Just got back from Vermont. Sorry. I had no time to investigate their secessionist movement. I was too busy pacifying my two-year old daughter who was permanently grumpy today. It was the first time we saw her in this mood. It was one of those things. Not even a Ben & Jerry's ice cream was enough to bring a smile on her face. Felt bad for the kid.On to my post.
"You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay Gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay Got to fight with all your might not to get in the bleeding heart's way." Van Morrison
A while ago I argued that YouTube should have standards. Today, I want to discuss the people who leave comments on internet sites.
Is a website only as strong as the quality of its content and comments?
If you're like me, you return to a site that has a witty comments section. You're also annoyed by the tiresome name-calling, selective bantering and repeated nonsense that poison some websites. Even over at Blogcritics, which has done so much for blogging, they are not without problems on this front. All it takes is one person to put a thoughtful conversation out of whack.
From there, it descends into a world of intellectual and moral depravity that would make Dante cringe. I'm sure many people have witnessed this in some form while navigating through the internet galaxy.
Now if you think it's harmless because there are always stupid people all around us, all I would retort is - fine. But do we have to arm them and give them a platform?
So how to deal with such people? Of course, there are no real answers. We're talking freedom of speech here. Striking a balance between what is an appropriate comment and what isn't is difficult.
Freedom of speech doesn't entail shooting your mouth off. Too many people run aimlessly amok with this sort of responsibility. It's especially easy behind the anonymity characteristic of posting online. People can act, well, tough behind a persona. Public forums are full of them.
The best thing is to ensure quality of content and enlightened community commentators that discourages people from leaving pointless vitriolic messages.
One difficult kind of commenter, for me, is one who is convinced that they know the truth about something and is angry that so many people can be swindled about buying a load of crap.
Good luck engaging them.
Freedom of speech?
ReplyDeleteCongress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, but I may abridge any thread on my site I choose.
When I take the trouble and time to put something up on my site, I will not abide some spam artist hijacking a discussion. I don't like sites which engage in 'prior restraint' comment moderation because it cuts off the spontaneity of the discussion. But if I see something up there in my comments that is either too long or too immaterial to the issues I want to see discussed, I will have no compunction to striking such a comment. I would prefer an option whereby I could merely edit a comment, but my software does not support that. But I would rather see no comments than non sequitur statements.