Interesting that it is not just the posts that attract the eyeballs but the comments do too.

Michael Totten has been doing some policing of his comments lately and it has worked to keep the commentary civil. I have no idea how he does it or how much work it is to manage.

Kevin Drum's site used to be a favorite of mine but I gave up because of the often nasty tone of a lot of the comments. That isn't Kevin's fault, just the way it goes.

Can it also be true that as the tone of the comments degenerate those that would usually engage in civil discourse give up and depart, leaving only the flame throwers behind?

Kevin Drum used to have fairly reasonable commentors. However, that seemed to change about the time he started his quest for Bush's National Guard records. One of his posts was linked to by FreeRepublic, and several of those wacky FReepers left bad comments. Some of his posts at that time got 200 or 300 comments, and he's still getting over 100 for many posts.

Most of those comments are worthless, and those worthless comments are almost always posted by those who agree with Kevin: cheap jokes about Halliburton, Bush, etc., followed by a comment from "Dave." "Dave" is an Atriosite whose comments are all a variation of "shut up you moronic wingnut troll."
Kevin has himself to blame for his comments descending to Atrios level; if he wanted to encourage more intelligent comments he could. Instead, he seems to want a orthodoxy fest.

The allure for commenting is this -- you can make a statement on issues that interest you before an audience without investing a whole lot of time in the exercise. When the group that actually posts comments is fairly small, your comment stands a fairly good chance of being read, understood, and maybe even challenged, discussed or debated. Personally, I find that stimulating, and I like the intellectual combat. Oftentimes, I end up learning something, or at least ending up wiuth a position that is thought through.

When that group is large (Kevin Drum's site -- the only other place I post), the chance you'll get read seems fairly small. I can see why his comments section has become so -- best word I can think of is "loud". It's hard to get attention unless you make an outrageous statement. I notice that my posts over there either get a hard edge to them, or they sink without a trace.

Hmm...of course this commenting could just be a pathetic attempt at attention by someone who is just too lazy to get his own bblog...I'd just prefer not to think about that.

I don't see what all the handwringing is about. they are just words on a page. So sometimes comments can be inane, obnoxious or downright mean. sounds like life in the real world. Learn to deal with it. The best way i know to deal with boorish behaviour: IGNORE IT. Don't let others drag you down to their level. When you see something outrageous in a blog, before responding, ask yourself whether its worth it. Sometimes it will be, if you can have a rational, well-reasoned rebuttal. Often there will be no reasoning with the flamethrower. So just move on.

I've stopped commenting on some sites because of the nature of the comments (which have degenerated considerably as the traffic has increased. I don't mind disagreements or different opinions, I just don't like insults and profanity - unless we're talking about clever insults and profanity, which they never are sadly enough). I take McG's advice. I ignore the trolls and stop commenting on those blogs, for the most part. If I have something to say and I respect the blog author, I will e-mail him or her directly. To my surprise they often respond. Maybe the 'increase' in flame-throwing is really just the polite abandoning the rude....

While shoddy writing may get you more noticed by your opponents, good writing gets you noticed by your allies. See, for example, the belmont club

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

In the long run, getting noticed by your allies is more valuable.

If you can delete any comment you want, then how can you honestly declare that the comments are reflective of your reputation? An edited comments section is "letters to the editor" with you, the editor, deciding what feedback is worthy of your publication.

When you're at the point of blessing your software for making it easy to purge comments, it's time to get rid of comments entirely.

Blogs can't enable true two-way communication. They're broadcast mechanisms, with an owner whose primary interest is getting his own view out, not soliciting other views. Comments are a reassurance to the beginning blogger as evidence that someone's reading. Once you're important enough that comments are a hassle, it's time to stop pretending you care what others think.

I think Matt's onto something that's common in a lot of writing; thinking back to graduate seminars, the biggest debates we had were about the worst (or at least most flawed) pieces. And, writing a shoddy critique of someone famous' work will get you a nice bump in the SSCI that might not result from a more reasoned piece--heck, some folks in our discipline have made pretty good careers out of doing nothing but nitpicking others' work.

I also think there's an understandable temptation to toss out red meat to your "amen chorus" of commenters or blog fellow-travellers in hopes of an Instalanche/Atrioslanche.

Lonewacko: exactly how am I to blame for this state of affairs? I sure didn't ask for the Freepers to descend on my blog, that's for sure. Overall, I don't know of any answer aside from a considerable amount of moderating, deleting and banning, and I'm just not willing to spend the time it would take to do that.

And I have to admit that although I'd personally prefer a more civil atmosphere, there's something to be said for a raw, unmoderated comment thread. It may not be pretty, but it does reflect the genuine emotion out there pretty well. There aren't too many places you can go to get that.

User rating systems? Why not let users rate the comments and then you can browse at a certain level (i.e comments with an average score of 3 of 5). People who want to see everything can, people who only want to see the good stuff, can only see the goodd stuff. Slashdot has been doing this for a while, and it works pretty well imo. Why don't more political blogs (with lots of comments) employ this method?

Dan (Daniel),

Your comment delete policy is the following:
"6)When it comes to the comments feature, remember that I control the horizontal and the vertical. I will delete comments that I think are personally insulting or so incoherent as to pass all understanding. My space, my rules."

I would appreciate it if you would update that policy a bit. I've discussed this with you by email - at one point I posted a couple of comments that were off-topic to the thread, and they were forthwith deleted with no explanation. When I emailed you about why, you made a valid point, that my post, while not incoherent or insulting, was way WAY off-topic. (I was excited about the breaking news that George Bush had hired a lawyer regarding the Plame incident - so I posted about that)

So your point about way way off-topic is definitely understood.

But if you could add this to your comments policy (posts that are way way off topic may be deleted), I at least would appreciate it.

Is this tedious, and annoying? God, I would think so. I feel silly asking, really...but I figured pendantic clarity might be better than "unexplained deletions".

Best

I don't know how representative that is Kevin. There's that silent majority that just doesn't bother contributing when they see that mess. I've stopped commenting on blogs that I agree with because trolls come out with the same old stuff that has been thoroughly debunked in the past. It gets really old.

Who is Robert McClelland? This ONE guy is mindlessly crapping in blogs all over the place.

Simple. Anyone who think Kevin's comment sections are totally worthless isn't reading them. Many of the people who comment on the smaller boards comment there also, and comment well.

The signal to noise ratio is decreased by the quantity, and conversations can be difficult, but commenters comment for the reasons bloggers blog.

It has turned more to the left, but the youth and innocence of the blogosphere is clearly demonstrated by the apparent shocking realization that political discourse has gotten more strident in the midst of an important election year. Who'da thunk it.

You missed the worst of all: One Brad DeLong who assiduously deletes comments which take an opposing view, even if they are couched in MUCH more moderate terms than the posting to which they are a reply.

Which is barely justifiable if it is made clear that the comments sections is designed to be a post-facto echo chamber, but which is wholly unacceptable when the comments are presented as an honest reflection of reader opinion.

User rating systems? Why not let users rate the comments and then you can browse at a certain level (i.e comments with an average score of 3 of 5).

About.com has this (well I don't remember if they have "browse at a certain level) and it quickly degenerated into a "rate your allies at 5s and enemies at 1s" type of thing.

Daniel,

Interesting post and an equally interesting thread. One perspective I'd offer from our recent experience at Command Post: for us, the issue was not a scaling issue. Since the beginning (the start of the war) our daily traffic has oscillated between 100,000+ and 10,000+ daily visitors across our multiple pages … but only recently have our comments degenerated to the point where (1) they we no longer something we could be proud of, and (2) they were no longer fun to read or manage. There are clearly secondary variables at play.

One which strikes me right out of the gate is the distribution of commenter viewpoint. Early on, our readers were from all across the map but not doing much to present political viewpoints … everyone was simply fact-checking the moment-to-moment flow of news from Iraq. Over time, though, our commenter population settled into a generally conservative bunch (not necessarily reflective of my and Michele’s views, BTW) with some hearty liberals keeping them honest. Over the past several months, though (and as a result of the left taking our 2004 page more seriously), our readership has become increasingly wide-spread and we’re back to having more readers from differing perspectives … but rather than being focused only on “news as it happens,” they’re focused on debating the issues. As a result of less monopolistic commenting, we have more debate, and by extension, more opportunity for people to lose their cool.

But I think there’s another variable at play: increasingly shrill commentary from all sides of the isle. Our comment policy is extremely simple: all comments are welcome, as long as they are civil and respectful. In recent months this has been a more difficult standard to meet, including among some of our regular commentators. So in my view, it’s not just traffic, and it’s not just a diversity of viewpoints … personally, I see in our comments casual evidence of what the polling firms have been saying for some time: that left and right are becoming increasingly entrenched, and by extension, less tolerant and civil in debating opposing viewpoints. This is complicated by another factor: I believe “regulars” come to feel nearly proprietary ownership for the commenting forum, and they’re increasingly less likely to tolerate “outsiders” over time … because of the community blogs can create some come to see it as their sandbox, rather than ours.

And if you buy that blogs (especially those with high readership levels) are points of collection for opinion leaders … well, it may be we’re seeing a leading indicator of less civil debate in our classrooms, breakrooms, and political conventions. As I Michele and I said to each other on the phone just this evening: we may be in for another summer of 1968.

Speaking only for myself, I didn't mean to imply that Kevin Drum's blog is made worthless by the (sometimes/often) nastiness of his comments. But I am looking for value: challenging ideas, an opportunity to add to the debate, and an opportunity to learn from the debate. With hundreds of comments, invective & foul language, trolls fragging the discussion, and comments that could most charitably be described as tangential, I just find that my limited time is best spent elsewhere.

Kevin,

The problem is twofold. On the one hand, your blog is now little more than a pom-pom waving cheerleading session for "Kerry for President" and any potential bad news on the economy, from Iraq, or anything else that helps your candidate and hurts Bush. So almost everyone who reads your stuff is either a diehard leftist, or a blogger/journalist on the right who wants to track the memes on your side of the aisle. This means the comment session is almost always a full-fledged echo chamber of the first order.

The folks on the right tend to be a lot more balanced on the whole, willing to criticize policies they disagree with, and with a much more diverse body of commenters. For example, Drezner, Totten (really a centrist), and Roger Simon. You will find lots of reasoned debate on their comment fora.

I'm leaving out complete partisan cesspools like DU, the Freepers, and LGF. Both sides have this kind of nonsense.

If you want your comment section to improve, you are going to have to stop being a hard-core partisan hack with nothing good to say about Bush and nothing bad to say about your own side. But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change.

There`s a battle brewing;one only needs to visit a range of sites.Those with blogs see the hostility. Left vs Right have now become a battlefield,now as in the past what is the first to fall ...with this instant on cyber transfer of info be it factual or not doesn't matter, there is a group ready to gobble it up and react..Sooo,patience,thick skin,always take the high road..just an opinion...

Kevin Drum writes: Lonewacko: exactly how am I to blame for this state of affairs? I sure didn't ask for the Freepers to descend on my blog, that's for sure. Overall, I don't know of any answer aside from a considerable amount of moderating, deleting and banning, and I'm just not willing to spend the time it would take to do that.

Mostly what Matthew Cromer said. When I complained about the S/N ratio, I wasn't referring to "the FReepers," one of which I happen to be. The FReeper Invasion seems however to have been the precipitating event. The FReeper Invasion perhaps caused opposing forces from Hatrios to be brought in, and they've stayed, including the ever-charming "Dave." I wouldn't suggest banning people - one of which might include me - but I would suggest that if you're going to throw out some red meat you remind your guests to mind their table manners.

Perhaps, like Bill "DailyPundit" "I coined the word Blogosphere" Quick you could create a post specifically designed for off-topic posts. However, in your case the goal would not be redirecting the off-topic posts so much as the worthless comments about $hrubCo, Halliburton, the wingnuts are getting desperate, "shut up you moronic wingnut fsck", etc. etc. i.t.d.

Matthew Cromer writes: I'm leaving out complete partisan cesspools like DU, the Freepers, and LGF. Both sides have this kind of nonsense.

A thread I posted on FreeRepublic 1.5 hours ago has, as of this writing, 253 comments. About the strongest invectives there are variations on BushBot.

Is civility an endangered species in the blogosphere?

Hell, no, Idiot, and I'll kick anyone's ass who says it is...
(Monty Python mode off)

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Seriously... a few thoughts:

The answer to your question seems to depend utterly on the blog under discussion. As has been indirectly suggested here, different blogs do tend to deal with the issues in different manners. You do have a pretty good crowd here which is one big reason I keep coming back.

The Instant One mentinons Usenet... and while I certainly understand his point...(Being a 10 year vet of Usenet, and of GT and FIDO for years before that) I submit that most places have a long way to go before they reach the level of USENET.

That said, a direct comparison of the content found on Democrat Underground and Usenet's political groups finds not enough difference between them to mention... both in political position and in shall we say, less than pleaseant discussion. Take your own meanings from that one.

That's a lie about Brad DeLong -- I repeatedly call him to task for what I believe is blatantly egregious copying that is not fair use, and he has never deleted any of my posts.

Glenn Reynolds is a fluffer -- it's not that he would rather blog than deal with comments, it's just that he doesn't want to be called on all of his smears.

You bloggers cry about the trolls but you all, including you Daniel have been guilty of trollish behavior yourselves, including name calling.

Instead of shutting down comments, just installed better software. MT sucks and you guys deserve the MT headaches.

Use registered email logins, or get user moderation. Or get a life and stop blogging. Or get a sense of humor and get over yourselves.

FARK and /. do just fine with moderation systems. You're a so called economics expert -- invent your own damn system and get someone to build it for you.

Until then, stop whining.

Welcome to the world of signal to noise ratio. S/N is not zero. What are you going to do about that? Turn off the signal or install filters, amplication, etc.?

Stop thinking like a historian, or an application luser, and start thinking like an engineer.

Pinhead.

"If you want your comment section to improve, you are going to have to stop being a hard-core partisan hack with nothing good to say about Bush and nothing bad to say about your own side. But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change."

The fair and balanced moderate here makes a civil criticism, and I am convinced. Darn it, Kevin, get your act together so Republicans like you again!

I must admit it shows much bigger cajones to run a blog with comments than without, and shows more confidence in ones reasoning and arguments. The quality of the dialog can be very good, and ideas become much more polished and the bad ones thrown away. That increases my respect for folks like Drezner (although I disagree with him very frequently) and bothers me about the many bloggers who do not.

And I may have judged the Freepers too harshly, I retract placing them in the same category as LGF (which I am very familiar with) and DU. I don't have enough personal familiarity with Freepers to claim it as part of the "cesspool". I was partially relying on word of mouth, which is very often unreliable.

Bob,

There is a difference between being someone who is partisan, generally prefers one candidate / party, yet frequently and vociferously disagrees with "their" party, and someone else who is a red-meat knee-jerk party mouthpiece. The latter are much much less interesting.

The rabid foaming at the mouth of the ABB crowd may be thrilling to the 15% of the electorate who would rather see Dick Cheney in a cell than Osama Bin Laden, but the other 85% of us somehow find it less than appealing. A pox on the Ann Coulters of the world too.

The simple answer is registered accounts. You need to be able to set up an account with a registered IP to post - otherwise you need to have to give out personal info to be able to post. Once people are not anonymous - they don't want to be a pain in the rear as others can point and say thats the guy that has a problem with everything else alive.

Per something I posted on Kevin Drum's site, a lot of this discussion is reminiscent of debates in Slate's Fray three or so years ago about the level of discussion, moderation and so forth.

I have to say that what really forced the issue there was 9/11, which exponentially increased the number of posters and in fairly short order led to a decline in the quality of the discussions. The Fray was and remains loosely moderated, as are most blog comment sections, and this invited trouble once the number of posters got beyond a certain point. That point, per what Alan says above, may be reached later in the case of blogs that update news or deal with matters of fact more often than do with opinion. It's clearly already been reached on Kevin's blog -- which is too bad considering the generally high quality of his own posts.

One thing I've noticed about Dan's blog is how engaged Dan is with the comment section, not necessarily in censoring posts but in letting posters know he's around. That helps, I think. Some comment sections -- and Slate's has definitely been one of these -- deteriorate because posters get to thinking they are shouting just at each other. Most people are more civil if they think someone else is watching, and I suspect there are a lot of posters who would mind having a comment deleted less than they would having it responded to publicly by the site proprietor with a note that it was inappropriate for reasons of tone or language.

It's not foolproof, and Kevin Drum may have too many posters to his site for it to be practical there. I'd try it a few times if I were him, though.

Dan Drezner wrote:
"Look, I'm an academic, and this stuff is nothing. I've attended seminars where the paper presenter ran out of the room because s/he was crying."

And that would probably be just the tip of the iceberg, if academics were allowed to use sharper instruments than tongues or pens.

I think a large part of the problem is technological. Comment technology in most of the popular blogging software is way behind that available in the latest message board technology. It's quite possible to have support for things like threading, rating systems, sorting, filtering, registration, e-mail notification, etc. And since the demand is there, I wouldn't be surprised to see these things added in the short term.

Commenter registration and viewer-customizable filtering (specifically, a way for each viewer to hide comments from specific people in a "troll" list) would solve a good part of it right there.

It is called civil society for a reason isn't it? Seriously though, bloggers who succeed at pushing people buttons may get their fifteen minutes or even fifteen years, but if that is the goal then who cares about them. Like them there are plenty of academics who publish scandalous, poorly researched, and sometimes offensive work, but maybe their goal is to get tenior and not improve our understanding of anything. So even when we can't get rid of all of them, and even if they are annoying,we can at least rest knowing that their impact is not up to them. After all the reason why publicity works is because we have the faculty to judge.

Zathras wrote:

One thing I've noticed about Dan's blog is how engaged Dan is with the comment section, not necessarily in censoring posts but in letting posters know he's around.

I also wish to make a random observation, in the hope that it is helpful for thinking about civility in comment sections. The observation is that, usually, the more technical the subject of the post, the better the comment section.

I am just wondering what it says about blogs that reflecting on the rules, management, and role of blogs in the broader media has become a major theme of all the blogs I like to read.

I don't know the answer, but I know that it makes them all less interesting to me...and I write a blog myself...albeit less frequently.

Isn't there some witty saying that describes this situation?

As an update to my earlier comment: I've just installed TypeKey comment registration on Command Post and we're testing it on our Publisher's Desk page. I've been using it for some time on another less visible blog, and while Six Apart certainly didn't do us a any favors on the engineering side, the coding gap was filled by some good Samaritans out there (most notably TweezerMan) and the templates are close to acceptable again. Once the install is done, the actual process for users is quite straightforward.

I expect we’ll move it to the news pages soon. Today was our first day without comments on the posts, and while we received a number of supportive emails (“it’s a news site anyway, not an opinion site”), one of the things I’ve always liked about the site was the ability of Joe Citizen to interact directly with a news item via commentary and fact-checking. The ability to participate in media is a big part of the open-source journalism we’ve enjoyed on the site, and without it I feel we’re just not the same destination.

Of course, the functionality and the willingness to articulate and enforce a clear comment policy are two very different items. TypeKey is a better tool,, but the practice is the thing, and I think that’s the place many bloggers get caught up: managing to equitably enforce a policy. Michele and I have tried to remain very politics-blind in our enforcement of our policy … we just haven’t enforced clearly or often enough, I suspect, and as voices become more shrill the invective took on a critical mass we could no longer tolerate.

So we’ll see how it goes …

" I get questions about the vitriolic tone of the comment section here with some regularity, and my answer is usually the same: there's just not much that I can do about it."

This is funny. Charles Johnson of LGF says exactly the same thing about his comment section, yet his blog gets called "racist" because of some of his commenters.

1. Re: Roger L. Simon's site. As a frequent comment there, just to set the record straight, I don't think there has been any significant deterioration in the comments there. That post was a reaction to one particularly persistent troll who is has polluted many sites (probably including this one.) His name was mentioned above, but I will not speak of it.

2. Everyone seems to be assenting that this blog is some kind of exemplar of a comments section. I have tried commenting here before and not found that to be the case. On the multiple threads I attempted to join, several dominant lefty commenters took to calling anyone arguing a point-of-view slightly to the right of say, Ralph Nader, a "fascist", "nazi", or the even more sinister "freeper". (I honestly didn't even find out what that word meant until a couple of weeks ago.) This was all coupled with a tone of snide condescension employed by multiple regular commenters (and on occasion, in my observation) by Mr. Drezner himself. Perhaps this is related to the background in academia? If this has improved since the last time I tried to actively participate, I withdraw the comment.

3. It's ironic that more mainstream left bloggers like Yglesias and Drum are trying to distance themselves from their more extreme commenters when Ygelsias (I'm sure) and Drum (I'm pretty sure) both were involved in the most recent round of sanctimonious finger-wagging (which resulted an attempt in having the site dropped by its host) about the commments at LGF. If they hold Charles Johnson responsible for his commenterss then why should we not hold them responsible for theirs.

4. I'm sorry, but the comments at even the supposedly better partisan Democratic sites are puerile. I was at Yglesias once, and once of the first comments was a guy ranting about how "Raising a child in George Bush's America is child abuse." I mean, more power to the guy if that's what he thinks, but not exactly, you know, a good taking off point for discussion.

5. It is annoying how reflections on the act of blogging and commenting itself have become such a concern of the blogosphere. The reason it's happened, I believe, is that there has just been a significant decrease in the qualify of comments as of late. I blame Michael Moore.

I've always felt that comments were one of the main reasons to blog. They're a key part of the conversation that - for me - is the best analog I know to blogging.

WoC has managed to do OK on the quality of comments, in part because all the authors participate in the threads, but also because I think we've worked to make it clear that we're a certain kind of party - and that puking in the punchbowl is going to get you tossed out, instead of a high-five. I've had a few 200 - 300 comment posts (one in specific where I was criticizing Charles Johnson), and while it's work, it's not unmanageable. I do think that the blog author owns some responsibility for the tone of the comments, much in the same way the host of a party owns responsibility for the tone of the event.

And I'm sad to think that this responsibility may lead people to close their parties down.

A.L.

Bithead -- "I submit that most places have a long way to go before they reach the level of USENET."

Blogs haven't been in action long enough to hit that mark, but it won't take them long, and the pace of this thing is picking up.

Coming off long experience in Usenet, I made up my mind instantly on setting up my blog that there would be no comments. It's not about "cajones" -- which is a curious allegation coming from someone who doesn't blog at all, far less under his real name, like some of us. It's about experience, and having had enough of that sort of thing. And I was utterly astonished at watching people set up comments at political blogs. I could not remotely imagine what they thought was going to happen, but it's happening. It was as predictable as sunrise.

"All politics in this country is now rehearsal for full-blast civil war."

(WJB III -- 2004)

Well, quite an interesting thread, I have to say. (I was thinking of being a troll for once... just to try it out... but I didn't want to do that to Dan.) Anyway, it has become clearer and clearer to me that the real trick to dealing with trolls... most of whom are working out their own "issues" (to think they are actually trying to persuade someone politically is ludicrous)... is to ignore them. Unfortunately, like Zen meditation (also a worthy technique), ignoring these people takes incredible discipline.

The fair and balanced moderate here makes a civil criticism, and I am convinced. Darn it, Kevin, get your act together so Republicans like you again!

Repeat that comment 100 times, varying it a little bit to include $hrub, Chimpy Chimp Mc$hrub, John A$$croft, etc. and you have a typical Calpundit comments section. I mean, Lord knows I'm not above posting the occasional sarcastic comment, but after you see variations of the same 100 times you get a wee bit sick of it.

I mean, it's like being stuck in a room with a bunch of pre-teen Mark Morfords, ya know?

"Repeat that comment 100 times, varying it a little..."

ok lonewacko, read my first comment, then read m cromer's 1st comment, and then judge the fairness of your response and then try to understand why i don't want any of you people in my area of the blogosphere.

"If you want your comment section to improve, you are going to have to stop being a hard-core partisan hack with nothing good to say about Bush and nothing bad to say about your own side. But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change." to quote cromer, about Drum

And this is the fair and balanced guy, and I am the jerk. I am so outa here, Dan Drezner.

In your particular case, my comment may not have been fully warranted as I did not read your previous missives. However, my comment about the tremendous amount of needless sarcastic comments at Calpundit stands.

You moderate your position on me, yet you have not yet criticized mr cromer for what i considered incivility.

"Mostly what Matthew Cromer said" above you seem to sympathize with mr cromer. So when he says about Drum:

"But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change"

which fairly clearly says that Drum takes his political positions and principles solely because he is paid to do so, I may presume you consider it both accurate and civil.
...
Now this is somewhat trollish, and disingenuous, for I am not Mr. Nice Guy. My recent viciousness is unmatched in the blogosphere. Not here, today.
But elsewhere my compatriot commenters have critized me when I go too far. Since the right and the left will be experiencing a separation for the next few months, as they probably should, I suggest we watch our own rather than each other.

These are the type of difficulties you get when humans are involved. As readership goes up, the comments become more attractive to the trolls, wackos, and interlopers. If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you chase the traffic, how can you complain when you get it? If it's too much effort, stop.

The difference between a wannabee and someone's who's successful is the amount of personal contentment one has. If you get 100,000 readers, yet you complain about your commenters, you're a wannabee. If you get 500, and you are satisfied with your product, you are a success. It's all a matter of self esteem, really. The other side of that coin, is ego.

People in Iowa were selling Bush and Buying Kerry hard. 12 cent swing

http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm

Possible double digit bounce in the polls in Kerry's favor could be coming real soon.

I wouldn't worry about it.

I've been on Usenet since 1985 (yes, nineteen eighty five), and while some groups have devolved and died, and others are past their glory days (alt.folklore.urban was once one of the best things on the Internet), civil discourse is not only still possibly but extrememly widespread.

The advantage bloggers have is that when they get trolls, they can stomp on 'em. Do it. I'm not talking about civil disagreement or a regular who loses their cool one day, but the poster who never says anything worthwhile. Shut 'em down, hard and fast. If they want to spout off, Blogspot awaits.

Don't just ignore them. Delete them and ban them.

Daniel,

Interesting post. I want to keep my comment section because I value the feedback I get. I think that the discussion is continued in a good way and you could have an exchange of ideas by providing features like comments and trackbacks. I don't worry so much about trolls and hecklers at this point, although it could have an affect on your mood, as I described in my post, ANNUAL BLOG REPORT II.

All the Best,

Martin Lindeskog - EGO blog.
Gothenburg, Sweden.

Bob,

Perhaps you have another explanation for why Drum went from being a mostly civil-tongued moderate liberal at Calpundit to a flaming, raw-meat demagogue once he landed his paid gig at Washington Monthly?

Sorry, I call it like I see it.

The rise of uncivil behavior is not particular to blogs, but to political discourse in general.

Maybe you folk could try reminding the commenters that the comments should be to the blogger and about what's been blogged. Allowing the comments section to become a forum/bulletin board invites the problems described.

Step back and look at the media in general, not just bloggers, and you'll see that you've paid too much attention to the blogger trees and not enough to the media forest.

This is a very widespread phenomenon, which I think started with the horrific Supreme Court decision (Times vs Sullivan) that made it virtually impossible to win a libel suit in this country. Since then, most any "journalist" (which now includes bloggers) could say most anything about anyone who qualified as a "public figure" without fear of serious consequence.

If the courts aren't going to revisit these "standards," then we have to hope that self-policing--what Jefferson called "the force of reason"--will defeat malice. It's probably not going to heppen. Paul Krugman of the NY Times just slimed my daughter--a new low even for him--who committed the unpardonable sin of volunteering for duty in Iraq, where she worked for six months. He claimed--falsely, and with no "evidence"--that she'd gotten this terrific job because of her last name.

In a sane society he'd be punished, since that meets the normal standard for libel--false and damaging. In the rough-and-tumble world we live in, responsible writers and bloggers are supposed to stigmatize him. I didn't hear many people calling him to account.

Cheers

I would like to stress that there really are tecnological solutions. See Slashdot, DailyKos, Kuro5hin for examples.

Sigh.

Luddites.

I think that a great deal of the problem is with the software people are using to manage comments on their blogs. MT doesn't seem too good these days, as far as I know.

I switched from MT to WordPress and I love the tools available to manage comments. It's soooooooo easy to deal with them. I highly recommend considering a switch if you want an easy way to deal with them.

I outlined some of the tools available in WordPress in my own entry on my blog about this. Hopefully that will help some of those who need better tools.

My own feeling is that comments add to a blog, they make it feel more like a community and provide alternative points of view to the blogger's own perspective.

Oops, one other problem is that some blogs (including my own at this point, shame on me! LOL) don't provide a code of conduct for users. It's very important in terms of community management to have a document you can steer people to that outlines what is expected in terms of civility, etc.

Here's what we use on one of the forums I manage for Ziff:

http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/nav/start.asp?webtag=extremetech#guidelines

It outlines pretty clearly what kind of community we want and what is expected of forum members. It helps us avoid having our well poisoned with vitriol, so to speak. I think the same thing could work well for blogs that require registration & login in order for members to post.

If Slashdot is an example of a technological solution, we're doomed. I mean, have you ever looked at one of the threads that wandered into political territory (e.g. outsourcing)? About the only thing that it accomplishes is the same thing that Dan does with MT-Blacklist: delete (or mark-down to invisible for people browsing at higher than -1) complete trolls and the goatsex link.

Personally, I've become more and more indifferent to comments on blogs, at least ones that touch on politics. I'll still sometimes look at the ones here, and on Crooked Timber (although lately I often regret it--do I really need to waste a moment of my life reading some nitwit who thinks that Eugene Volokh is an idiot who shouldn't have been awarded a law degree?), and sometimes Centerfield, but that's about it. As for the rest, it hardly even matters whether the commenters are being civil when all the comments are the same no matter what the blog is or topic of the post was.

If that was truly Mr Ledeen, it may be the most famous person I have ever seen comment on a blog.
Mr Drezner is to be congratulated on the quality of his audience.
....
I have heard of other instances where the Ledeens have defended their daughter, and they should be respected for an extraordinary loyalty.
....
The "Green Zone" volunteers should be respected for their courage and self-sacrifice in volunteering for a dangerous assignment; which does not directly bear on the judgement of those who made the CPA staffing decisions, anymore than the management of the war reflects on the courage of the soldiers who fight it.
....
As for the reasons for her selection, a process in which merit is the only consideration used in political or bureaucratic appointments is not one I find very plausible or even attractive.

"Perhaps you have another explanation for why Drum went from being a mostly civil-tongued moderate liberal"

One, I mentioned above, tho I do not claim it is the entire explanation.....we are six months farther along in an election year. I expect all partisans to do their duty and and express their opinions with a bit less balance and a bit more fervor, and to intentionally irritate and demoralize their adversaries.

I like politics, and don't expect it to be dispassionate at all times.

Beck mentions he doesn't have a comments section, due to his long Usenet experience.

Billy, I gotta tell ya, I struggled a long time with that one, myself, and I know where you're comin' from.

I ended up going with one, though... initially against my better judgement, for reasons I don't think I ever really thougt through. I guess I figured if it didn't work out, I could always pull the code.

As a result of having one, I've decided that it takes a certain level of courage either way... putting up a comments section, or not. Putting one up, for the obvious reasons of exposing one's work to idiots, and not putting one up, thus exposing one's self to critics who would doubtless claim you're not allowing 'free discussion'. Usually, the self-same idiots.

In my own case, my fear in setting one up was the usenet idiots, as well, given that at the time I started blogging I was still quite active there.

My fear, as it happened, was unfounded; I've ended up having banned only two people from participating on my comments section. They're both related, and one of them died just recently.

I can't tell you what finally caused me to allow a comments section, though in fairness to myself, I should mention that Blogger didn't at the time have an internal comments section... the final straw came, thogh when I found a free external commenting service I now use.... and still use, despite Blogger having coughed up a comment section.. and a good one, I hear. Too much re-design in my template to get it working, at this stage, though.

Billy says: Blogs haven't been in action long enough to hit that mark, but it won't take them long, and the pace of this thing is picking up.

Perhaps. But again, I submit that tends to depend on the blog in question. Usenet (and the FIDO and GT echoes before it) got that way because people put up with it... and people put up with the idiots, because like it or not, it was the only game in town. Not so the blogs... one can always find a new one. BTW? that's the other part of putting up a comments section being a gutsy move; when doing so, one risks readership numbers.

I guess a question I've not seen addressed is; is this situation being caused by blogs and their format? (Comment, no comment, contentiousness form the blogger, etc, etc) Or are blogs simply a reflection of what's going on around us?

If it's the latter, is htis a bad thing? If I recall right, most blogs in their most basic sense, are intented to be a spot to write about what goes on around us, and what holds our attention... and holds the attention of our readers.

So, I guess the shorter question would be, are w suffering for simply doing what we intended to do?

Charles Johnson of LGF says exactly the same thing about his comment section, yet his blog gets called "racist" because of some of his commenters.

No, I'd say his blog is called "racist" because of what he chooses to post there.

Hey ledeen, Krugman didn't slime your daughter -- there is nothing wrong with being young and inexperienced. He disparaged the process by which she and other political partisans were chosen.

I still get the giggles remembering how you and your old crow came to brow beat Josh Marshall when he debated Perle.

Joshua, the point about /. is that even assuming it is the bestest system on the planet (and who could doubt that such economics and blogging experts such as Drezner could invent a better system?) it is a volunteer system that works pretty damned well (sorry Michael Powell). Drezner is worried that comments will soak up all of his publish and perish time, /. and k5 show that volunteer moderation works well. Tenured fluffer Reynolds has no excuse for not posting comments, except that he is rightfully scared of the fisking that would become immediate apparent.

Hey Ledeen, can't blame you for defending your daughter -- but answer me this -- who hires an MBA to run accounting? MBA's are for finance and don't know shiat about accounting apart from knowing to hire a CPA -- folks that learn, study, and are accredited in accounting. I know this cause I have an MBA too. Cal '97.

Aha.
The plot thins.
I'd wondered when we'd see an example.

You'se guys are so proud of yoru mad web blobber skilz, but your software is the sux0r and you can't get eMpTy to do yur thang.

Why not rollz yur pwn with some opensource software?

And learn from the giants that literally wrote the book on community software. There's still a lot in Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, including how to deal with idiot trolls such as me!

Come on Drezner, is there no CS/BusAdminIT/J at your school? No room on your budget for interns/producers? Can't get some J school students to become producers to get some experience? Can't get some Ph.D slaves to do this for you?

Hey, Dan, thanks for the "published" response.

"Actually, I'm blessing the software because without it, deleting a comment takes 10 minutes of rebuilding; without it, it takes 10 seconds. In a world with spam, that's not a minor convenience, it's a major one."

My point is still the same: deleting comments should not be among the first 100 features mentioned about a software package. When it is, it's time to give up on comments.

I wasn't implying that you deleted a large number of comments; in fact, I'm sure you do not. But once you begin deleting, you are editing them, and as such you are presenting a massaged view of the feedback.

In the early days of a blog, comments are useful to the blogger because it reinforces his will: look! people are reading! They're moved to respond! How cool! Once readership numbers make validation unnecessary, it's time to turn off comments.

Comments eat up the blogger's bandwidth and energy. Either the comments themselves will give the wrong idea, or the energy spent monitoring the comments will take away from the time spent writing.

So as you continue to debate the subject, just keep your primary objective in mind. Presumably, you keep a blog to broadcast your ideas for a wide audience. Comments are orthogonal to that goal. If you want feedback, you can read your email. But why do you allow people open access to publish their thoughts on a site that you pay for? How does that further your goal?

LGF is not racist. All it does is show how vile and sick muslim culture is.

Daniel,

Just started visiting your site and find it interesting, especially on the subject of civility. I read maybe half a dozen political blogs a day plus a few relating to computers and I have one simple rule: I do not return to a site that allows flame wars. This might not be fair but part of the way I judge if a blogger is worth bookmarking is by the quality of the letters, emails or comments the blogger posts on his or her site. I have no interest in reading what someone has to say if they start out with a 'Jane, you ignorant slut' line.

It's an interesting exercise in software design and optimization to consider what on earth MT could be doing that would require the "rebuilding" of your site after the deletion of a comment. And require that it would take ten minutes to do so. You may wish to run a contest hypothezing pessimal possibilities.

I'm dead but that implementation stinks worse than me!

You are correct "Compared to academia, this is a tea party"! I argue that there OUGHT to be more civility in academia. Too often the writer is concerned with their own ego--demonstrating how smart they are, rather than offering careful, constructive criticism. You can't review a manuscript without being nasty toward the writer? The comments can be brutal....I think there should be "rules of decorum" for the review of manuscripts.

Honestly, bloggers that whine about the lack of 'civility' in the blogosphere need to grow a thicker hymen. Take 'Daily Kos' post on the massacre in Fallujah for example. I don't know about you, but my civility kinda goes out the window when people like 'Kos' Zuniga start claiming that Americans who serve for private security firms in Iraq, many of whom have distinguished military careers, are 'mercenaries' and deserve to be murdered and mutilated ('Screw them'). I find those kinds of opinions objectionable and I'm not going to be shy about voicing my objections in the most colorful terms on the blogger's site. Call me "uncivil" if you wish.

Muslims are evil. Have you forgotten 9/11? They were ALL Muslims, not buddists. Charles is telling the truth!

I've written my own thoughts about this issue, for what they're worth:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/michaelduff/204361.html

Matthew Cromer: If LGF is "partisan" which party would they represent? There is no "anti-idiotarian" party yet.

As for the comments topic, let it go. If man chooses to be uncivil and chooses to simply attack, never defend, and excuse all statements on the grounds "they're necessary", then let it be. If the natural course is to destruction and the objects are strings of "ones and zeros" then what is lost? It's software people.

I concur that my point is simplistic, but I just don't see the erosion of civility in comments as a bad thing. If anything, it's good. Those lacking quick wits have all the more reason to pay attention as the skill can carry you far beyond the realm of competitive blogging.

Personally, I find that comments are not as good as hosting a forum. Technology sites that I visit usually have an open forum to talk about anything, yet they also have a specialized forum reserved for discussions on the published articles of the website. Here readers can add new details and further information to assist the reader in understanding the context of the article as well as elaborating upon it. The forum works because if you wish to be uncivilized there are many opportunities to present yourself without occupying the the civil conversation attached to a published article.

Many thanks to ledeen.is.a.liar for making my points so effectively.

Neither he, nor Krugman, has the vaguest idea of how our daughter got her job or what her job was. He doesn't bother to ask, predictably. But he has strong opinions on both, and he's delighted to express them.

Fine with me, as i say, it makes my points.

Simply too many bloggers encourage irresponsibility with their own irresponsible comments to get the "juices flowing".
In other words, bloggers like this:
http://www.rabbitblog.com/2004_06_01_rabbitblog_archive.html#108629445051052740
who apparently see themselves as internet messiahs spreading their own "Great Commission" delight in the effect that, once their rabbit has been revealed, it's much easier for others to mimic.
As this person is a syndicated professional, it makes it all the worse.

If I want civility, I'll read a boring newspaper or The Economist.

As long as it doesn't go over into dirty tricks, such as impersonating people and the like, the blog wars make for some entertaining reading.

This thread is great! Democracy in action! I'm sure they are doing the same thing in Baghdad now too!

No, I'd say his blog [LGF] is called "racist" because of what he chooses to post there.

posted by: Bob on 07.07.04 at 10:25 AM

Clearly, you are disturbed that Charles posts articles highlighting terrorisim committed in the name of Islam, while he fails to be fair and balanced by posting articles like "Muslim saves kitten, praises Allah."

Is that about right?

What the bloggers who have posted to this discussion fail to realize is that blogging sucks.

"He doesn't bother to ask, predictably. But he has strong opinions on both, and he's delighted to express them."

Welcome to the blogosphere! Since I hate to see good people smeared, I'll ask. What is her job and how did she get it? Not that it's any of my business, nor do I particularly care.

Wildly Off Topic,

Incidentally, I don't agree with your asessments on Iran's nuclear capabilities. I remember hearing years ago that the Iranians would have nuclear weapons by 1997. Seven years later and most assessments still have them four years away from a functioning device. I think that, not unlike Libya, Iran probably purchased a lot of hardware to enrich Uranium on the black market. Perhaps some weapons designs, possibly even enriched Uranium. However my suspicions are that Iran lacks the technical capabilities to actually create one. In short, much like Saddam Hussein prior to GWII, the mullahs are bluffing. Your thoughts?

BUSH IS HITLER!!! BLOGS ARE FASCISTS!

just kidding ;)

"I am not an accountant," the icily composed Mr Skilling [Harvard MBA, former CEO Enron] told one senator after another. "I relied on our accountants. Andersen had taken a hard look at this structure. They believed it was appropriate. The board approved it after accountants signed off on it."

posted by: Bob on 07.07.04 at 10:25 AM

Clearly, you are disturbed that Charles posts articles highlighting terrorisim committed in the name of Islam, while he fails to be fair and balanced by posting articles like "Muslim saves kitten, praises Allah."

Is that about right?

posted by: Lewis on 07.07.04 at 12:41 PM

The above exchange is indicative of what Daniel's trying to say. But notice it's the left who isn't replying in a civil fashion. Lewis tried to question Bob on his views, and Bob hasn't responded. And Bob's first post just spouts off some opinion, with nothing to back it. Or we have "Ledeen.is.a.liar" with the ad-hominems.

Let's call it for what it is. The left is being less civil than the right. The only time you see the right uncivil is when they realize that they can't get through to someone on the left.

Believe me, we try. It's like talking to a wall.

TV (Harry)

, I don't know what is. Bob never tried to counter

Who is Robert McClelland?

I am.

This ONE guy is mindlessly crapping in blogs all over the place.

No, I only comment on four RW sites on a regular basis and another 4 on a sporadic basis. What you are seeing are the Robert McClelland impersonator(s) leaving either stuff that they've cc&p'd from my site or calling everyone a reich whinger.

As for the topic of civility, I always let those already posting on the site determine the level of discourse. If my dissenting ideas are met with rudeness, I respond with rudeness. If met with civility, I respond with civility.

I find this response is most often dictated by the bloggers themselves. If the blogger is coarse and spits out a daily dose of hatred toward one or more groups of people then their commenters mirror that in their own behaviour. That's why LGF's comments for instance, are a cesspool. Compare that to Matt Y's comments and you'll see the difference between the two bloggers is that Matt doesn't spew hatred in his posts.

I forgot who mentioned it, but the decline of civil discourse has been underway for some time now. Maybe started with the politics of personal destruction under Clinton, but it has rised to new heights with Bush hatred.

If anyone is going to discuss civility, please do not mention Yglesias or Kos as examples. There are many on the right who are equally as coarse.

"I forgot who mentioned it, but the decline of civil discourse has been underway for some time now. Maybe started with the politics of personal destruction under Clinton, but it has rised to new heights with Bush hatred."

It was started by the left. Rememeber Nixon, Bork, and Thomas?

Most people go to blogs to read the comments section anyway.

I'd rather read the comments section of blogs than most blog articles anyway.

Why can't we have a blog that is just a comments section, where all non-bloggers can congregate and discuss how much blogs suck?

We could do a lot to raise the level of the discourse by strongly encouraging people to blog and comment under their real names with properly functioning contact information. Anonymity and disguise give people the feeling that they are not answerable for their behavior.

Not alot of leftists realize the fact that leftists are idiots. This fundamental oversight tends to lead to breakdowns in civility. Not alot of rightists realize the fact that rightists are smarter. This too breaks down civility.

The best we can hope for is for leftists to realize they are stupid and for rightists to be smart enough to not waste time talking to them.

Now I see that it is Daniel Drezner's "blog" that has become a "cesspool" of anti-semitism, nazism and blatant Islamic supremacy!(Of course you LLL types are going to attack LGF every time because you hate the J-O-O-O-O-s and blame thenm for all the failures in your pathetic inferior little lives.) Also you are scared to argue with people who can actually FACT-CHECK YOU ASS! Maybe when the islamofascists finally force you to wear burkas someday then you realize you were wrong to criticize Charles Johnson who is actually willing to fight for his freedom unlike you Michael Moore fans!

Sorry to interrupt the LGF-bashing (and phony trolls pretending to be LGF fans), but we now have registration for comment posting at LGF, and the posts by freaks like those above, using fake email addresses and names, have dried up completely.

You may now proceed with your regularly scheduled bashfest.

I find it notable that Charles Johnson is coming out against identity concealment among commentors. Do other bloggers want to follow suit?

An important post, Dan, thank you. One aspect of this challenge you did not mention is that the blog host can post an entry about the commenters if he or she has concerns. I did this and got a very nice response.

I find allowing a comments section is helpful because you don't get to chose who may comment or your blog, whereas those who do not have a comments section exercise more "control." The freedom involved in an open comments section is one of the challenges of the blogosphere than keeps bloggers more honest.

Thanks, Kathryn. Coming from someone who posted (what she thought was) my personal address and phone number on her blog and invited her readers to harass me, that's ... uh ... rich.

While I was writing this, I see we have heard from Charles Johnson.

Here are links to some posts about LGF implementing commentor registration.

I don't like registration myself (although I have registered at Charles's site): I prefer to remain anonymous, and also believe that removing the opportunity for anonymous comments can inhibit open discussion. However, I have no problem whatever with stricter standards being applied to posters who conceal their identity. Anonymous ad hominem attacks or mindless ranting should simply disappear without further explanation or notice. (Which requires monitoring the comments, which presents a problem for individual bloggers. Fred at Rantburg addressed this by giving several of his trusted regular posters editorial access to his site.)

AFIK, rating systems and volunteer moderation packages aren't yet ready for prime time, at least as far as non-techie bloggers are concerned. (To suggest that anyone but a true geek try to build a blog around Slashcode is ludicrous.)

That said, civility is ultimately the responsibility of the commentor. If enough don't want to be civil, well, screw 'em ;-)

Wow Charles, nice to hear that LGF has cleaned up its comments section. It was truly awful for a while. I might try reading LGF again, there was some very useful stuff posted.

Now I don't have anywhere I can describe as a right-wing cesspool comments section.

Joshua: If Slashdot is an example of a technological solution, we're doomed. I mean, have you ever looked at one of the threads that wandered into political territory (e.g. outsourcing)? About the only thing that it accomplishes is the same thing that Dan does with MT-Blacklist: delete (or mark-down to invisible for people browsing at higher than -1) complete trolls and the goatsex link.

But it does so with far less effort involved from the blogger (which is key when the number of comments scale well beyond what Dan has here), and in a more democratic way. Relying on a single moderator can result in a comments section overly reflecting that moderator's biases, ala Brad DeLong, which kinda defeats the main value-add of a comments section or message board, which is to see a wide variety of different viewpoints.

Making the trolls invisible to most people without actually deleting the post is actually a better solution, because there are times when people see responses to a deleted post and then want to see it. And I think some trolls like provoking moderators into action, and actually enjoy it when their posts are deleted. And hiding is pretty much just as effective, because the fewer people who see a troll, the fewer people who feed them. Of course, I myself am still using MT, although I've been contemplating moving to WordPress for a while. But it's not like I get many commenters (partially cuz I tend to write posts as completely argued as possible, which, as Yglesias observed, usually doesn't provoke many responses), so I can afford to procrastinate.

As for Charles Johnson, I've got nothing against him. I had him on my fantasy baseball team for a while until I realized he got too many days off unpredictably to be worth filling out a utility roster spot (plus I already had Pudge anyway). Not too fond that he had a couple of decent games against my Giants, though.

Oh, wait...

It is pretty strange that bloggers and commenters have said precious little about one of the great virtues of comments: they can keep a blogger honest.

It may be true that the quality of ore found in most comment thread might be quite low in general. Yet some of the comments can absolutely nail an argument or observation that the blogger posts. It is EXTREMELY powerful to see a post refuted decisively in a comment following that post -- and I don't think that any honest blogger can pretend that that has not frequently happened. Even in cases in which most of the post may stand, comments frequently shade the real significance of the observations in a way it's clear the blogger had not anticipated.

Not that this very comment of mine is by any means a remarkable example, but where in Drezner's original post will you find the particular virtue of comment threads that I'm now describing even mentioned? And yet who can deny that this is indeed quite basic to understanding the importance of comments?

Personally, I hardly can think of a single blogger I read who has comments for whom I DON'T find the comments every bit as important as the original posts by the blogger himself. They round out the discussion; they bring to light logical flaws and relevant facts; they also serve the useful purpose of giving one a sense of where people stand on an issue, in much the same sense as does a focus group. One has to pick out the signal from the noise, but since when is gathering knowledge supposed to be an easy thing?

Blogs with comments are, in short, rich in content in a way in which blogs denuded of them can NEVER be.

Dead on, flankly0!

While I applaud Charles's attempt to get his comment section under some control, I also note that he is still in denial about the effects of his posts and the nature of his audience. He blogs affonts to LGF here and then claims his defenders here are somehow fake LGFers. He should be given the IP numbers and relevent entries from this blog's logs.

His comment registration procedure is a step in the right direction, but he has a few more steps to take. And none of this is to say that LGFs comments have beome more moderate, or necessarily more rational. But rather the hooded mob aspect of that particular scene has been substantially curtailed.

"He blogs affonts to LGF here and then claims his defenders here are somehow fake LGFers."

Um, that's not what he said.

Frankly I don't see the registration making the LGF comments more sedate. The purpose was to make it harder for drive-by trolls, who wouldn't bother with the extra work of registering. The regulars are still as over the top as ever. But not more so than Calpundit's, or Yglesias', or Atrios', or Kis', or ..... which was my original point. And I've actually met about 20 LGF readers, and almost all of them were polite, sane centrist liberal types with professional jobs and families.

I find the Winds of Change and Roger Simon comment threads have the highest signal-to-noise ratio. Tacitus is pretty good too, especially since he manages to mix left and right wing commenters equally and on the whole they stay civil to each other.

LGF is invaluable for publicizing the seamy underbelly of Wahabi Islam. To call Charles racist for what he posts is to shoot the messenger.

Um, that's not what he said.

I was being tactful. OK: he accused at least one of his defenders of being a stalker:

Over at Drezner's site, we now have one of my stalkers posting hateful comments, pretending to be an LGF fan. Such lovely, civil people.

Is that better?

Kathryn,

Charles is not the only person whose personal information (incorrect in CJ's case) you've published on your blog, and whom you've invited your readers to harass. I know of at least one other, and in that case you personally recommended harassing him professionally.

Charles, on the other hand, immediately deleted YOUR personal information when it was once posted at LGF by a commenter.

As Charles' entry at LGF suggests, you should address the beam in your eye before critiquing the mote in anothers. Of all people in the blogosphere, you have no standing to make such criticisms.

I don't think Charles is in denial. I think he's well aware that 30,000 people read his blog daily. I think he's aware that his reporting of the things the mainstream media ignores has an influence. I think he's well aware that he has a loyal following that respects his efforts and is willing to defend him against unfounded attacks.

Shouldn't you be busy smearing dead Americans?

Ms. Cramer,

this post is almost certainly by a faux LGFer:

Muslims are evil. Have you forgotten 9/11? They were ALL Muslims, not buddists. Charles is telling the truth!

posted by: gift on 07.07.04 at 11:37 AM

I feel confident that Charles was referring to this particular post; possibly others too, but I'm not sure.

Kathryn Cramer also carried on a protracted and hysterical campaign of complaints to my hosting company, trying to get my site shut down. She only stopped when Hosting Matters explicitly threatened her with legal action for making spurious charges.

Why is she pursuing this vendetta? Because I exposed her despicable attempt to link one of the American contractors murdered and torn apart in Fallujah to a neo-Nazi -- who just happened to have the same name.

This is the dishonest and vindictive creature who presumes to lecture on civility.

Interestingly Mr. Johnson fails to address any of the points raised in the orginal post or by the more coherent commenters.

Rather, he becomes defensive and turns it around so that he's the victim. One would expect a blogger running a site as vitriolic as LGF would have developed a thicker skin.

Charles: I was actually complimenting you: I was trying to point out that your comment registration system discourages the very misbehavior I complained about to you, your ISP, an to local law enforcement.

I approve of the change you've made. I am not being ironic. You are creating an envronment much less conducive to mob attacks on other blogs than formerly obtained. Do you have a problem with being complimented for improvement?

I only read LGF for that 'V the K' guy. He is freakin' hilarious.

Ms. Cramer: I have copies of every email you sent to Hosting Matters, as they informed you. Do you really want to open that subject?

As for your approval, I give that the weight and importance it deserves.

Charles: Are you somehow insulted by the implication that comment registration diminishes your power over other blogs? I don't understand what your problem is here.

Kathryn Cramer:

Whatever the substance of what you're trying to say now, your previous actions (attempting to, literally, censor someone's website by having them dropped by their hosting service, and spreading a vicious lie about someone recently deceased) make you beneath contempt and not worthy of consideration.

With the appearance of the Robert McClelland and Kathryn Cramer level of commenters I belive we see yet another example of
Dreck's Law at work:

The comment section of any post criticizing destructive political rhetoric ultimately provides more vivid examples thereof.

This tedious argument yet again?
OK fine!
1) LGF is an Early Warning System for Outrage. Take it or leave it.
2) Every comment I have ever posted at DU, dKos, and MYland has been deleted, through the hivemind function of comment ranking.
3) Charles expresses less opinion than any blogger in the blogverse. I am qualified to judge, as a math/stat major. He shows things. Since it is impossible to argue with facts, he and his comment section are the targets of ad hominem attacks.
4) Yehudit, I wuv Winds, but Charles' SNR is at least as high! Particularily since Charles improved the sampling frequency with registration. Now that there is no violation of the Nyquist Criteria, all the aliasing has completely stopped!
4)

Hee, hee, this is getting to be kind of interesting.

Go haters go! Bring on the Rodgerer L. Simon contingent, Eric, Rodgerer, and YouIdiot. Moses! what a whine!

Clearly this is the magical comment section that will summon any blogger named.

Michael Moore, Michael Moore, Michael MOOOOOOOORE, get your fat ass in here.

"3) Charles expresses less opinion than any blogger in the blogverse. I am qualified to judge, as a math/stat major. "

LOL. Sometimes you read things soo silly, on so many levels, it just makes you laugh. I think LGFers really do speak for themselves.

Such wringing of the hands!

I've been through the whole cycle. From obscure blogger on GM, migrating to MT, to getting 20K daily visitors (that was 2002 mind you) to seeing comments go to crap, finally turning them, and then quitting the blog for a full year, because, without comments, it's just not blogging. I'd never come back if it were not for Scoop, and yea there's a curved trade-off in ease of posting comments, but it's minor compared to knowing I won't go through that comments-to-hell crap again as the exponential repeats itself.

Scoop is GPL'd, meaning even you haters can use it freely (as in free speech AND free beer!)

up to a certain level of traffic it feels like a conversation, past that it degenerates into USENET

This is an excellent observation.

I dislike the header of this post of yours--it's always been true, even in USENET's heyday, that everybody bewails the loss of a Golden Era in online conversation, where everything was a cozy tea party full of civility and thoughtful discussion. The precise Golden Era depends on the fogeyness of the poster, but I believe it's a mistake to imply that at one time, blogs or USENET or AOL or BBSes were civilized until the obnoxious hordes ruined everything for us.

Charles goes over the top on occasion, but are you telling me Kos and Yglesias do not? Either hold them all to the same standard or prepare to be ignored. And holding someone accountable for the comments that appear on their blog is ridiculous.

I have one question for Kathryn Cramer. Is this statement below true? If it is, your comments on this thread are absurd.

Charles is not the only person whose personal information (incorrect in CJ's case) you've published on your blog, and whom you've invited your readers to harass. I know of at least one other, and in that case you personally recommended harassing him professionally.

Lest the my initial point be obscured by the flames, it seems to me that bloggers whose comment sections are chronically out of hand should follow Charles's fine example and institute comment registration as it discourages all kinds of nonsense and especially since it diminishes the feeling of anonymity and freedom from responsibility.

Personally, I do not use comment registration because my comment section has only been sporadically a problem, and I would like to receive commentary from first-timers with no prior experience with blogs who may be reluctant to register. But under other circumstances I would.

(And any other bits of social engineering that make it unfashionable to post under disposable pseudonyms will also be socially beneficial.)

In this cross-blog discussion there has been a fair amount of consternation about not being able to convince the other side. I don't see that as a problem. I don't see political blogging as some kind of tug-o-war. Rather, it is an occasion for close examination of political situations in a rapidly changing environment. Sure, we make fools of ourselves sometimes, connecting a few more dots than is justified. But in the long run, collectively, we leave behind a trail that can be followed by others taken with an interest in whatever topic we pursue.

Despite a certain group thinking I am some kind of all powerful, conspiratorial evil genius able to inconvenience bloggers ten times my size, and the anti-Christ to boot, I really don't think there's that much wrong with the blogosphere's social tone at present. And those that do will find that a little bit of the Golden Rule goes a long way toward smoothing things out.

No answer.

Did you or did you not post a second individuals contact information and ask your readers to harass him/her?

Cog: Charles is spinning things his own way and I don't want to go there since I was attepting to compliment him, not call him names, but since you asked, his complaint stems from my not deleting an inapproprate comment by a third party fast enough on a night when I was inundated by threatening and obscene messages; and from outing a pseudonymous poster who was participating in an organized harassment of me and would not stop posting inapproapriate messages on my blog at a rate of one every couple of minutes (or maybe faster). I will not discuss this further since I am not currently being harassed and therfore have suspended legal actions against the perpetrators. Read the April archives of my blog if morbid curioustiy takes you there.

You know, it might be helpful here to take a look at an example from Usenet.

In comp.lang.java.advocacy, a poster named JTK repeatedly posted anti-java messages. Another poster, let's call him PVDL, "outed" him. PVDL is an author and is or was an employee of java's maker, Sun Microsystems.

For even more fun, look up posts containing 'revulsky jtk' in that group.

You people, I tells you.

Oh, and Cog, I didn't ignore you the first time. It took me a while to write my post since I was supervising several children. Don't assume.

I simply asked you to answer the question. And you have not so I will ask it again.

Did you or did you not post a second individuals contact information and ask your readers to harass him/her?

Evidence that extreme partisanship didn't begin with blogs or 24/7 cable news:

Those who either attack or defend a minister in such a government as ours, where the utmost liberty is allowed, always carry matters to an extreme, and exaggerate his merit or demerit with regard to the public. His enemies are sure to charge him with the greatest enormities, both in domestic and foreign management; and there is no meanness or crime, of which, in their account, he is not capable. Unnecessary wars, scandalous treaties, profusion of public treasure, oppressive taxes, every kind of mal-administration is ascribed to him. To aggravate the charge, his pernicious conduct, it is said, will extend its baleful influence even to posterity, by undermining the best constitution in the world, and disordering that wise system of laws, institutions, and customs, by which our ancestors, during so many centuries, have been so happily governed. He is not only a wicked minister in himself, but has removed every security provided against wicked ministers for the future.

On the other hand, the partizans of the minister make his panegyric run as high as the accusation against him, and celebrate his wise, steady, and moderate conduct in every part of his administration. The honour and interest of the nation supported abroad, public credit maintained at home, persecution restrained, faction subdued; the merit of all these blessings is ascribed solely to the minister. At the same time, he crowns all his other merits by a religious care of the best constitution in the world, which he has preserved in all its parts, and has transmitted entire, to be the happiness and security of the latest posterity.

When this accusation and panegyric are received by the partizans of each party, no wonder they beget an extraordinary ferment on both sides, and fill the nation with violent animosities.

From David Hume's essay, "That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science"

Cog: No, I did not. Now go do your bleeping reading if you actually care about this.

I'm posting under my real name. Do you have the guts to? I suspect not. And to those of you who hide under hoods, pulling the hoods off is the ultimate Internet crime. Get a real name if you want to talk to me.

Thank you for answering the question. I will politely decline giving you my contact information.

Now it would be interesting if Powderfinger would post what he claimed was you encouraging your readers to harass a second individual.

The individual in question is requried by the California Bar to have his contact information on line. And giving directions for filing complaints for any actual ethics violtaionsis not harassment.

But, OK, what this raises in a subterranean way is whether it is appropriately civil to send your readers over to harass someone else through their blog. I would hope we could all agree that the answer is NO.

"Now it would be interesting if Powderfinger would post what he claimed was you encouraging your readers to harass a second individual."

Well then, here goes interesting. The person in question is a gentleman who is an attorney in the Bay Area, and whom I consider a friend. Ms Kramer posted his name, address, and his page on the California Bar website, and invited her readers to intitiate complaints to the Bar about this individual because he disagreed with her on her blog. This was in the midst of Kathryn having a psychotic meltdown over perceived DOS attacks and other such blowback from her pissing on dead Americans whose corpses, at the time, were still swinging from a bridge in Fallujah.

Is your curiosity satiated?

Kathryn, would you care to deny this? Before you answer, think "Screen shots"?

"Why can't we have a blog that is just a comments section, where all non-bloggers can congregate and discuss how much blogs suck?"

You can. They're called forums, message boards, and so on. That's what Free Republic is, believe it or not. DU, too. Or start your own, which is what I did--close to 1000 regular posters, and it makes a profit, too.

"It is pretty strange that bloggers and commenters have said precious little about one of the great virtues of comments: they can keep a blogger honest."

This is nonsense for two reasons. First, Dan has already said he deletes comments. Once a blogger deletes comments, regardless of the reason, he's presenting an edited version of reality. So the minute comments are deleted, they aren't reliable.

Second, a blog as well known as this one receives far more exposure from other well-known bloggers. Assuming that Dan wanted to publish untruths, he's got far more embarrassment coming from NRO or Volokh Conspiracy--and rest assured they probably weren't reading his comments.

For the most part, commenters are just taking advantage of the blogger's good will, which usually evaporates once the popularity makes comment management too much of a hassle.

So I'll stop taking advantage of Dan's good will. See you all around, I'm sure.

Powderfinger: Can't you bother to go back and read archives? And does it matter whether he committed an actual ethics violation right there in my comments section? I suppose not, since you people have been off muttering to yourselves and licking your wounds since April.

Kathryn wrote:
"But, OK, what this raises in a subterranean way is whether it is appropriately civil to send your readers over to harass someone else through their blog. I would hope we could all agree that the answer is NO."

But it's OK to send your readers to harass people (and even the WRONG people) in real life? Are you f***ing kidding me?

Blogging 101: If you enable comments, you just might get them. Often, you won't like them. Get a helmet, or turn them off. Or, get out of the blogosphere. If you say stupid things, and word gets around, you'll get blasted. You've obviously discovered how to delete things that upset your worldview. What, exactly, is your complaint here, in light of your uncivil actions?

Posting other's personal information on your blog, and encouraging your readers to disrupt their real, earthly lives is simply wrong. You've blatantly violated the most basic terms of netiquette. You're dodging that fact.

"Powderfinger: Can't you bother to go back and read archives?"

Not your archives, since you delete so much of what you don't like, including your own words when they come back to haunt you.

Kathryn, you are the epitome of uncivilized blogging. Please go away.

What - Guy heads for the bush for 3 months and he misses his big chance to blog about the reserves- Dammit.

You know what though, Dan - I didn't miss it. But good to see a few of the regular crew

(Hey Bits, Hey Buehner -You would LOVE the 240B - 762 was never better, tell the boys at Stratpage hi for me -, Hey AM! - whatever became of the Oldman? He wasn't *that* old, was he?)

Dan - Glad to see you're learning to love the Philo MilTopics. When can we talk about the new BDU's?

Was that Civil? No? Give me a coupla days to scrub the filth off. I'll play nice.

P: You didn't answer my question: Is it appropriately civil to send your readers over to harass someone else through their blog?

Not to interrupt the winding down "civil discussion," but ...

I haven't seen anyone note that the downturn in "civil" political discourse might have to do with the rise of cable news networks. We've been watching pundits scream and yell at each other for 10-15 years now on cable. Might that and other examples have an impact on political discourse across the board?

Thank you Powderfinger. It was not really curiosity that made me ask the question.

I saw her disgusting post that started the flame war mentioned by CJ. I also saw the way she responded by not only attacking the person who pointed her comments out, but also encouraged others to do so on her blog, in addition to threatening legal action.

If you did have a screen shot of her behavior, it would be informative if you could post it somewhere not on your own server. Maybe a free host.

I would like to read first hand what she said. If true, I think I would never read a comment by this individual again.

And just so I have this straight:

"Did you or did you not post a second individuals contact information and ask your readers to harass him/her?" - Cog

"Cog: No, I did not." - Kathryn Cramer

"The individual in question is requried by the California Bar to have his contact information on line. And giving directions for filing complaints for any actual ethics violtaionsis not harassment." - Kathryn Cramer

I think this will come down to if the conduct mentioned was actually harassment. If this was not a case of an ethical violation, I believe it this could be harrasment. And she is not only engaging in it herself, she is actively campaiging for others to do so as well.

Jerome Armstrong, anon: Ahh, but the 'awesome power of Scoop' has deprived you of my company, and my extra-wise insight on pre-Islamic history, memetic engineering, goth-rock, Clintonian immint analysis and anime-- don't you find it supresses the heck out of dissenters? I disagree with Charles, and he has never supressed me! :)

(Hey Bits, Hey Buehner -You would LOVE the 240B - 762 was never better, tell the boys at Stratpage hi for me -, Hey AM! - whatever became of the Oldman? He wasn't *that* old, was he?)

I have no ide3a what you're talking about, but I get the impression that if I did it might almost be amusing.

But not quite.

What stops a blogger from pretending to be a commenter on his blog?

What stops a blogger from commenting on another blog's comments section?

What stops a blogger from making counter-comments on another blog's comments section?

What stops a blogger from running two blogs that have comments sections that fight each other's blogs?

Get your head out of the machine.

It makes you crazy.

Antiblogger:

Bingo. The rest of you -Step away from the monitor every once in a while.

"But what's really going to bake your noodle" is wondering whether or not 'antiblogger' is actually Daniel Drezner...

[apologies to the brothers]

THe answer to your question, Antiblogger, is "nothing". However, I'd like to direct a question at you. Do you have any verifyable evidence of any of that happening? IN the absense of it, I would suggest it's not worth worrying yourself over. Blogs in the end, are about ideas. Argue the ideas, not the person writing them.

>>THe answer to your question, Antiblogger, is "nothing". However, I'd like to direct a question at you. Do you have any verifyable evidence of any of that happening? IN the absense of it, I would suggest it's not worth worrying yourself over. Blogs in the end, are about ideas. Argue the ideas, not the person writing them.

What about arguing the idea that a blogger is responsible for comments against his blog on another blog run by a blogger that makes blogs that comment on the comments sections of blogs that don't have comment sections because they were deleted by bloggers who don't comment, but would if the bloggers weren't making comments on each other's blogs about how other bloggers should blog the way blogs that don't blog about how other people blog, if a blogger could blog blogs?

Put down the pipe, and step back.

Reading "Antiblogger's" comment and can't help thinking the Purple Microdot must be especially potent today.

Kathryn Kramer,

The discussion here has managed to arouse my morbid curiousity.

One observation. On the one hand, you decry bloggers and commenters who don't post under their real names. But, as I look at your archives, it becomes clear that one of the things that precipated your own attacks against the LGF people was that they made veiled threats against you personally, went to the web sites of your family and did the like.

Isn't the obvious lesson to learn here that it's foolhardy to post under your real name, feel free to post inflammatory remarks, and not expect such threats will be part of the game you're playing?

Your claims of victimization, given its complete predictability, rings a little hollow, don't you think?

It's particularly annoying to have to listen to your holier-than-thou remarks regarding the importance of using your own name in the light of the ugliness that ensued over your post on the contractors, and the obvious vindictiveness in both directions.

Yes, the people who threaten you may well be behaving a lot worse than you did, but you're not exactly any paragon either.

This might sound strange but I wouldn't mind have people posting rude/offensive comments on my site! At least they'd be interested enough to post a comment! Mind you my site is mostly links but still, these sites that have 15-20000 readers are lucky to have such an audience! With that comes dealing with the crap... Just my two cents.

Kevin Drum,
Start deleting the most over the top comments, or edit them to embarrass the commenter, and display the deletions/changes prominently and the message will be sent and delivered.

If you say you don't have time.....if you spent 1/10th the amount of time weeding the trolls from your site that you spent declaring that Bush was AWOL, you'd have one of the more genial sites on thw web, instead of one of the leaders in cesspool commenters.

Isn't the obvious lesson to learn here that it's foolhardy to post under your real name, feel free to post inflammatory remarks, and not expect such threats will be part of the game you're playing?

Blame the victim?

"Put down the pipe, and step back." - Bithead.

Now there's an interesting insight into the mind that produced "Blogs in the end, are about ideas. Argue the ideas, not the person writing them."

Don't misconstrue this as an accusation of incivility. I'm actually quite paranoid that you're hacked into my webcam and are watching me right now, pipe in hand, replying to your comment.

But isn't that as it should be?

I mean, after all, it's you guys talking about the blogosphere's creeping loss of civility as if it were a bad thing.

You see, I lack something you bloggers cherish. And that is attention.

And I'm cool with that.

I'd link to my blog, but I don't have one. When I get a blog, I'm not telling anyone about it either.

Blame the victim?

Yes, sometimes that's exactly what you should do -- as well as blame the perpetrator.

Suppose I go out into a very bad neighborhood at night for no particularly good reason, and make a big show of a wad of cash. I pack a gun in case of trouble. If some mugger goes after me, and I shoot him in "self defense", am I to be admired?

The mugger was in the wrong -- but that hardly puts me in the right. I think I'd be pretty contemptible.

Now there's an interesting insight into the mind that produced "Blogs in the end, are about ideas. Argue the ideas, not the person writing them."

Tell me; is that a normal bit of discourse for you? Are you seriously going to tell me that wasn't a little bizzare?

For example... my real name is pretty widely known on the net. For another, you may wish to check out our host...

Don't misconstrue this as an accusation of incivility. I'm actually quite paranoid that you're hacked into my webcam and are watching me right now, pipe in hand, replying to your comment.

Given my day gig, you should be.

Suppose I go out into a very bad neighborhood at night for no particularly good reason, and make a big show of a wad of cash.

So, you see no differences, here? Please....

So, you're suggesting that anyone entering the public eye, is subject to abuse, and that's OK with you?

Is it possible that your attitude here vaires acording to whomever the subject is?

"The folks on the right tend to be a lot more balanced on the whole, willing to criticize policies they disagree with, and with a much more diverse body of commenters."

Can't agree with this; I've noticed that the right-of-center blogs that used to attracta broad audience by being heterodox have fallen into an orthodox line. Tacitus lost most of his left-of-center commenters after moving to Scoop and letting mediocrities in as guest bloggers, and Assymetrical Information lost most of its economically literate commenters and left-of-center commenters after Megan got a media job and the blog entered into a Fat Elvis stage.

Tom, finding either of them criticizing the administration or the GOP isn't a difficult chore.

But, as I look at your archives, it becomes clear that one of the things that precipated your own attacks against the LGF people was that they made veiled threats against you personally, went to the web sites of your family and did the like.

franklyo, would you be so kind as to post links to what you've discovered?

So, you're suggesting that anyone entering the public eye, is subject to abuse, and that's OK with you?

Read what I said, please. I said that the pepetrator has of course done something wrong. My point is that this does NOT imply that the victim or "victim" has no culpability either.

Is this point really that hard to understand?

And, yes, the analogy with the mugger and victim was not in every respect similar to the case at hand. I was simply using a counterexample to shoot down the general correctness of the knee jerk response that what I was doing was "blaming the victim". My point was that sometimes the victim deserves real blame AS WELL AS the pepetrator.

would you be so kind as to post links to what you've discovered?

I looked a bit into Kathryn Cramer's archives for April, and I mostly just repeated her own characterization of what she said she and a member of her family endured. I don't know where these threats were made. It may be that they came by email, so I would hardly have any verification in the archives per se.

Were the threats in any way serious, or just being puffed up by Kathryn into far more than they were? I have no idea.

I certainly have no reason to believe that they were not exactly the kind of hate mail that virtually every blogger gets when they come out with something obviously inflammatory. I would guess that Kos, for example, has received far far worse, for his own comments regarding the death of the contractors in Iraq. The difference is, you don't see him wailing uncontrollably about being abused, and trying to shut down blogs who expressed their own outrage over his comments. He understands the game and the price exacted on the Internet for his unrestrained expression of his beliefs.

Read what I said, please. I said that the pepetrator has of course done something wrong. My point is that this does NOT imply that the victim or "victim" has no culpability either. Is this point really that hard to understand?

Oh, but you see, I DID in fact read what you said, and I do in fact understand it quite well... too well, in fact. How to come up with a responsive comment otherwise?

However, I susect that my objection to your position was apparently expressed in to subtle a manner. The distribution of blame you propose, shuts off all debate, and allows for the silencing of dissent.

OTOH, it's called standing up for what one says, and standing by it. As an example of this, I've tended to handle hate mail to my blog in a manner you may find amsuing.... I tend to post it, along with the email address of the sender, assuming it's confirmed by my server as the real source.

As a result of doing htat a few times back when my blog was starting, I've found I have very little trouble with hatemail, as you can imagine.

"Were the threats in any way serious, or just being puffed up by Kathryn into far more than they were? I have no idea."

Please keep in mind that you're reading nothing but what Kathryn wants you to read, as everything else has been deleted.

I was in the middle of that particular conflagration, and IIRC there was one troll that was particularly offensive. His particular schtick is to impersonate the gentleman I mentioned earlier, though a simple look at the IP addresses would clarify that issue.

That is one of the consequences of blogging, that trolls will trouble you.

It certainly isn't any excuse to disrupt the real world life of an upstanding individual who happens to disagree with you.

This is another example of Kathryn failing to do due diligence, as she did with Michael Teague when she called the recently murdered man a Nazi.

Consider the source, please.

BTW, anyone interested in what Ms. Cramer has to say should also peruse this:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/lgf-search.php?searchWith=lgf&searchWhat=entries&searchTime=180&searchString=Kathryn+Cramer&doSearch=search

You should also notice the links that worked then, and don't work now.

Caveat Emptor.

As a technologist but a relatively new and plain-vanilla blogger, I'm certain there's a lot more technology can do to address this problem.

For example, the first thing that came to mind reading this topic was the notion of a distributed ranking functionality (a la Amazon's filtered and ranked comments) that allows comment readers to rate an entry either negatively or positively, or binarily recommended, a comment entry that can be presented in a number of threaded views. Since folks usually read the latest x number of entries, one would rate some of the more recent comments, while other readers would rate others, and so forth, which cumulatively would lead to an ongoing, 'rolling' ranking system. The most interesting comments would bubble to the top providing a linked list of the most interesting entries for the entire blog.

Blogging is in its relatively infant stages. I wouldn't be surprised looking back 5 years from now, how this will mimic the same trend curve as filtering spam vs. desired mail, where now some really smart solutions are finally coming online that show a lot of promise. The lessons learned from controlling spam will also probably shorten the learning curve to develop technologies that help seperate the disinteresting and offensive from the rest.

In thinking on this subject fr several days, now I've hit on a pattern that perhaps deserves discussion.

Billy Beck will know of my history in the Usenet world, and in the BBS world before it; it's a history we share to some degree. Both mediums had flat out crazy growth after we'd been blazing the trails for a bit, and the quality of the medium changed, for the worse, I think, in both those cases, in much the same way is as being discussed here.

Thing is, this pattern of deterioration isn't limited to computers, or computer networked messaging.

I found the same thing on the CB channels some years ago. To explain; In the middle to late 60's, long before most people knew what the hell that odd looking box under the dash , or on the desk, was, or why the huge antenna was on the roof, I was toying with 27mhz. My first rig wasna old Johnson WhiteFace. A tube unit; no transistors. Certainly archaic by the tech of today, but it was a class rig, in those days.

Most CB activity at the time was illegal, of course. Eventually, the band grew to the point where the FCC hadda do something; they made it legal to use CB in the manner that about everyone was using it anyway. Sometime about then, the quality of that medium changed as well, as the population started growing. A lot of the problems as the population grew were cultural in nature. Common practices and (To the radio operators of the day) common courtesy changed to "It's technically possible, so why the hell not?" Fights broke out, power wars and the occasional druken fool, etc, etc ad nauseum.

Now, an interesting thing about these comparisons. In the case of CB, the cycle I describe took many years to fully turn... 10 or 12 years, though most blamed the change in environemnt to the FCC making it legal. Thing was, it took that long for the technology to be understood by the majority.

In the case of BBS'ing, the cycle was about half that length of time, about 5 years...and the shift in quality was blamed on higher line speeds and BBS networking.

But the similarity here thta went un-noted at the time was in the early days of BBS'ing, the majority never really undertood the need or for that matter, the uses for a home computer, even after IBM finally toss their "We'll only need four computers for the whole world" nonsense out the window.

Along comes Usenet as a subset of the INternet... and even people who knew what a BBS a modem and a Fidonet were, didn't have a freakin' CLUE about what the internet was. And for that period even USenet was a fair civil place where I posted for a long time. But that lasted for around 4 years. Now, I've been blogging for a bit over a year, some of you for two, and look at the discussion we're having.

Think; in each of these cases once the public's understanding of the medium grew, and the population of each medium grew with it, the old hands.. the trailblazers, started getting pushed out... and the nasty stuff started happening with greater frequency. The shorter time frasme in each is because our technology is better understood, faster, by the general population.

I bring this pattern up, because the similarity is striking, at least to me. That such a similar pattern could exist across all these differing mediums suggests to me that there is more than the medium itself at work.

I could even see someone doing up a study taking this pattern back a few steps, to the level of societies as a whole, and their deterioration as the populations grow and gain understanding about the mechnisms the society uses to control itself, such as culture, and culture's tool, government. Our government and control of it, is becoming a less than civil process, if you will, as we get more comfortable with it.

I have to ponder this further, because I've not got it fully thought out yet. But I wanted to toss the ideas out on the table and see what I get in response.

Comparison;

When one is working at a new job, one tends to be less self-assured, quite polite and very produtive, or at least always in motion. Given a few years to learn the ropes some complacency moves in. As people learn where the rules are, they also learn as a part of that process to effecively skirt the edges of those rules.

Is the growing lack of civility simple human nature at work, here?

Am I explaining this line of thought well enough?