POLICING THE BLOGOSPHERE
Kevin Drum thinks it would be nice if people in his comments section engaged in civil discussion of ideas rather than flaming one another and being mean to conservatives. I’m all for it.
FILED UNDER: Blogosphere, Kevin Drum
Me too.
Yea, I’ve noticed that with the distinct minority of right wing blogs, conservatives are getting beaten up far more often than their liberal counterparts. It’s time to stand up for the little guy and treat them with the respect they give us.
🙂
Regardless of ideological persuasion, it really is nicer if people could engage in reasoned debate. It really is more worthwhile and enjoyable.
It’s one of the reasons I like hanging around here.
The problem with Kevin is that he makes casual swipes at conservatives in his postings and then expects us to be civil in the comment section. In other words, if his postings aren’t going to be civil, why should his comment section? Some of his postings are just an invitation for conservative bashing.
One can say much the same thing about posts on the other political side of the fence. Right-Thinking is a fine example of the extreme.
Then we would have to go to Democratic Underground or Indymedia for our entertainment.
BTW, I think civil discourse over at Kevin’s site will be easier said than done. I hope he achieves it.
Good luck Kenin.
I’m calling the ACLU to protect first ammendment right
to flame. Why can’t we just get along? Maybe it’s because
some of us aren’t capable of reasoned debate. I can’t see you and you can’t see me. I might be David Letterman’s wife for all you know.
Steven asserts that civil political debate is more worthwhile than shrill uncivil political debate. I’m not sure that’s really true. I think the magic of bloggers isn’t the wide reaching debate. We’ve had usenet groups for years. That’s never been a political force.
The strength of blogging is independent reporting. It’s the research, presentation and FILTERING of information with biases from accross the spectrum. Readers have unprecedented choice to access information. The debate aspect isn’t as critical. I like to read OTB because James links to articles that I’m interested in. I like the commentary too but if the links were all stale I’d probably stop reading.
Sigh . . . and the thread to Kevin’s “civility” post degenerates into conservative-bashing. Go figure. I believe Kevin was sincere, but he has little control over the tone of his commenters, unless he’s willing to devote time culling the trolls — which is well-nigh impossible given the volume of comments. I suppose the best thing conservatives who appreciate Kevin’s left-liberal commentary can do is not read his comment thread to begin with.
I long ago gave up on his site…
Kevin is so blinded by ideology that all compassion for facts is lost. He is reduced to saying thing that are simply incorrect or (as more typical) a non sequitur.
His comments section is populated by moon bats who think Gore won Florida and Bush knew about 9/11.
Reasonable people can disagree. But first they must be reasonable.
I do hope he means it and I do hope that it is a success. However there will be no breath holding here.
Paul
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