Are you man enough to take my challenge?

Dear Readers,

I am greatly saddened by the amount of negative, expletive, sexist, racist, discriminatory, violent comments posted on KI-Media.

But, before going further, let me reply to a few of questions asked of us first:

1- Is Ms. Theary Seng involved in the daily operation of KI-Media? The answer is NO. Like many others who sent us their op-eds, opinions, etc… to post, Ms. Seng is kind enough to share with our readers some of the articles that she found interesting and that could be of interest to some, if not all, of us. However, that does not mean that she is part of our team, even though we wouldn’t mind seeing activists like her joining our team, but that is just a wishful thinking. Based on perusing some of the negative comments on Ms. Seng, it appears that even the various photos we posted of her are topic of irritation to some. On the other hand, not too long ago, a reader posted a comment berating Dr. Peang-Meth for always posting the same photo of his with his article. What this reader did not seem to realize is that (1) Dr. Peang-Meth has nothing to do with KI-Media’s posting, and that (2) our posting of the only photo of his is the only recourse we have since we do not have any other photo of him. Personally, I am very puzzled and dismayed by such reactions.

2- Is KI-Media merely a nest for opposition followers to come out and curse the government? By the look of it, KI-Media seems to attract a large audience of government critics and detractors simply because our comment section is not moderated. Why didn’t we remediate this issue? The answer is very simple: we simply do not have the staff necessary to do the policing and cleaning up of the comments posted by our readers. Look at it this way: most of us are students who still have to attend classes or who have to work at a fulltime job to earn a living etc…, therefore KI-Media is just a hobby, albeit a passionate one, for all of us, therefore, we simply cannot afford to spend large amount of time policing the comment section. Without an income to provide us with our daily bowl of rice, it would be impossible for us to offer the free service of KI-Media.

From a historical standpoint, because we use the free service of Blogspot to host KI-Media, in the past, we were very limited on how we can control the posting of comments by readers: unmoderated, fully moderated or not allowed. As explained above, full moderation is impossible for us to handle. Ideally, our best choice would be unmoderated with selective moderation for language, and that option was not available until recently. Even at that, because of our limited number of volunteers, we simply cannot monitor all the comments 24/7, therefore, some of these “pesky” comments may linger a while before we catch them and zap them out.

3- KI-Media only serves as an aggregator of news, there are better news aggregator services than that – such as Google or Yahoo – so what’s the use of having KI-Media at all right now? True, we wouldn’t deny this fact, while the amateurish KI-Media offers less news than those professional and commercially funded outlets, on the other hand, we also offer Khmer and French news and articles translated into English as well. We also post community news as well as information that are not usually found in the traditional circuit or that would be censored in Cambodia, such as Sacrava’s cartoons. Do these justify our existence? Most likely not, but as we said it earlier, KI-Media is a passion to some of us, we would pursue it even if it only serves a single reader in the whole wide world.

4- Should KI-Media borrow a page or two from that temple thug Hun Sen by just blowing away irrelevant, nonsensical comments by CPP/Hun Sen's supporters here on KI-Media? Other team members may disagree with me on this topic, but personally, I refuse to stoop to the same level as my oppressors. I’d rather put my life on the line to defend the right of my oppressors to speak freely than forcing silence on them. It’s just my choice and my principle, and I do not expect everybody to agree with me on this issue.

5- Why does KI-Media sometimes twist the title to criticize the government? Well, simply speaking, the fact that you are asking this question shows that our twisted approach works: they got your attention, they invite you to read the true title (included) of the article and the article itself. If the title is plain and boring, you may not read that article at all, therefore, one of our tasks is to challenge our readers and force you to react, even if in the process we will earn your curses. We strongly believe that an engaged audience is much better than an adoring audience: debate, refute, contest, protest. Remaining a silent majority is no longer an option. Those are the essence of democracy, please put them to use to your advantage, woo the readers with your comments, challenge our team back, can you do that?

That being said, I would like to return to my initial consternation. As I indicated above, I am very disturbed by the sexist comments against women: is it wrong for women to express their opinion? Why do some have to use very sexist and derogative words to attack women? Didn’t we all come out of a woman’s womb one way or another? Furthermore, being a man, I simply cannot imagine a world without women. Can you imagine how boring a male-only world would be? The thought of it makes me shudder between my legs (no pun intended). Therefore, I challenge you all to rise to the occasion: you may not agree with a woman’s opinion, however, are you man enough to explain your reasons with civility? I sincerely hope you do.

I thank you for your attention,

Heng Soy

PS: To the person who kept on repeating, like a broken record, that KI-Media’s father is gay, let me simply say that you lack basic judgment: (1) If someone’s father is gay, how could that gay father naturally procreate a child as this “natural” process usually requires the interaction between a man and a woman?, (2) KI-Media does not have a father as KI-Media is not a person. Now, can you come up with more intelligent comments in the future?