned disagreement, either with the opinions/facts presented in a post itself or with other commenters
•Sharing of relevant, personal anecdote (within reason)Note: Although Jezebel editors have strong feelings on a whole host of issues — political and personal — we don’t expect everyone to share them. Nor should you. Ganging up on commenters who don’t share your point of view is not only unnecessary, it is tacky and contributes to a cliquish atmosphere that is not in the spirit of this blog.
I love you Jezebel.com, but am I the only one who thinks creating rules and standards that commenters have to fulfill in order to be featured on the site is inevitably going to create a cliquish atmosphere? Isn’t the point of feminism to be free to be you and me? Isn’t the beauty of an internet publication that people can interact with each other and express how they feel? I get what you’re trying to accomplish ladies, and sure some (lots of) people are assholes, but that’s why you have a comment moderator. To delete offensive and irrelevant comments.
Anyway you know as soon as my comment gets approved I’m gonna be talking shit to all the newbs who aren’t in the cool kids club. Suckaz!
Check out Jezebel.com for some good, estrogen-fueled reading.
Comments
I left around 20 comments on Deadspin, the Gawker sports site, before i finally got approved, it was one of the happiest moments in my life when my moniker Charlie_Kelley appeared on the site making some snide comment about Kurt Warner’s wife.
It’s very high and mighty of the gawker sites to make you audition with a dozen or so comments before they let you on, but as one of the people that always reads the user comments after a story, I think it makes for better/funnier comments when only approved people get on.
Angie- Keep on commenting, I know they’ll let you on someday soon.
dont give up angie
Thanks for this post. A dozen comments? 20 comments? I see my problem now. Their FAQ only says “at least one comment” although “multiple” would be helpful. So I left 3 comments and thought that would be enough. Apparently not.
But I completely understand, it’s so frustrating to write comments and not have them appear. I just hope I get approved eventually…
Wow, I had no idea it would take this long to get approved. I just thought it was a human moderator making sure you weren’t spam.
I know this is an old post but I was googling things about getting commenter approval on Jezebel specifically hoping to find something like this.
I just started commenting–ahem, I’m sorry, auditioning to comment on the site. And every time I post something, hoping it seems good enough to make me an approved commenter, I feel a little more ridiculous.
This is completely clique-ish and annoying. I understand they’re trying to weed out trolls and the like, but at the same time…I just want to join everyone else in complaining about X Stupid Thing That Megan Fox Said or whatever.
I think it’s a total bad move to have the commenting system work this way. I’m so annoyed and feel like such an idiot for continuing to do it. Jezebel had better be grateful that I love it a WHOLE LOT, otherwise I’d already have given up.
I also got here googling how to get approved at Jezebel. I think my comments are pretty good. Most of the time I bother to comment it’s because someone asked a question and I can answer it. Once I got snippy at somebody, but I wasn’t MEAN or anything.
Anyways, I wanted the rest of you all to know you’re not alone. Right now I pretty much consider my comments at Jezebel to be venting into the darkness. It’s an advanced form of talking to yourself. Very soothing.
Right?… Right?
Okay, not really, but a girl can pretend.
hey– i’m the author of this post. thanks for all the comments! i actually stopped going to jezebel because i started to dislike their content… maybe i’ll check it out now, but it seems that rule-wise not much has changed.
Don’t feel bad- I’ve actually been begging them to delete my account (they won’t for some reason) bc of how awful the site has gotten. If I had known I couldn’t delete my account I wouldn’t have joined.
i also got here from a google search! you have pinpointed my exact frustrations.. i wouldn’t expect a site like Jezebel to have some strange commenting requirements. in fact, i can’t think of a single other site i frequent with those commenting rules– either you sign up and make and account so you can be held accountable for your comments (they’ll kick you out if you’re rowdy), OR you post anonymously but moderators have to approve your comment.
long live buntology!!!
Eh, I think it’s a pretty smart move on their part. I finally got approved last night after leaving random comments for about 2 weeks. This way people can’t just log on to jezebel and leave dumb comments only for the purpose of pissing people off. And spam! It’s all worth it too. Jezebel is the place to be!
Well, they are certainly not perfect. Feminists, indeed, but unfortuately this hardly makes them more than slightly-less-indoctrinated-fools-slightly-above-the-regularly-indoctrinated-fools.
Some of their content can be annoyingly tip-toey and patronizing (making fun of people with different opinions, making fun of men despite protesting equality (that last one I don’t really care about, but hypocrisy is hypocrisy)), but there are many impressive, extremely well written articles with a plethora of societal commentary and hilariousness.
Not cool though, the auditioning thing. Fuck that, that is all I have to say about it, whatever the excuse, or excuse me, “reasoning”.
I can just imagine them now . . . “You must keep in mind that Jezebel is a website designed BY WOMEN FOR WOMEN, and as such, we owe it to our readers to maintain a safe, positive environment, especially considering the sensitive and sometimes very personal subject matter we cover here at Jezebel, la la la . . . .
Maybe right, maybe wrong, annoying all the same.
tl;dr: I feel like Jez’s comments are a much higher caliber because of the auditioning process. 🙂
Gotta say, when I got approved I was thrilled (just recently). Also, when you get “promoted” to be on the feature page, it’s pretty exciting. I was a little intimidated at first, but, honestly, this audition process is fun for a lot of reasons. I’m being challenged to really think about what I want to write instead of just putting some random bs down. Also, I double check my grammar. And not text speak (which is fine, but not really my forte). I feel like everything written there is pretty high caliber, generally, (especially compared to other threads when you want to discuss something on the internet) and witty. Usually, people try to be polite when they pose other opinions.
Okay, I swear Jez isn’t paying me to write this. I’ve just been lurking on their site FOR A WHILE and just got the balls (figurative) to try and audition.
/end rant
i love that this little article i wrote over a year ago is still getting so much feedback… girl power!?!?
I just googled to find someone complaining about this same thing! I am so annoyed at this and it seems pretty hypocritical of Jezebel to make their site into an exclusive club of sorts. I’ve only commented a couple times, but no luck yet. Which is absurd because many approved comments are not of the ‘highest caliber’ there, either! I’m tempted to stop going to their site and give up, if they’re going to act like it’s some kind of sorority. I think it’s full of too many faux-intellectual, faux-feminists anyway.
I love Jezebel but their pro-obesity stance and trollpatrolling of anyone who does not believe that being significantly overweight makes you unhealthy is bizarre. I find it hard to read lately. Many of the commenters use their politically correct opinions as swords. Seriously close minded and hyper sensitive. You aren’t missing much. I am preferring Gawker lately.
Just found this site in the same way as the others who have commented above me. It takes between four months and a year now to become “good enough” to get a star.
I don’t think I want to belong to a club that expects me to, as Sabriel above writes, talk to myself for that long.
I do understand about wanting to make sure there are high quality comments but this kind of anti-newcomer stance seems a bit like shooting themselves in the foot to me.
A feminist site that encourages women to repeat the same desperate, forlorn behaviour day after day and month after month in the hope that one day they will be approved of- yes, I am certain that is what feminism is all about.
Truly a lot of great facts.