Letters to the Editor
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Get rid of Anon
you say "But we're all adults here" as if being an adult were some guarantee of mature behavior. Let's face it, the combination of the election and anonymity is going to make comments sections all over the net ugly.
I'd say start by getting rid of anonymous postings as it is the premier venue for mindless attacks.
Let me close by saying that Mr. Koppelman is a poopy-head.
*cracks Mr. Koppelman on the ass with a rat-tail*
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Maybe your Title contriubtes
Ever think of possibility of the title WAR ROOM might have contributed to the heated discourse.
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We Are All Adults
It's interesting to think what that says about our culture's evolution. It seems that there was a time (though not during my tender 35 years) when there was such a thing as civilized discourse among adults. But now, society is pretty much nakedly high school redux, Lord of the Flies, whatever you want to call it.
Perhaps we need a rhetorical King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table to declare Might for Right rather than Might Makes Right. A pity that we need authority figures to legislate our behavior like that, but then we aren't that far removed from six-shooters at high noon either, are we?
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Hey Koppelman
Suck it.
There always has to be one...
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Solution:
Spend some time moderating a sports message board and you'll stop worrying and start laughing when sensitive readers get their feathers ruffled when someone calls them a poopy head.
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Koppelman knows best
Thank you, Alex, for being the arbiter of good taste in the letters section. Perhaps one would have to go to Scalia or Thomas to find a more sober judge of what is proper.
I feel so much better, safer and secure knowing you are policing our behavior.
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People won't change
You'll just have less time for eating and sleeping, Alec.
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Er, Alex
Sorry about that.
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This is what the Internet does to people
I'll admit, I get caught up in it too. After 5 responses or so I just start lashing out and calling people morons and such.
The ability for people to post whatever they want behind the safety of their computer screen has been pretty common elsewhere too. I saw this a lot in with online games where players taunt one another to levels you would be amazed with.
To help the letters section, a few things could go a long way. One would be to not allow anonymous publishing. I really don't see the reason for it. Is there a way someone could actually come to my house and yell at me or something? An online persona isn't a problem and only goes to feed the ability for people to say whatever they want and hide behind those remarks.
Secondly, an ignore feature might be useful. This way you at Salon wouldn't have to weed out worthless posts from certain people and we could tailor the letters to our liking. If a user is ignored, the line in letters would show a post by someone that was ignored and you could open up the post if you wanted to read it for some reason. I know this is a little bit against the idea of letting everyone express their ideas, but I already ignore them anyway. It just gets annoying to sift through all that stuff.
Of course, your section, (no offense) isn't really technically cutting edge anymore either. There are many other options out there now that allow even more features than I know about. (on Dailykos for example).
Responding to war room posts and stories is actually a lot of fun for me. If we could create a somewhat online community around this, I would be here a lot more...and I would pay for a premium account more easily ;)
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@filthyharry
We both used "poopy head" in our posts...
OK, you hyphenated yours... smarty-pants
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@ adam.mcgahan
"It seems that there was a time (though not during my tender 35 years) when there was such a thing as civilized discourse among adults. But now, society is pretty much nakedly high school"
I blame our school system. Before kids were required to go to school, they learned how to socialize by watching adults socialize with other adults. Now we stick em all into 1st grade when they're 6, and they learn to socialize by socializing with other 6 year olds who are themselves learning to socialize. Is it any wonder I'm willing to publicly call people 'poopy-head'?
Madness.
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Uhhh.... I just used the F Word
in an otherwise on-point and substantive post.
http://letters.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/15/oreilly/permalink/17e1d013667749bb4605e0f172e6294d.html
If that's gonna be cause for deletion/expulsion, you can have this prissy place. I'll take my observations elsewhere.
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Trawling for trolls
Seems like just staying politely on-topic (difficult as it can be on any message board) is the only real antidote for trollspeak. Either the troll is getting their jollies by going on the attack, or they're deliberately derailing discussions so people can't think straight on anything, so the only way to beat that is to not be distracted and derailed, as frustrating as that can be. If trolls are attention whores, then the way to get them to another curb is to just ignore them and comment on the articles at hand or the reasonable issues brought up by it, and to be civil. That'll make the trolls stand out, and should hopefully bore them into oblivion. Battle not with trolls, lest you become one (apologies to Nietzsche).
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How blogging and campaigns work...
A while back I worked for a campaign, and one of my jobs was to troll through a variety of blogs...and post the "talking points of the day" that were given to me by the campaign staff. As I read through a lot of comments on different political threads, it is very easy to spot the people who are doing this for both the Clinton and Obama teams here on Salon.
Each morning I'd receive an email from a higher up in the campaign, and this person would list out the points that they wanted us to make, and arguments that they wanted us to counter, on different blogs. There was a small army of us, and we all had certain blogs assigned to us (We overlapped, so it wasn't too obvious).
But a lot of the heated exchanges going on here have the feel of possibly falling under this catagory...Attempts by the campaigns to influence the blogs and to score points on a micro level.