Friday, March 16, 2007

Comment Moderation Enabled

Everyone can thank both sword of truth and col jenny sparks and their inability to keep their online feud civil. There is no reason to allow the comments to be filled up with "he said/she said" irrelevant garbage. For the same reason, all their posts attacking each other have been deleted.

Some might wonder why I'm being this firm. Many of you are thinking that at Screw Loose Change everything appeared to be acceptable. Firstly, this is not true. Every so often James and I would delete a post that went a little too far. Secondly, our recent adventure with fake "Nico" ended in a decision to delete his posts, an action few questioned when they should have. More on that later.

As for the actual enabling of comment moderation, the naive think the reason we did not do this at Screw Loose Changewas a love of free speech. That was not the reason. Comments are not moderated at Screw Loose Change and similar blogs because the result is more chaotic and divisive, preventing any genuine honest debate. James and I laughed ourselves silly that it took some twoofer sites years to understand this principle. Open, unmoderated, anonymous commenting sounds ideal, but, like many liberal ideals, it is a fantasy. There are three reasons a controversial blog is unmoderated in any way:

1: naivete
2: testing the waters; the purpose of the blog is to record what people are thinking on a subject
3: to generate confusion and acrimony

Still, the idealist in me had to give it a chance. I know better now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Secondly, our recent adventure with fake "Nico" ended in a decision to delete his posts, an action few questioned when they should have. More on that later.

Why should people question that action? Someone who makes a fake blog in order to impersonate someone has no right to a valid opinion. If they want to make a point, fine. But make your own blog. Impersonating someone is morally bankrupt and a cowardly way of getting your point across. Consider yourself lucky. If it was my identity that was being impersonated I'd seek legal action and I wouldn't stop till I got it.

PJ said...

richard: reread this blog and consider why we let the real "Nico" spam SLC in the first place.