Some of you may have seen Sickipedia mentioned in the press recently – I wanted to put out a public statement about it sooner but a combination of actually replying to journalists and trying to fit in my real work has left me a little frazzled.
I thought a reasonable half-measure would be to stick up some of the messages I’ve written for the journalists who got in touch.
CHORTLE
First off there was Jay Richardson who wrote the original (and most upsetting) item for Chortle. This was a hatchet job produced by Jay emailing me, not telling me his intentions and getting his quotes by subterfuge. With journalism there’s something called a “right to reply” which means if someone writes a highly critical story they should tell you about it before publication and give you an opportunity to defend yourself. Anyway – a copy of the original emails between us are here. On reflection – I’m sure Jay Richardson’s intentions were noble – he’s was just trying to help his friends – but it was at my expense so I have to flag it.
THE INDEPENDENT
Chris Green of the Independent wrote a much fairer story presenting both sides clearly. The comments I gave him were:
It’s really unfortunate what’s happened with Gary Delaney. I apologise fully for the behaviour of some of our sites users.
We run a public forum for gags – and, like any user-submitted content site, this has plusses and minuses. It’s completely great that there’s this big pile of amusing (and often stomach churning) material for all to read but occasionally stuff turns up that gives us nightmares.
Mostly we try and be hands off – we allow the users to vote stuff up and down. Anything that’s voted down too much drops off the site.
Our members feel that us poking around too much and overriding their democratic decisions is damaging to the site. So if stuff is removed they have a habit of posting it straight back on – it’s called the Streisand effect – where the internet routes around what it sees as damage or censorship.
When Gary got in touch we didn’t know what to do about his complaint as it was the first of its kind and we worried about it: that if we did as we were asked we’d just create a bigger problem.
Hence I advised Gary to contact the person who was submitting his material himself as I hoped they might work it out between themselves.
This hands-off moderation strategy proved to be the wrong approach as I believe Gary didn’t get what he wanted.
So then – being unsure of the best way to proceed – we acted on Gary’s request and deleted the material ourselves, big mistake. As we feared, the community saw his jokes being removed as an attack on their free speech and reacted awfully.
We learnt from this and worked with Gary to find a solution that allows people to attribute jokes. Obvious in retrospect, really. Gary now tells us he’s happy with this solution. Thank god.
I’ve also apologised privately to Gary for allowing my uncertainty of how to deal with this delay a solution.
- what action has your site taken to prevent unattributed jokes appearing?
All jokes now have the option of being attributed by anyone who reads them. The principle – like Wikipedia – many eyes keep things accurate.
But I’d like to stress the site is set up to collect the jokes that do the rounds in pubs etc, and not to step on the toes of comics on the club circuit.
However as our site evolved over the last 3 or 4 years we’ve found that many of our contributors spend hours crafting their own material, and find it extremely valuable to test it out via our site.
- what are your views on plagiarism in comedy? Is a joke public property as soon as it’s said in a gig, or should it remain the property of the comic?
Web marketing people call stuff that self-propagates as viral. Jokes are the original viral. They get thought up, they mutate and they get passed around via speech and leap-frog onto whatever the current technology is of the day.
This is true of jokes thought up by comics who work in the industry and also ordinary people – a witty line or comic observation is part of everyday discourse for people, the vast majority of whom don’t work in the comedy industry.
We’re interested in these people – letting them share their jokes with a bigger audience than just their chums.
- Also, is it true that Sickipedia’s hosting its own comedy night tonight in Shoreditch?
Yes, we have 12 or so comics on many of whom haven’t been on stage before and some who’ve honed their craft by inventing one-liners for Sickipedia.
Simply some guy who works in a pub who’s a fan of the website emailed me and said, “what about doing a comedy night?” I thought no, then yes, it would be really fascinating to stick these untried web comics on stage and see what they do. Can someone who can turn a phrase on a web browser get on stage?
So I said yes – and it’s absolutely devastating that this simple let’s do something for shits and giggles is getting confused with a moderation dispute. I’m literally getting panic attacks now that this has turned into a press story.
SUNDAY TIMES
My replies to David Schneider – yep, him off the telly – writing for The Sunday Times. David is an extremely reasonable man and I feel a bit of a shit pre-empting his story by publishing the comments I gave to him. UPDATE: Ooh he’s emailed and said it’s fine. Phew.
My top line is simply, “We had a problem, Gary got in touch to complain. We were crap at fixing it quickly, but we did fix it. Gary agreed that he was happy with the solution. I’ve also apologised to Gary.”
But in more detail….
Sickipedia like having an old dog you keep in the garden that occasionally escapes and bites the neighbour’s kids. And then, while you’re apologising, it’s behind them, shitting in their garden. But you can’t actually put it down because it’s your dog and you’re weirdly fond of it.
The problem arises from a clash of cultures. Sickipedia is born from a more public “let’s swap jokes” vibe that anyone who’s ever sat in a pub with a load of blokes will know about. Its intention was not to step on the toes of comics – in fact I was barely aware of the comic circuit until very recently.
However as the size of the site has grown – and in three or four years years it’s grown from a single thread on the b3ta messageboard to a site that gets over 7 million page views per month – we’ve found ourselves butting heads with a number of people I’d never expect to come into contact with. It was a bit of a shock and we weren’t quite sure how to handle it.
Also, as the site has expanded, a wonderful thing has happened. It’s become – not just a place for people to swap rotten old jokes – but also a place for people to write and test out new material. (I can put you in touch with a handful of interesting, articulate people who use the site this way, should you be interested.)
And this is what breaks my heart – our mad, weird, funny little website full of creative people, comedy fans and people I’d frankly be scared to meet in a dark alley is being painted with the paint of one colour: plagiarists.
Comedy nights: I like saying yes to opportunity – most of my life is pretty routine. Having a cup of tea with a fancy biscuit is about as showbiz as I get. On a day-to-day basis I help my wife look after the kids and run internet projects from my home office with my school-friend Dave. So when the Ents manager of a pub emails me and says do you want to put on a comedy night, after a bit of anxiety wrestling (I have no experience, and hadn’t even watched a live comic in years) I figure my life will be more interesting if I say yes.
So I stick out a message online and see who wants to turn up. The pitch is simple – see 12 or so guys, many of whom who’ve never stood on stage before and only written gags on a website. Will they sink or swim? I’d want to see that.
The night was last Tuesday and it was a roaring success – not only did so many people turn up we had to turn them away – people came up to me who know the open-mic circuit said it was like nothing they’d ever seen and they’d love it. The key difference I think was the audience – they weren’t a traditional comedy audience who go to live gigs, they were fans of the website up for a party.
And our acts – well amongst my favourites was Mushy Bees – a truly unique act, someone who’s never been on stage before but deserves to go far should he wish to pursue it. His act was basically being a full-on transvestite, a gruff voice, whilst showing hand-drawn caricatures of celebs with rude poems… Well, see for yourself. A professional camera guy, Joe Rigby, thought what we were attempting was so interesting that he got in touch and offered to film it for free (with the permission of the acts!). Check the video here.
And finally…
The other name that gets rather overlooked in all this mess is Ross ‘Teddy’ Craig who also had a similarly crap experience of Sickipedia. Sorry Ross. SORRY ROSS.