Punknews.org FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Well if it is, we're all zombies and you've stumbled upon our secret lair. Grr. Argh. and so forth.

Quite simply, we don't.

We love to report on classic bands that built our scene, however there simply isn’t a large volume of Ramones or Hüsker Dü news out there. When there is, we'll gladly get it up there, but at the end of the day it's one article. Mainstream acts, those that you may assume we over-cover, have marketers working in their favor as well. If Against Me! has a new album coming out and their PR company releases twice weekly updates with new video footage, new song clips, and other updates, that's of course going to generate more individual articles. Particularly if those stories get a reaction from the readers.

It's also a matter of perception. We can post news about The Slits and it will only get 11 comments, none of which are posted or read by you. Then we'll post on Brand New and it will get hundreds of comments and is ground for huge conversations and arguments. At the end of the day you're going to perceive the Brand New article as "bigger," but to us it's still just one article and took no more time or effort than the Slits one.

PR firms aside, some bands simply don't release as much news as others. We may love Tragedy, but they don't exactly give us a lot to work with.

The answer is two fold.

First we're trying to be democratic and reflect the interests of the people who participate in the site. Our only gauge of reader interest is the comments they leave, both in terms of quantity and the types of discussions generated, so if an article on My Chemical Romance spawns hundreds of comments (positive and negative), we're likely to cover them again in the future. It's an attempt to be democratic and not just inflict the tastes of the editors on the readership.

Secondly, articles about mainstream acts help bring in new readers. These are the "gateway bands," and a fan of Fall Out Boy who arrives at Punknews looking for news will hopefully be exposed to some more underground acts and expand their own tastes. We all started somewhere.

It's not like putting up a story about the Alkaline Trio prevents us from putting up one about the Buzzcocks. Everyone can be happy. Woo!

None. The banner ads are the only paid content, and we'd like to think that they're pretty clearly not part of the site content. We do not sell "features" or coverage.

Not much at all. There are about probably 20 to 30 active registered commenters and about the same number of anonymous commenters. When you see "300 Comments" under an article, it's likely a heated discussion amongst the a small group of people. Our traffic numbers dwarf the number of people leaving comments. Like most websites, the amount of casual readers and "lurkers" far outweighs the participants. Most people never even see the comments.

So if you're forming an opinion on the "state" of this site based on the quality of the discussions going on, realize that you're being inaccurate.

We don't think of ourselves as a message board. There are plenty of interesting, topical and well-regulated boards out there that actually stimulate interesting discussion. The comment sections are just for fun, and are certainly not our focus as editors.

We have no interest in trying to force anonymous folks in the internet to adhere to some abstract code of conduct. There are too many slippery slopes, particularly when dealing with already censorship-weary punk music fans.

That being said, we will ban your IP if we find you spamming the boards, trying to exploit the comment posting tools, or doing something that's blatantly bigoted and harmful. That has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with not acting like a four year old.

A number of theories have been forwarded for this:

• Michael Tresca's “Impact of Anonymity on Disinhibitive Behavior Through Computer-Mediated Communication”
• Gordon Fletcher's “Fight Club: culture, conflict and everyday life amongst an online community”
• Clay Shirky's Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software
• John Gabriel's “Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory”

"It is a deep curiosity of the human condition that people often find negative attention more satisfying than inattention, and the larger the group, the likelier someone is to act out to get that sort of attention." - Clay Shirkey

If only it could be. The editor staff are all either in school or working day jobs like the rest of you. Punknews is run entirely by volunteers who simply love music enough to spend an unhealthy amount of time staring at these blue, gray and white screens.

Any ad money we make goes to paying our bandwidth and hardware maintenance. Nobody makes a dime off of the site.

From time to time we need to expand the editorial staff, and whenever we do we always ask someone from the community. Regularly submitting news on a voluntary basis and consistently posting insightful comments is a good way to get noticed, but we make no promises that you'll ever by approached about an editor position. The law of averages says you won't.

This feature exists to shed some light onto interesting finds that the editing staff may have stumbled across. Sometimes the bands are easily categorized as punk, and often they aren’t. A myopic view of music is dreadfully boring, and since this is generally a "light fare" weekend feature we don't feel constrained to keep it so narrowly focused.

People asked us this following the Clash frontman's death. Seriously. If any of you are trying to promote exclusion in Joe's name then you missed the point entirely.