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…Do The Comments Have It?
In my last post, I explained why I have decided to turn on the ‘comment moderation’ feature here which means that you will have to wait for your comments to appear.
This is not something I do lightly because I honestly believe that the best bloggers do not just post.
In addition, they also discuss those posts, at length if warranted, with folks on the comment threads.
This is a conclusion I came to after I started hanging out a now defunct outpost called ‘The Whiskey Bar’ that was run by a master comment thread masseur named ‘Billmon’.
The discussions at the Bar, whose tagline “Free thinking in a Dirty Glass” were two parts Brecht and one part Lizard King, were so wide-ranging and informative that I often felt like I was entering a world-class salon where I was sure to learn something significant every single time I visited. And to a degree that salon lives on still, sans the original barkeep, at an uber Brechtian, patron-run site called ‘Moon of Alabama’.
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Now….
I have tried to run my tiny site with that same comment thread ethic.
And as I said in my last post, I think I’ve done a pretty good job over the years.
Which means that I have done my best to keep this place wide open for comments since I started way back in the dinosaur ages (i.e. pre-WordPress).
And I have always tried to respond to any reasonable comment with a reasoned response of my own designed to extend discussions as much as possible such that new information and/or insight can emerge.
And the amazing thing about that approach is that I have never, ever really had anyone come by to act as, as Billmon used to call it, a deliberate online provocateur.
Or, in the more modern parlance, a ‘Troll’.
And I like to think that, in large measure, folks won’t be deliberately obtuse if they know you are paying attention and are willing to engage them in honest conversation where demonstrable falsehoods are given no quarter regardless the ideological stripes of the discussants.
So.
Why have I suddenly put on the ‘comment mod’ feature then?
Well, it turns out that I finally lost patience with a concern Troll who will pretend to be reasonable and then will suddenly turn obtuse every single time.
Which brings me to ‘Online Journalism’, which I view as being very different than pure opinion/discussion-driven blogging.
I raise this distinction here because I think the best local practioner of online journalism, Sean Holman, has been unfairly hit by the fall out of the point that I have raised regarding deliberate obsfuscation by commenters.
Why?
Because the same person I will no longer allow to talk codswallop here regularly shows up at Sean’s place.
The thing is, the way I read it, Sean is presenting information and then letting people have their say about that information rather than engaging them in conversation and offering opinion, either on the original information or on the comments (i.e. he is not ‘blogging’ as I see it). Thus, I have no problem with the following comment he left on my last post, which is the following:
“Without specific reference to this case, I’m curious as to what measures I should use to determine whose comments get posted and whose don’t. My policy has always been as long as its not defamatory, it goes up.
Anything else and it seems that I risk being charged with judging what can be the subject of political discourse and what can’t….”
This is an important point. Mr. Holman is a working journalist who, in that role, feels it is important not to give the appearance of bias.
It is a very different matter with myself, however. I am not a working journalist and, while I like to think of myself as reasonable, I do have a bias, which I wear on my sleeve.
So, thanks everybody else who stopped by to offer support regarding the specific Troll issue, but please don’t take it out on Sean.
OK?
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