Letters to the Editor
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typical
"we, too, need to eat and sleep occasionally"
Typical Hillary supporter.
...
Kidding ... I'm kidding. :-)
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I don't know...
...I go in and out of here frequently, but on an irregular basis. I saw one of your pleas, Alex, night before last, but I could not find any really bad discourse. Had you already deleted it?
Do you not have the e-mail addresses of posters, including the Anonymooses? Could you try to send stern notes straight back to the nasty posters?
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Ebony
And Ivory.
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@ John762
"We both used "poopy head" in our posts... OK, you hyphenated yours... smarty-pants"
I will now 'flame' you.
You didn't spell poopy-head with a hyphen? I mock your level of education! I deride you, and [Candidate you support] and [your local sport team]
Let me close with [ad hominem attack on your closest living relative].
P.S. Your physical appearance is comical to me.
Take that!
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@ Bobby G
If that's gonna be cause for deletion/expulsion, you can have this prissy place. I'll take my observations elsewhere.
-- BobbyG
Stick it to the man, brother! I'm with you all the way! Delete this one too, Mr. K.
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A lot has to do with the substance of the postings
Alex, I don't mean to put the blame for this on you, because these letter writers are responsible for their own actions. However, I can't help but notice that where Salon has run thoughtful stories that actually focused on the substantive issues (like when How the World Works focused on the economic theories of Obama's economic advisor Austan Goolsbee), the letters are generally civilized and thoughtful in response. But when you just slap something up in the War Room that says, "Clinton says McCain's advisor says Obama plagiarized her economic plan!!" you're just asking to get 300 letters in response that are going to look more like the Monty Python Argument Clinic than any sort of real debate. I suspect if you actually got into the weeds on these economic plans, these folks would shut up in a hurry because they don't really understand economics and couldn't comment meaningfully on the actual details.
I've been begging for weeks for someone in Salon to look at Obama's environmental platform and advisors and compare it to Clinton's, with some environmental scientists and economists subjecting both to some real scrutiny. People keep bringing up Obama's ties to the nuclear industry...so let's talk about it, instead of just batting it back and forth like a game of Pong.
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Drop Anonymous
And only allow one user id per IP address. Technology can be your friend, Alex.
I used to love reading Tim Grieve's War Room - he was pithy and offered brief analysis for his topics. In fact, Tim was the reason I became a premium Salon member.
Alex, I will continue to read your column... for a while. But please, do stop posting quotes from political apparatchiks with zero analysis.
Please do keep moderating these boards -- when I see 6+ pages of letters all posted by the same handful of haters, it turns me off even faster.
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Ban Anonymous
Please , please just get rid of anonymous postings. OF course it 's not a silver bullet, but it's a good place to start. Also, Salon will never get rid of ruffled feathers or hurt feelings so don't try, beyond the the most egregious. Eliminating anonymous postings is just a small step toward more honesty in the environment.
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He isn't a poopy head...
he's a doo-doo brain*...
*Not that I actually believe this of course, I just couldn't resist the obvious piling on. If I were in your shoes, I would welcome your new pre-pubecent minded overlords, and then cut off the comment section entirely. But that's just me.
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Re: I blame our school system.
I blame the internet actually. I'm 33 and I really haven't grown up in a lot of ways - actually I have a theory that all men never really mature past 14 but that's another story :P
If you play online games (world of warcraft?) such as I have, you start seeing the pattern so well. The constant "ur" and "neone" and other internet speak that is going around so much. Then kids talk smack at one another behind a computer because it's easy to "own" people that way. Look at youtube's comments sometime. Wow. Add in stuff like South Park and we are on our way to a whole civil disobedient generation. The other day at my university someone found a sign that said something like "Pls put ur trash in the right containers". What the hell?
So maybe it is our school system too but the civility on the internet has gotten out of control where we now need cyber bullying laws and the like. I'm not sure this is going to get any better :(
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@FilthyHarry
LoL,
This is much more fun than work...
going to have to ban myself from the internet for the next few hours...
...that should raise the level of discourse a few notches.
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I love how so many of you people think "Anonymous" is the problem
Or trolls are the problem.
Definition of a troll, from what I can see: Someone who disagrees with you. Y'all are as bad as republicans who lable judges as "Activist"
Guess what. You all are the problem.
Sidenote to Captain Lara B: Spot on.
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Quality articles will attract quality readers.
I'm glad that Alex has said something about this problem; I'm one of those that quickly become frustrated by trolls and just wander off to another site where I'm more likely to read well-written opinions. But, I agree with some of the other readers that the War Room has suffered from the loss of the great analysis that I used to look forward to under Tim Grieve.
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alex
look at the nation's blog - they have an ignore feature ... most intelligent people would use it ... it's much easier than playing big brother
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@ Brian - Seattle
I agree the internet has exacerbated the damage to public discourse. But the internet just made us lazier communicators, and the anonymity brought out the worst in us. The damage was done long ago when generations of children were deprived the opportunity of learning to socialize from adults. And then those children grew up and had their own generation of kids and it just gets worse as the memory of dignified public discourse becomes fainter and fainter, and mudslinging, name-calling become the norm.