I’d like to apologize. I’ve been lax about letting thru comments with ad-homs. Please attack people’s arguments and not them. I will be more strict about this, starting immediately.
I value my regular commenters. Most of you say smart and interesting things. Please do me the favor of avoiding ad-homs. I don’t want to not approve comments which are otherwise good because they have a sentence or two attacking another commenter.
If you’re a regular commenter, feel free to email with your preference of:
1) just not letting your posts with ad-homs thru; or,
2) deleting the ad-hom parts and letting the rest thru.
Make sure to include the name you comment under if it’s not the same as the name on your email.
ianatfdl-at-gmail-dot-com
elkern
Thx, Ian. Pissing contests between commenters are worse than a waste of time; they diminish the Blog.
OPs here are *always* (!) high quality. The Comments are generally worth reading also, but Commenters should avoid wasting Readers’ time with personal attacks.
I’d also like to ask Commenters to avoid really long Comments. Rule of Thumb: if a Comment is longer than the OP, it’s too long… ?
different clue
I don’t necessarily agree about the ” too long” part. Spud recently wrote a high-value comment with a lot of links which had to be long in order to get in all the links and the reasons for the links.
Any reader who feels a link is too long for their own personal taste in reading can always stop reading it or not even begin reading it to begin with. Other readers who consider the commenter in question to be a consistent bringer-of-value can keep reading right to the end.
But in the end, the blogger can set whatever rules for length the blogger likes, if the blogger so chooses. I remember one time Colonel Lang said the comments were getting too long. He ruled no comment could be more than 15 lines. I wrote in with a Haiku . . .
“New rule for comments.
Write a page in fifteen lines?
It is hard to do.”
In hindsight, I wish that last line had said ” very hard to do”. oh well . . .
He was nice enough to let it print.
Ian Welsh
I don’t mind long comments myself. Some of them are very good. It’s the quality that matters.
Mark Level
I’m with Diff Clue and Ian on long comments, obviously I write them, guilty if charged, it’s a way to clear out the backlog of anxiety about the world we suffer in. Also if someone makes a quick, prejudiced claim, piling on contrary evidence sometimes wins the argument.
If one repeatedly beats on the same point, dead horse, idee fixe, I of course just tune out and scroll on. When I was teaching, students who were ruled by TL:DR generally did poorly, it can be a sign of mental laziness. Spud in a recent thread did an outstanding long post, well worth reading in its entirety.
elkern
Jane, you ignorant slut – 😉 (if you don’t get the humor, look it up)
OK, I bow to collective wisdom about Long Posts, though yeah, I will skip past ones which I find TDLR.
Question for Ian: is the linear framework of your Comments section (no Indentation for Reply sub-threads) intentional, or just the only structure available on the host(s) you choose?
I suspect that the linear format limits the size of the community of regulars. There are advantages to that (less Admin?), but IMO, your perspective & insight could help steer our World towards a better future… if it got to more people.
Sean Paul Kelley
@elkern: Rocky Horror Picture Show.
@elkern: updated several hours later. Your reference is to SNL. I was thinking, ‘Damnit Janet, you’re a slut,” as a call back during the marriage proposal in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of the weirdest experiences I had as a teen.
different clue
And if my memory is correct, the ” Jane you ignorant slut” character was inspired by James J. Kilpatrick.
Here are some images of JayJay Kilpatrick, for anyone who wants to take a stumble down Nostalgia Alley.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrFZhzqUHhpgAIA0mFXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=james+j+kilpatrick+image&fr=sfp
different clue
There are two general sorts of thinking-writing styles which lead their practitioners into committing ad homs.
On the Right-to-Hard-Right there is the Sneering Mockery and Ridicule style. We have sometimes seen it in comments here every rare now and again.
On the Left-to-Hard-Left there is the Spittle Flecked Rage style. We see it every so often here on a regular though semi-uncommon basis.