Please comment here if you wish to make comments unrelated to recent posts. Kavanaugh conversation should go here, in particular.
I’m also noting an up-tick in ad-homs and nastiness in comments. Tone it down please.
Category: Administrative Page 26 of 35
I’ve been spending most of my time lately either praying to the porcelain God or wishing I felt other than I do. Nausea being bad for writing (at least for my writing, perhaps you write great while sick to your stomach), please use this thread to talk among yourselves.
I devoutly hope to return to writing soon!
Recently I changed this blog’s comments to be reviewed and approved before posting, because too many comments were, well, bad comments.
In particular, many of the comments were attacking other commenters, not other commenters’ arguments. Others still were simply racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive.
I had been reluctant to place comments under moderation both because I didn’t want the extra work and because I believe that sometimes calling evil, evil is required; that swearing is not always bad, and; that it is helpful for people to see the trogdolytes.
I still believe these things (and am still lazy) but the problem was moderation: There was simply too much insulting and too much racism and so on.
So, since I’ve put on comment moderation, almost all comments have been clean and approved. The few exceptions were marginal. Granted, there are no new threads yet on topics people get excited about, so we’ll see. But I’m guessing most people understand how to be polite.
That said, let’s run through how to comment productively.
First: no ad-hominem attacks. That means addressing the commenter’s, or poster’s argument, not their character. “I believe that red is not the best color,” rather than “Any fool knows blue is the best color,” or “Only a depraved ^!#%#$# would say red is the best color.”
I understand this can be difficult at times, because a commenter may say something truly vile or stupid like, “the Holocaust didn’t happen,” or compare a race to animals, or whatever. However that won’t be happening now because such comments will not be approved.
Of course a poster may say something you think is evil, or may themselves engage in some ad-homs (I have not been shy about calling various people evil in posts). This may seem unfair and probably is. You will simply have to suck it up and deal with the argument. So, instead of “Ian is scum for calling the Iraq war/Iraq/Putin/Obama/Bush/Trump/Clinton/My Cat (or whatever) evil,” try “Ian is wrong about Iraq being evil because by gosh, it has made the Middle East objectively a better place as measured by (damned if I know).” If doing it this way is unbearable, well, there are other blogs. You are not required to read this one.
Second: No racism, sexism, etc… I’ve put up with some of this, maybe too much of it, because I believed that it was useful for readers to see people make the arguments. But now that I am pre-approving comments, I will be very reluctant to allow it. Commenters might be able to get it in by using racist or other objectionable comments as launching points for rebuttals and so on.
There is a gray area here, when it comes to actual differences between the genders and ethnic groups. Obviously there are some. Let me suggest it should not be suggested that any race or gender is innately bad. Blacks are not arrested more than whites in America because they are innately criminal, and so on.
There are going to be some marginal cases here, and I’ll just have to judge them. There will be no appeal, because I do not have time to get into finely-parsed arguments with commenters. I may well make the wrong choice in either direction, especially if I decide an argument I think dubious needs some air time so that it can be seen, and hopefully rebutted. How much of that I allow will depend as much on how other commenters deal with it as anything else.
I don’t want this blog’s comments to turn into a place where it is impossible to note, say, that there are biological differences between men or women. I also don’t want it to be a cesspit or sexism and racism.
Third: Swearing.
Yeah, I’ve been known to swear myself in blog posts. The old progressive blog argument was that civility was bullshit, people were suffering and dying and angry people, who should be angry, were being censored out of the conversation because they spoke and wrote like angry people, when anger was entirely appropriate.
So. Limited, for effect, and not directed at other commenters. There will, again, have to be judgment calls here. I will make them, they will not be up for appeal, for time reasons. If you use invective, you will be risking your comment. Up to you if you want to take that chance.
Concluding Remarks
I am saddened it has come to this, but it has. Let’s make it work, though. It really shouldn’t be hard. The basic rule is: “Would I say this to the face of a guy I know could whup my ass in real life.” If the answer is no, don’t say it.
I have many, very good commenters. I value your comments. Let’s make the comment threads something people want to read, not something they flee.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Moderation is now on. All comments will go through me before being posted. This will last for at least a couple weeks.
Do not email me if comment approval takes a while, I’ll try to check at least once a day, but it may be somewhat longer depending on the events of my life.
No comments with ad-homs will be approved. In some cases, I may edit them, to show how to make an argument without using ad-homs, in other cases I may just delete them. I will also not approve comments which, in my opinion add nothing to the discussion, or which include lies. This will not be up for debate, it is at my discretion.
I have tried to avoid this, but it is as it is. Play nice for a couple weeks and I’ll take the moderation off, as it’s extra work and I’m not interested in doing it.
I hope my readers had good years in 2017 and will have better ones in 2018.
It’s going to be an interesting year. Trump is fairly clearly in the throes of dementia. We need to avoid a major conflict with either North Korea or Iran. And we can expect, barring large, unexpected events, that the Republicans will lose control of the House and possibly the Senate at the end of the year.
All the best to all people who act with good will in this new year.