Don't be a G20 Jackass
After G20
The Protests and Police Response
There were lots of protests, and while there was property damage, nothing horrible happened. There were a few broken windows, there
were a handful of injuries, and a fair number of arrests. The police responded with force on a few occassions, but it was fairly restrained.
Having seen a few protests, and having been out in Bloomfield just as the police had dispersed some crowds, I have to congratulate everyone
on both sides of the fence: people mostly kept their heads. In a rough estimate, there was probably more damage after the Steelers won the
Superbowl than over the past two days.
Even more, what little jackassery happened was perpetrated by just one jackass.
One extreme jackass out of the thousands of people that showed up? I can live with that.
Thank you to everyone. But I'm still upset that Pamela's Diner's window was broken in Oakland.
"Police Resistance"
Friday night, there was a "Police Resistance" march to protest the behavior of the police during this event. I think it was unjustified.
Yes, the police responded with non-lethal deterrents, like pepper-gas and sonic weapons, and yes, they were aggressive about breaking up crowds.
These crowds, of course, were spontateous protests that did not have a permit. The permit requirement is not a tool to silence dissent, but
for safety and the public's benefit. Chanting "Who's streets? Our streets!" may have an emotional thrill, but it's our streets too,
and the citizens and emergency vehicles also need to be able to use them. For everyone's safety, the police have to break up the crowd.
A hundred years ago, the Pinkertons used real bullets to attack the Homestead strikers, just to keep things in perspective.
The Response
The response this site received was overwhelmingly positive. I was blown away by the feedback it got, and it just emphasized one of the best
parts of Pittsburgh: Pittsburghers. In total, with only about a week online, this site has garnered nearly a thousand signatures, and I've
personally received dozens of emails about it. It's been discussed in the local news, all over Facebook, and even covered by the Guardian
in England.
As with any site like this, one of the major concerns one might have is spam. While there were a fair number of spam or junk comments,
in reality, they were a vanishingly small minority. Even with the anonymity of the Internet, people were voluntarially not being jackasses.
I did have some automated spam filtering in place, but looking at the logs, it didn't catch all that much. There wasn't much to catch.
Things I Learned
I've never put together a site like this, and going through the process has been educational for me.
Getting the word out
My initial promotion was simply word of mouth. I passed the link around work, to friends and family. They passed it onto Twitter and
Facebook, and Facebook. Seriously: Facebook. Most of the traffic that came to this site was from Facebook. After that, it was
direct access (people typed the URL into the address bar) and Google searches.
Of course, there was also the news. Local coverage on KDKA TV and radio drove the biggest traffic spikes this site saw, although it
did not come through their websites. The traffic driven from their websites were anemic, but the attention generated by their broadcasts
was significant.
You know what drove almost no traffic? The PostGazette's "PG+" site, their paywalled news site. I'll let the reader draw their own conclusions
about the likely future of for-pay newspaper publishing online.
Interviews
Being interviewed for something like this was a novel experience for me as well. Doing TV was much easier and more comfortable than doing radio,
and I think it shows, if you compare the two interviews. Essentially, it boils down to editing. The actual tape recorded for TV was two or
three times the length of what you saw, and they cut it down to the best bits. On radio, live, there's a lot more pressure. I felt compelled
to fill the gaps in the air, and that made it sound like I was rambling. Not that I anticipate doing this again in the future, but next time
I'm being interviewed live, I'll actively prep and have notes in front of me.
Did Good, Do Better
There are a few things about this site that I think really worked. The obvious "win" was the domain name. People responded very positively to the
phrasing. It was short, memorable, and was a perfectly judicious use of profanity. Big success there.
I'm generally happy with the design of the site. Like the domain name, it's simple and just the right amount of "stuff". I never got the three
columns working exactly the way I wanted them to. On small screens, it collapsed to two columns and looked awful, and even on large screens,
I never figured out how to center it properly. In the future, a little more time spent on touching up the design would go far.
For security reasons, I was dropping "'" and ";", which was laziness on my part. That's why you see a lot of "OHara" and not "O'Hara". I
shouldn't have cut corners there, but I was more concerned about SQL injection than proper punctuation. Similarly, I should have had code
that properly rationalized case, so that ALLCAPSIDIOT of SOMETOWN doesn't show up. I attempted to clean up that case, but
with towns named things like McCandless, it's hard to properly get case handled, and I decided it wasn't worth the effort.
Don't be a Jackass
I think the final takeaway, and the most important one to share, is this:
We are all stuck with each other. Everything we do impacts someone else, and it's up to each of us to make sure that those impacts are
positive. We will always have disagreements, but there is no reason to abandon civility. In all things: don't be a jackass.
Thank you all, so much.
Contact, Blog.