Letters to the Editor
-
The Fake Pose of Helplessness.
To slcgrad: I am vexed that you, like Salon, is ignoring 50% of the situation I pointed out.
My point isn't that it's Salon's fault for posting inflamatory articles, but it does so while choosing to skimp on the tools and policies necessary to manage discussion boards.
I do not dispute the poor thinking and lack of manners which degrade discourse. I dispute the notion Salon has no choice but to allow it.
Salon has been around since the early days of the Web - they've witness good and bad control of online forums. It was obvious that if one of the oldest webzines opened comments it would attract the entire spectrum of responses.
By the time they did scholary papers were available on trolling and moderation, major media outlets had been burned by inept feedback management. Hell, that Letters pages bring out the kooks was known long before the net.
Yet Salon chose minimal gatekeeping: no registration, anonymous commenting, no spell check, a one sentence comments policy and moderation queue which either didn't exist or had little oversight. (I used to defend anonymous commenting, but realized I only did so because it already existed. Most forums worth reading don't offer it or are more moderated than Salon.) Then after the problem was entrenched, they've been slow to change.
The problem is not readers failed at civility but Salon doesn't do enough to manage incivility. There's been multiple essays essays complaining about the results which have said little about why Salon chose such lax methods or why they are so slow to act in a way which satifies their own complaints.
This omission is becomes more dishonest each time. One is left to guess why the lack. As said before, I suspect Salon is unwilling expend the resources for the moderation it really needs. Nor is it willing to do anything which might reduce the traffic brought in by comments.
So I'll be blunt if you aren't going to do what's necessary, suck it up and stop blaming the readers who have no power to prevent the trolls.
-
Bottomline you don't like what you don't like
Ha'aretz tosses out most of the letters it receives. The fact that they post any is reflective of the massive effort they go through to read them all before they go online. So what you object to is really that they make you read something that doesn't tow the official line.
-
Good manners bring about social equality
I have to disagree with the idea that manners were brought into society to maintain class differences. On the contrary, while there are some small concessions made in the business world concerning rank (like who walks through a door first), the rules require that everyone treats everyone else with equal civility, regardless of station. It's as much a crime against etiquette to be rude to your waitress as it is for the waitress to be rude to you; it's as bad to be insult someone on the street as it is for you to be mean to insult next door neighbor. Your boss must treat you as well as you're expected to treat him or her.
-
Please!
Thank you.
-
@ Allie_ ...and others
How Dare You!
You encourage Censorship against "trolls." How dare you call them trolls?! How dare you Censor them?!
Don't you know that upstanding men like brightstar65 and merely mortal male and Rob Anderson and TomReedToon are the only path to the truth for the rest of us ignorant slobs, feminists, etc. They have a right to make total asses of themselves if that's what it takes to help the rest of us idiots see the truth. They're like prophets, don't you see? And your attempt to shut them out of the conversation won't allow them to continue to martyr themselves on our behalf.
In fact, we don't simply have the "right" to choose to listen to them or not; indeed, if i understand them correctly, we have an OBLIGATION to read every last word they write. If Salon shuts down these noble men's capacity to spew forth with their sacred words, Salon won't merely be quashing their inalienable right to spew but will be denying us the opportunity to meet OUR obligations to them!
I can't stand by and watch YOU try to destroy this most holy temple in which the rituals of ad hominem are performed with such selfless zeal!
*
Ok.... actually, i think you're right. Maybe Salon could start by putting a cap on the number of posts a person can submit in a day or a week or something. Most of the more sensible posters don't post three or four times every day. But these trolls, as you call them, seem to thrive on posting once, getting someone to take the bait, coming back later to check their trap, and then blugeoning the more reasonable respondent with most venomous and detestable kinds of expression. Surely there is a way to moderate this better?
(And it is kinda fun, by the way, when some posters turn the table on them... and poke fun at them in a way that is inviting to the rest of the community, i.e., in a way that supports a community rooted in the unfettered interchange of genuine dialog)
Then again, maybe not. Maybe it simply isn't worth Salon's efforts to monitor these exchanges. It's not as if it is likely that Salon will loose me as a reader just because i've mostly stopped reading the posts to articles that i know will contain this kind of garbage.
*
So here's my last thought about this. What i find completely mystifying about the trolls is not simply the sense of righteousness but the apparent persecution complex. They really seem to me to think we're all out to "get them" when we respond to them, but isn't the truth of the matter that we just want them to leave us alone? I mean, who's doing the persecuting anyway?
-
Sorry, this is nothing new
Since my very first Usenet session in 1983 (almost 25 years ago, yikes!), I've been reading pleas for good netiquette, replete with warnings that the Internet was going to explode/implode.
It hasn't yet, and I don't think it will because of bad manners.
However, the rise of the WWW, and the letting of the unwashed masses onto the Internet in the early/mid -90s ... well, that will ultimately be its downfall. :-)