Still polishing the new policy to govern comment decorum. Since it’s taken me this long, I thought I’d go ahead and share it with the world as my Sunday column. So you’ll be able to read all about it Sunday, either in the paper or right here.
But here’s a sneak preview, a teaser if you will, just to stir up advance interest:
I’m implementing a Double Standard:
The bad news is that one group of people will be free to post pretty
much whatever they want. I will maintain the same hands-off policy with
them that I’ve maintained with everyone up to now. With those in the other group,
I will delete at will any comments that I deem harmful to good-faith
dialogue.
The good news is that you get to choose which group you’re in.
To be in the first group, you just have to give up your anonymity.
This won’t require filling out special forms or supplying me with your
birth certificate or blood type or anything. Just fill out the existing
fields that precede comments with your real, full name; your regular,
main e-mail address (the one you use for friends or family or
co-workers, not something you set up on Yahoo for the specific purpose
of hiding your identity); and if you have a Web site, your URL. If it
seems necessary (either to you or me) to provide more info to establish
your legitimacy, you can do so either in the text of the comment, or
more discretely, by e-mailing
the data to me. When would it be helpful to provide more info? Use your
judgment — if your name is John Smith and your e-mail is
jsmith@aol.com, you might want to tell a little more, such as that
you’re the West Columbia attorney or a student at USC or whatever. And
I’ll use my
judgment — if you call yourself Mike Cakora, but write something totally uncharacteristic of him, I’ll start asking questions.
To be in the other group, keep hiding behind anonymity. I’ll still
let you through most of the time, but I’m going to start deleting
comments that fit into one of two categories…
How will I define those categories? Tune in on Sunday.
You will also be able to read some hints on how to communicate constructively while still making strong points. Here’s an excerpt from that:
As you write, always try to express your ideas in a way that will actually change the minds of people with whom you disagree.
As a corollary to that, don’t write in a way calculated to win
cheers and attaboys from those who already agree with you, or to give
yourself a jolt of vindictive satisfaction.
Bottom line is, if you internalize and act in accordance with those … two principles, you will never have your comments deleted.
Unfortunately, given the present polarization of political attitudes, some of you will refuse to believe that those other people
can ever be persuaded. You think there are people like you, and people
like those others, and any attempt to reach across the divide with
reason is futile.
Anyway, you won’t have to wait all that long for further explanation. Here’s hoping that this policy — the product of a conversation that involved more than 470 reader comments — will produce a place that all of us find more useful for discussions that move toward real solutions on issues.
If not, we’ll try something else.
Related Posts
Congratulations. That is beyond the shadow of a doubt the pissiest comment policy I’ve ever read.
It was nice knowin’ ya . . .
This must be a generational thing. Is posting our Christian name somehow supposed to keep us in bounds? How long until you start charging?
Let’s turn this into Blog Or Not while we’re at it. What a perfect strike against creativity this is!
Mr. Warthen, you have one of the more respectable (in people and format) sites on the internet. If you think you have it so bad, check out the comments on a site like aintitcoolnews.com.
I admit that may be comparing the local sports bar to Mos Eisley Cantina, but that’s exactly my point, as well.
There’s no need to overreact and go all Imperial Navy on this site.
That said, it’s your site. Thanks for what was.
OK, I hereby debut my last name to go along with my email address and blog url. I think it’s a fine policy. Enjoy.
It’s another idée fixe of Warthen’s; the idea that posting someone’s real name does anything other than to make them vulnerable to attacks by thugs. What’s important for holding someone accountable for their views is not that they use their real name, but that they use the same name. Atrios was just as accountable before he revealed his secret identity as he is now, and his real identity was irrelevant to an evaluation of his views or for praising or deprecating him for his writings.
Here are two examples of conversations before or after Atrios’s identity was revealed to the world:
Before:
A: Atrios said X about Bush.
B: Who is Atrios?
A: I don’t know.
After:
A: Atrios said X about Bush.
B: Who is Atrios?
A: Duncan Black.
B: Who’s that?
A: I don’t know, some guy.
“As you write, always try to express your ideas in a way that will actually change the minds of people with whom you disagree.”
Does this mean that Warthen isn’t going to post anymore? He doesn’t ever say anything except that the 60% of Americans who oppose the war are “defeatists” who are “blinded by hatred of Bush” and “don’t love America enough to support the vital mission in Iraq”. You take that away from him, confine him to explaining WHY the war is vital, and how it helps America, and he’s not going to have much to say.
Too bad. See ya.
We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal . . . A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind.
Bradbury
I will sincerely miss kc and SGM.
The irony is that I can’t think of anything they’ve ever posted that I would have deleted, even with their pseudonyms. So I doubt this would have any practical effect on them whatsoever.
Actually, that’s just one irony. Another is that I’m going to rely upon ongoing feedback from all sorts of perspectives as I determine whether this policy works. If you check out, you are denying yourself a say in the discussion.
On the off chance that they haven’t gone away entirely yet, I ask them to wait and read the entire explanation Sunday, plus the rough drafts and other supplementary materials to which I will provide links — and comment on it.
If they decline that opportunity, then we will all miss them.
As for “Mary” — well, there’s the greatest irony of all. I’M a coward, according to this person who can’t comment under “her” own name for fear of becoming “vulnerable to attacks by thugs.”
This is going to be an interesting process.
some of you will refuse to believe that those other people can ever be persuaded.
Obviously, Brad doesn’t read Lee’s multitudinous comments.
I’m not giving up my pseudonymn.
The first comment of mine that Brad deletes will be my last.
It might be this one for all I know.
And yet, it’s still there.
One of these days I’m going to have to get folks to explain to me this secret-identity fetish. I don’t get it. My ideas are such a large part of who I am. Why would I separate the two?
Well,Brad,although I never should have brought it up,I’m gay(or queer,as you prefer),and listing my real name WOULD make me feel vulnerable to attacks by thugs(it’s happened before).There’s enough antigay sentiment on this blog to make me feel this way.If you think I’m being paranoid,walk a mile through
Lexington County in my shoes someday.
I also think it’s a mistake to waste another Sunday column on a subject of very little interest to most South Carolinians.
First of all, how do you know that Mary Rosh isn’t my real name?
Secondly, yes, Warthen is a coward because he DOES NOT ARGUE HIS POSITIONS IN AN HONEST AND UPRIGHT WAY. Instead, he claims that his positions are the only “patriotic” positions and that those who don’t agree with his positions “don’t love their country enough” to suppoirt the Iraq war and who “demoralize our soldiers” by arguing that their lives are too important to be sacrificed in the Iraq war.
THAT is cowardice. A coward seeks to shield his views from criticism by conflating patriotism and agreement with his views . A brave man supports his views with arguments. If Warthen weren’t a coward, he would explain WHY he supports the Iraq war, and explain WHY the 60% of Americans who disagree with him are wrong. Instead, he simply repeats endlessly that the Iraq war is a “vital enterprise” and that “we” have to carry it through to the end, and constantly claims that those who disagree are “defeatist”.
Not wanting to risk hatemail, death threat phone calls in the middle of the night, people showing up at your house to attack you for your ideas, that isn’t cowardice. That’s just sensible. The name I post under doesn’t affect the soundness or unsoundness of the arguments I put forth in favor of my views. It’s just that Warthen only has room for about 3 or 4 idées fixes, and this idea that anonymous commenting is cowardly is one of them.
Warthen’s views may be a big part of who he is, but his personal identity HAS NOTHING TO DO with whether his views are sound or unsound. The fact is that Atrios strongly recommends that people who comment on the Internet do so anonymously, so as to shield themselves from danger from nutcases, organized attacks, and simple loss of privacy.
Whom should I listen to?
Atrios, who within a period of months became a leading commentator through marketplace acceptance of the soundness of his reasoning and the quality of his writing?
Or Warthen, who was given a platform by a corporate owned newspaper, and vastly more resources to promote his views than Atrios could ever dream of having, but who, it seems, cannot command a readership of more than about 5 or 10 people?
Yeah, well, another column idea I worked on late into the night fell through — I’ll need to finish it next week.
I had to write this anyway. In fact, I had it written, in another form. Strangely enough, it takes me just about as long to rewrite something like this as it does to write from scratch.
But I thought it would better serve readers to serve up something I’d put a lot of thought and work into than, say, a rant off the top of my head about “profiling” in airports, which was my other backup idea. (I’m for it, by the way — I think the behavioral observation techniques the Israelis use, and which we are testing at some sites, are promising.)
As for being gay — look at Andrew Sullivan. He’s out there with his real name, and he says what he wants. But note — he expresses himself with respect for other people. He doesn’t have to tear people down to build his ideas up. I don’t get time to read his site as often as I’d like, but what I’ve seen is good stuff.
Be anonymous if you want — just give other people the respect that you would want for yourself. That’s the only price I’m asking people to give in return for anonymity. Well, that, and the requirement that people not bore me to death with bumper-sticker slogans. But that second requirement is less stringent than the first.
You know, by deliberately giving people the most sensational parts of my policy — this is a teaser, after all — I think I scared people more than I meant to.
But even if what I gave you were the whole thing — and it IS the essence of it — people should be able to tell that it’s not so bad. Either ‘fess up as to your ID, or behave yourself. Either way, most of your comments will likely make it. It’s just that if you opt for the latter road, some of them won’t. No biggie.
“But note — he expresses himself with respect for other people. He doesn’t have to tear people down to build his ideas up.”
You have just GOT to be kidding.
Hey Cap, Bill, and several others, you guys gotta stick around! I mean, this blog needs some humor (and I mean that positively!). I mean, there are too many dour participants here who take themselves dead seriously all the time.
Herb is right. And come on, fellow anonymous people – so what if Brad banishes my “blog self?” I can come up with another, if I want to comment. I could even name it Brad Warthen! I will stay anonymous because I work at a state agency, and although I am not important, the people I work with often think THEY are, so best to save the hassle and retain my option to criticize.
And since Herb is a Martin Luther fan who likes his humor, and I’m an old Lutheran myself – here is an old Lutheran joke to lighten things up:
How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb?
Change? Why change?
“don’t love America enough to support the vital mission in Iraq”.
Is this is an accurate quote, Brad?
I don’t know. Where’s it from? “Vital mission in Iraq” sounds like me. The rest doesn’t sound familiar.
Yep, it’s an accurate quote. You exhorted people to “love your country enough to support our vital mission in Iraq,” or something like that. You were, and are, too much of a coward to present arguments as to WHY the mission was vital; instead, you dishonestly conflated support for “our” “mission” with love of country.
Brad,
I like the new policy and the options it provides. I doubt anyone who posts here really has anything to fear.
However, if you are concerned about reprisals that likely means you have said something offensive, vitriolic or repugnant on the blog that you likely wouldn’t have said in person because of the constraints of common courtesy.
Mary,
Do you call all the people at work with whom you disagree cowards again and again? I bet not.
Brad has had to make a decision between a blog that allows you to vent your spleen or one that seeks a higher plane of dialogue. I, for one, am grateful for the choice he’s made.
And I encourage you to modify your posting and stick with the blog. Even though I often disagree with you, I respect your opinion and feel that your perspective is an important one.
Brad,
Overall, I agree with your new policy. I certainly hope that many of the anonymous contributors continue participating on the blog. Three thoughts come to my mind concerning this matter:
Many of the anonymous writers present cogent ideas and new perspectives on the subjects at hand. We have quite a few talented writers, and I much enjoy reading their posts. Of course, a fair number of people feel compelled to keep their true identity hidden because of fear of some possible future retribution (e.g., being fired from their jobs). I understand and respect the rights of people who choose to conceal their identity for this reason.
It’s a shame that people have to fear expressing their thoughts and opinions in a public forum. Perhaps your blog can become a tool to facilitate the genuine exchange and debate of ideas in a civil manner. I wish that some of the people who regularly participate on this blog would from time to time be published on The State’s Editorial Page. Ready to Hurl, Capital A, and Herb among many others are quite capable writers.
I know you must have struggled with making your decision, however, I believe you made the right decision. I say this because during the previous months the comments from a few contributors became personal attacks of such an offensive nature, with such invective and acrimony, that quite a few people no longer made posts. Undoubtedly, you cannot allow people to feel intimidated about expressing their opinions based on the actions of a few. Why would anyone choose to contribute when he knows that he’ll be assailed? It’s unfortunate that a few people hide behind anonymity in order to make unchecked personal attacks because they ruin it for everyone else. Anonymous personal attacks are especially damaging to those people who do choose to reveal their identities
Your proposed policy seems reasonable to me because it protects the rights of both anonymous and named contributors while promoting some modicum of civility.
Thanks.
I think everyone is taking this waaaaaay too seriously. Come on folks, lighten up. Have some fun. Share your ideas. If Brad axes your post, so what. Will the sun not come up in the morning. Fun is the key word. Let’s have some fun with the Brad Blog and keep the serious stuff at home. I for one have enough on my plate at home not to get too upset if Brad axes one of my posts. It’s your Blog Brad. If you want to axe me go ahead. I’ll continue to post as I have anyway.
“don’t love America enough to support the vital mission in Iraq”.
This is more offensive than anything Lee, Lexie or Dave posted.
Looks like Brad needs to ban himself.
OK, Brad, since you haven’t actually put your new policy into effect yet and at the risk of repeating the gist of my posts in the Civility II thread, here’s my position on the new policy:
I have my own reasons for wishing to maintain my anonymity here. They are my own and good enough for me. To try to explain and defend them would be self-defeating, that is, to be at all credible, the explanation would have to be so detailed as to give the people who I don’t want to know, all the information they would need. If anyone here wants to call me a coward, I think that says more about them and how they see the world than about me. For the record, I have actually had something published in the Letters to the Editor section of the dead-tree State. When I feel it’s appropriate, I have no problem facing people in the open with my opinions.
But, as I said, my reasons here for anonymity are my own, and just as valid to me as anyone else’s. No matter how much I might disagree with the opinions they post, without knowing them personally, I have no business judging their desire to remain “in cognito.”
However much your new policy attempts to balance your competing goals of the subjective standards of civility (“I don’t know what the definition is, but I know it when I see it…”) and your participants desires for personal privacy, your new policy now creates two classes of people who can post here. We will now have the separate, but equal “identified” posters and “anonymous” posters.
Of course, while the identified posters can feel free to say exactly what they want, the anonymous posters had better watch their tongues. (“Back of the bus with you, your opinions and your hidden identity.”) I would guess, Brad, that this was not what you were trying to do and is more an effect of the law of unintended consequences than anything else.
(“Oh, but wait SGM, you can keep posting anything you want. You usually seem, well if not completely rational, at least polite. It’s those other people who keep saying mean things and hurting our feelings that had better watch out.” No thanks.)
Brad, it’s your blog to do with what you will, for good, bad or indifferent. Like I said up front, I don’t want to repeat all the things I said in the earlier Civility II thread; I’ve had “my say” and unfortunately you’ve taken a course of action that I don’t think I can live with as a matter of principle.
While I’ll certainly read your Sunday explanation and hope that you can convince me otherwise, I’ll not be sitting in the back of the bus.
Brad, This is taking on the aura of herding cats, trying to control this blog. But I will say that it is not difficult to find instances of people who are bypassed for promotions because the employer finds out they belong to the NRA, and I bet that some who belong to Code Pink may be career inhibited also. I read recently where one company’s HR department uses a special search engine to check myspace.com and blogs to check on the thinking and ideas of job candidates. This is real and is happening now. Take Paul DeMarco (Dr.). I can assure you that if he blogged an idea that doctors should be allowed to publicly advertise medical rates, he would be seen as a pariah by many of his colleagues. Bet on it. The gas station owners wish they had that control, where you would have to pull into a station, buy the gas, and then only 2 months later find out how much it cost. Nice policy if you can get it. Anyway, I will stay incognito for the time being. And stay employed.
Ummm all these posts referencing Lutherans are scaring this Catholic guy. Heretic square comes to mind… JUST KIDDING.
On a more serious note and in reference to the topic, I would like to see everyone stay. I certainly don’t agree with everyone and sometimes, no one, but I enjoy reading the thoughts and ideas of others.
The only negative I’ve really a problem with are personal attacks and some have been very personal. We can do without that for sure.
Personally, I have no problem with your requirements for either group, but that’s just me.
Paul, the people at work don’t avoid discussion of their opinions by reflexively characterizing those who disagree with them as unpatriotic. When they make mistakes, they acknowledge their mistakes and take responsibility for them; they don’t try to blame the consequences of their mistakes on those who point out those mistakes. In short, they aren’t cowards. So I don’t call them cowards.
Warthen, on the other hand, is a coward. He is a lazy, stupid, dishonest, racist, cowardly, freeloading hypocrite who advocates a course of action that has caused great harm to the United States, and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people because he took a fancy to a racist philosophy based on the idea that if the United States imposes its will on countries with predominantly nonwhite populations, that will lead to peace and freedom, and everyone will have a pony.
His philosophy has now been thoroughly tested and has proven an utter failure. Thousands have died, and hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted. Warthen bears NONE of the consequences of the failure of his philosophy. He would not consider enlisting to fight any of the wars he advocates, or to urge any of his relatives and acquaintances to fight in it. He does not contribute to the war financially, because he is a net receipient of federal taxes, rather than a net contributor. So basically, he advocates a philosophy that calls for other people to risk their lives and give up their treasure, while he sits taking handouts.
This is Warthen’s position. He advocates a war that costs him NOTHING. When others object to the financial, physical, and moral costs of the war, he doesn’t explain how the war offers any possibility of success, or how the results that have been achieved so far, and the likely future results, justify the enormous costs, NONE OF WHICH HE BEARS. Instead, he constantly accuses those who question the war’s justification and outcome of defeatism, failure of will, and lack of patriotism. This is the conduct of a coward and a hypocrite.
You say that Warthen wants to raise the discussion to a higher plane. Yes, he wants to do this by censoring others, not by changing the way he conducts himself. He urges those who disagree with him to “love your country enough to support our vital mission in Iraq,” thereby implying that those who don’t support “our” mission, (that is, who don’t agree with his views) don’t love our country.
Is there a lower plane of dialogue than that?
If Warthen takes the beam out his own eye, things will improve quite a bit by themselves.
Dave,
I’m puzzled by your assumptions:
a) That I would not advocate for patients knowing up front their medical costs so they can comparison shop and
b) that by advocating such I would become a “pariah”
I strongly support knowing the price of a visit or treatment up front. As you suggest those numbers are woefully difficult to obtain. Even after a hospital procedure its very difficult to know how much it will cost because no one seems to have an overall view of the hospital charges/doctor’s fees/radiology costs etc.
I think your complaint is legitimate and have many colleagues who agree that the current system is a mess and needs to be made understandable so consumers can factor cost into their medical decision making.
By the way, if you ever need a routine office visit at my office in Marion, the charge is $70. However, we never refuse patients based on ability to pay. As long as you make a good faith effort (even 5 or ten dollars a month) on your bill we continue to see you.
Paul, I must admit you just amazed me with that post. The AMA and state medical boards fight any attempts to make rates public. Maybe you should run for office, you would get my support. Now, my question next would be, are you the exception or the rule in the medical community? At any rate, your response was heartening. And hopefully your white coated comrades wont hold it against you.
Dave,
I’m not aware of an AMA policy that prohibits or discourages the posting of fees. I researched this briefly and found the AMA’s policy on advertising on their website. I don’t know how to create a link so I’m going to quote it for you.
Professionalism E-5.02
“There are no restrictions on advertising by physicians except those that can be specifically justified to protect the public from deceptive practices. A physician may publicize him or herself as a physician through any commercial publicity or other form of public communication (including any newspaper, magazine, telephone directory, radio, television, direct mail, or other advertising) provided that the communication shall not be misleading because of the omission of necessary material information, shall not contain any false or misleading statement, or shall not otherwise operate to deceive.
Because the public can sometimes be deceived by the use of medical terms or illustrations that are difficult to understand, physicians should design the form of communication to communicate the information contained therein to the public in a readily comprehensible manner. Aggressive, high-pressure advertising and publicity should be avoided if they create unjustified medical expectations or are accompanied by deceptive claims. The key issue, however, is whether advertising or publicity, regardless of format or content, is true and not materially misleading.
The communication may include (1) the educational background of the physician, (2) the basis on which fees are determined (including charges for specific services), (3) available credit or other methods of payment, and (4) any other nondeceptive information.”
If you have a specific example of doctors or medical societies trying to suppress charge data I would like to know about it. I suspect it does happen.
Overall, I’m unsure the percentage of physicians that would oppose releasing charge data, but I’m certinly not worried about any backlash against me personally.
The problem is actually publishing reliable fees so patients know what they are actually paying for in advance and making sure that you’re comparing apples to apples. One doctor might advertise a lower price but not provide as comprehensive a service.
P.S. Can anyone email me directions on how to put links to the web into my posts?
Thanks
Paul, the best thing to do is to write your post first in a word processing program like Word; I would insert an autotext entry (in word it is in the menu under “Insert” that looks like this [but replace the & signs with <, and the $ with >and { with / — I obviously can’t do that without creating a link]:
&a href=”webaddress”$text you want to show&{a$
Replace the word [webaddress] with your URL, and [text you want to show] with the text you want to link to.
This is written from an amateur; others here will be able to explain it better, but I didn’t want you to have to wait too long. In general, you can go to to this URL and get a whole list of HTML formatting possibilities:
http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/reference/html_cheatsheet/
the ones I use most often are the italic and the blockquote, but don’t forget the / commands, or you will end up italicizing or blockquoting your whole document.
I would do an autotext entry so you don’t have to look up the formulation each time, and I like to write my post in Word anyway, because Brad’s blog has a tendency to swallow my whole post about one sentence before I’m finished writing, and then I have to start over.
Thanks to Mike Cakora for teaching me this; he can certainly explain it better than I can.
Paul, Bookmark this site and when you want to post a link, first copy and paste the example of the link from this reference. Then paste in the URL you want to link into the command, being careful to replace ONLY what is between the ” marks. Then also type in the link title you want to show at the end. http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/chap04.shtml
Herb and Dave,
Thanks for the help. Remember you’re dealing with an English major who typed his college papers on a typewriter, so speak real slow-like when giving directions in computer (essentially a foreign language for me).
But I think between my 15 year-old son and I, we can manage it. I’ll let you know if I have any problems.
Paul, when I write “place” or “write” something in, I often mean “copy and paste,” which is something I’m doing all the time, including copying and pasting my whole post from Word into Brad’s comments. Maybe Dave’s method is faster, I’m not sure. Your son will know, I’m sure of that.
Yeah, well, I can still trackback your ass
What is it about these authoritarian right-leaning bloggers . . .
Yes, my name is “dave.” It’s on my birth certificate.
Now blow it out your ass, moronic brownshirt fuck. Out. Your. Fucking. Ass.