The South Bend Tribune has indicated an intent to be more active in policing the comments section on its website. The comment section there, like the website of any newspaper of any size I’ve seen lately, is basically a sewer. There seems to be a Gresham’s Law of commenting wherein the bad drives out the good. I know that the Indianapolis Star has a ridiculously low light to heat ratio. Why bother offering thoughtful commentary when it’s just going to get buried in a bunch of name calling?
I wrote a law review article on the Internet and Copyright Law back in 1995 or thereabouts. I had quaint ideas about newspaper websites which, essentially, did not exist at the time:
Using hypertext, for example, news articles could be linked to reference documents explaining specific topics within the article. This means that an article reporting about the conflict in Bosnia could have a hypertext link to a document giving a brief history of Bosnia and Eastern Europe which in turn contains links to documents that provide even more detailed information. Furthermore, the article could have a link to a discussion group where interested readers could share ideas about the article or the issue in general.
That has more or less come to pass, but what I didn’t foresee was that the “ideas” that readers would primarily be sharing were that other readers who disagreed were assholes with uncertain parentage.
The South Bend Tribune responds preemptively to those who will undoubtedly whimper about their First Amendment rights:
We believe strongly in the First Amendment. It is the cornerstone of our profession.. But our belief in free speech doesn’t mean we have to allow posters to make offensive or untrue comments on our Web site.
Start your own Web site. Pay for the domain. Host it. And say whatever you want. We don’t care. But we do care, deeply, about what is said on our Web site, to our readers.
I have been fortunate so far with this blog to have a minimum of comment flames. Undoubtedly this is, in part, because the population of readers is much smaller and much more thoughtful. I appreciate that.
Fuck off, asshole!
For the love of all that’s holy, please let the preceding comment be ironic…
I’m so disappointed that I wasn’t the first to make the ironic statement. Fuckin’ douchebag.
Just what I’d expect from a bunch of freedom-hating, Obama-voting libs trying to take away my medicare and replace it with socialized medicine!!!
I guess I asked for this. Ya buncha smegma felching pederasts.
These comments are truly hilarious and made my morning.
Doug,
Due propers for working “smegma” into a comment on your own blog.
I copied and pasted the following exchange from the Indy Star’s comment section some time ago for an occasion such as this. Saved in a doc on my desktop called “morons commenting”:
Guest replies:“REally! So I take it you’re perfect and have never made a mistake in your entire life. Bet you’re mother is proud of you.
Viscous Realtime replies: “You spelled your wrong, braniac.”
———–
Struck me as amusing.
Oh, Viscous Realtime, will you ever win?
So does this mean more people listening to talk radio?
“Merkin” would be a better word to work into the ironic commentary thread…obscure, and yet, still sort of suggestive…
My favorite comment is the frequent one where if you’re postive in any way towards Obama its because of the Kool Aid you’re drinking.
I have no issue with moderating comments on any blog – it is the blog owners’ right to do so. I do think that little or no moderation can offer some insights – not from the commenters themselves, but in the totality of the comments.
What I mean is that if you read the Cincinnati Enquirer, particularly any of the crime stories, it is a stark illustration of the racism that is still prevalent within our society. None of the people I spend time with are overtly racist, so sometimes I forget these attitudes still exist. But a quick trip to the Enquirer is a reminder. If a crime happens in Over the Rhine, comments immediately surface about the inadequacies of African American parenthood, while if a crime happens in a tony suburb, the comments immediately begin that whites commit crimes too (usually refuted that african americans simply drove to Indian Hill…)
It is saddening, but at the same time a useful reminder.
Go to the comments section of the Indianapolis Star to see why more newspapers ought to do this. The comments about Bayh’s retirement read as if they are being made by people from some alternative universe where up is down, black is white, etc.
Every once in a while I forget what I had previously experienced and wander into the comments section at Yahoo! News. Sewer is exactly the right word to describe the comments there. Hard to see how a site of that size ever moderates its comments, sadly.