Gee, what did we do with all that spare time we had before computers, email, blogs, cell phones, etc. As someone said to me the other day, seems we are almost regressing in some of our communication modes, kids are text messaging, we email everyone, blogs abound....heaven forbid any of us should use that old fashioned device called the phone and call someone!

The tech revolution certainly has its good qualities though, but it seems I'm more behind the 8 ball trying to play catch up what with the emails and voice mails I have to respond to at my office everyday, all that in addition to the regular old phone calls and heaven forbid - people still write letters - but of course those arrive in the - ohmigosh - the mail - but of course just tb sure they are received the sender faxes the letter, emails it to you, then has someone call to make sure you got it....we are in the hands of the computers are we not....great piece though, enjoyed reading most of it but had to cut it short cuz 20 emails came in that I have to act on.

Click throughs and $$$ are why so many publications lament the controversial articles and vitriol in reader responses, and yet do little to nothing about it.

It's no coincidence the NYT firewalled editorials, hopefully to increase subscriptions, at the same time it closed down a lot of "letters" sections.

I understand where Kamiya is coming from, in regards to the difficulty of writing. I'm a writer myself.

But even reader/commentators are facing that difficulty. Sure, it's not as much of a time investment, but it provokes response just the same, and I've seen commentators flayed along with the original writer. Additionally, I've seen comments better written and reasoned than the original article. The only real difference is time spent and the option to remain anonymous.

And as far as journalism being something loftier than opinion, I completely disagree. Everyone has an agenda, even supposidly unbiased journalism. Journalism is sometimes the worst example, pretending to have no opinion while at the same time hammering their opinions home. (See: Fox News)

Salon is a great big, often well-written blog. Kudos to having the guts to put your opinions out there everyday, but let everyone else be entitled to theirs, too.

The real fear behind this article, as I see it, is that the boundaries between journalism and blogging are crumbling. I would argue that the boundaries have always been a sham. There are excellent blogs and there are crappy blogs, just like there are excellent journalism publications and crappy publications. The free-for-all opinion is a good thing, it's democracy in action, and it's quite easy to filter out Paris Hilton stories—don't search for them and don't click on them.

Additionally, there are investigative journalists/bloggers/writers online that scoop stories Salon won't touch. There is more truth out there on the Internet than has ever been published in a newspaper or broadcast on TV. All those lonely researchers out there deserve a lot more praise than they receive for making information available to anyone who knows how to Google. If people can't use their critical thinking skills to filter out what is well-sourced and reasoned online, and what isn't, then it is, ironically, partially the fault of traditional media: media handing people the "correct" opinion from on high doesn't allow readers the opportunity of wading into the fray and figuring out the answers for themselves.

Outsider opinion is tomorrow's mainstream, and in my humble opinion, traditional journalism is really just upset their business model is eroding because people are seeking the truth they refuse to publish. Oh well, adapt or perish.

I've seen studies that show that people in Virtual Worlds tend to be way more aggressive and rude than the same people interacting in real worlds. It may be that because we evolved to communicate face-to-face, when we are in a situation without facial expression and tone of voice, we lose our ability to monitor ourselves, to normalize our behaviour.

Actually, the researcher I saw talk about this had hoped VR would help young adults become less inhibited & more self-fulfilled. But she came reluctantly to realize that the socially-inhibited self is actually a real self, as I said, the evolved self, and the uninhibited loner is not the psychological norm.

I bring this up not so much to explain letter writers, but to try to get at why writers will necessarily be affected by having that quicker feedback. In developing their craft, they learn to work with delayed & minimal people, and the reason we bother to read them is that they *are* exceptional, different from a conversation you would have at the bus stop. And that *will* change as they start to "see the faces" of all those people at the bus stop. It isn't because writers are wimps afraid to meet real opinions; it's because they are humans --- animals, evolved to behave this way. It will take a while to create a new concept of writer, and it will be different.

These worthies may see themselves as keen-witted literary arbiters, but in fact they more closely resemble the extras who play outraged townspeople in low-budget vampire movies, oafs in lederhosen milling around angrily and waving burning torches.

Ouch. That hits close to home. But what I really want to know is, how did he get the videos from my family vacation?

This was an excellent article all around. My major point of disagreement: While I think that this format has made the overall conversation more crass and personalized, I think that it has less to do with the ease of responding, and more to do with the lack of accountability. If I decide to write something completely thoughtless and humiliating, just to laugh at the reaction I provoke, I can do so with no repercussions whatsoever. In Salon's case, I wouldn't even have to create an account in order to troll.

The people who are entertained by the cleverness of their own bile are usually in it for their own entertainment and ego. Those who merely let their outrage get the better of them can often be coaxed into more productive discussion. Trolls can't. Some of them may see themselves as serving a useful counterpoint to people who take things too seriously. But their behavior is no more justifiable than spraypainting someone's car or house because they're taking the concept of personal property too seriously. Try as they might to justify themselves, I don't see disruption as a worthwhile goal, and I'd be happy to see strong measures taken to make such disruption more difficult.

In the long term, I think reputation systems and multi-site on-line identities will do a lot to bring civility to the new medium. Sure, I might still be able to create a new identity just for messing around with Salon. But people will be more willing to listen to me if I've already gained respect in my other online dealings, and I won't want to risk that reputation by misbehaving here.

In the short term, however, my favorite technique for filtering is to let users select which items they really like. Then, instead of using that information to create an overall "score" for an item (which tends to promote groupthink) you instead try to find other users who tend to vote the same way you do, and use their scoring data to decide which items a user will be interested in.

By doing so, the onus is put on the user. If you only approve of letters that agree with your biases, then those are the ones you'll see. But if you approve intelligent, well-intentioned writing from all viewpoints, then you'll tend to get that in return. Best of all, the system is highly troll-resistant, because people who intentionally vote in favor of crap only affect other people who are doing the same.