A number of people evinced considerable uneasiness about the new blog policy when I foreshadowed it on Friday. Understandable. It’s new; it’s different.
But it’s not going to be so bad.
Anyway, in the interest of giving my blog readers that little something extra, I refer you to the two rough drafts that precede the column, which precedes this. You can see how I hashed this out.
To see more deeply into it, go back to this post, this one, and this one. Peruse the comments in particular. You’ll find that a number of people suggested that the problem was anonymity; others said it was up to me to screen the comments and throw out malefactors.
Basically, I found a way (I hope) to meld the better qualities of both ideas.
Of course, there are some who didn’t want me to modify the site’s accessibility in any way. Well, I did it their way for 15 months. But I got tired of the complaints — some of them from respondents I greatly respect — about the ad hominem stuff, and about the tail chasing left-right exchanges of cant that led nowhere.
I finally decided to listen to them for once, and try to do something. Ultimately, all of y’all will decide whether this succeeds.
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As an ocassional reader of Brad’s blog, I know what he’s talking about when he writes about the lack of civility. There are those on both sides of the left/right divide who are capable of ad hominum attacks, sloganeering, writing only to gain approval from those who already agree or just to “listen” to themselves rant. This type of noise is found on almost all blogs that allow comments and does nothing to, as Brad says, advance the argument. If the rules don’t suit these people, there are plenty of blogs that allow, even thrive, on this sort of thing. As for myself, I look forward to civil, reasoned argument. I’m sure I have plenty of company.
When this blog, like The State, refuses to discuss illegal immigration, corruption in city government, waste in education spending, etc, is it uncivil to bring those topics up in one of the pap threads?
Lee, start your own blog if you want to focus the discussion on those topics. It’s still a free Internet.
Well Steve, I certainly won’t join in the discussion of trivia which constitutes half the converstation among most blogsters.
And if someone happens to veer off the topic by posting something about a real issue, I will answer it there.
Thanks, Robert. And thanks for speaking up. Don’t stay in the Silent Majority. I’m constantly running into smart, thoughtful people who say they read my blog, and prove it by citing what they read. But they don’t want to comment because they don’t want to be a part of the melee.
The point here is to get the people who don’t want to waste their time interested in dialogue. You could contribute to that.
And Steve’s got a good idea. Lee, you post more than I do. You’ve got the energy and the interest. Why DON’T you have your own blog? Or do you?
If I ran a blog, I would filter all the posts before they went up, in order to keep the conversation civil and not permit the cyberthugs to drive out those with expertise in subjects.
Brad, why don’t you start a newspaper, and learn the rest of the business?