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Monday, July 21, 2008
My Comment Policy
As some of you may know, I have recently decided to close comments on two threads that I started, Who Was Shakespeare? and The Raw Critic: “The Dark Knight." These actions reflect my personal decision and should not be taken as indicative of any change in policy at The Valve. Valve policy, as far as I can determine, is rather loose.
Why did I do this? I suppose I just got fed up. In the case of the Shakespeare thread, the issue is one that invites circular discussions and I couldn’t see any particular reason to keep spinning this one out. The Batman discussion seemed rather circular as well. Beyond that, as I explained in my concluding comment, I had a particular reason for creating that thread and the discussion pretty much destroyed it for me: I actually wanted to discuss the film.
Will I do this with other threads that I initiate? I don’t know, but I suppose I will. Will I give any sort of warning? I don’t know; I didn’t in these two cases. But now that I’ve decided that closing down discussion is something I’m willing to do, I suppose I’ll consider giving warning in the future. What are my criteria for doing this? The best I can do is offer those two threads as examples. I’m making this up as I go along. I don’t mind thread drift and I don’t mind argument and debate. I do mind whatever it is that was going on in those two threads.
Whatever that is, it is common in blog discussions, and common enough at The Valve. I don’t see any reason why I should encourage it. If that means that I’ve got to act in an arbitrary way to shut down a thread, well, I’ll do that. I see no reason why John Emerson should get all the curmudgeon points around here. Note that this applies only to threads that I initiate. I do not have the capability to turn comments off for threads initiated by others and wouldn’t do so if I did. They’re responsible for conversations they initiate.
What do I like? Cooperative discussion. Cooperative discussion doesn’t preclude either thread drift or disagreement and argument. But it does require a sense of limits. At the moment Rohan Maitzen’s discussion of Adam Bede seems to be working in this way. More of that would be a good thing.
Comments
Bill, in both cases I agree with your decision, and in both cases I was part of the problem. If I may--since you’re allowing comments here--I’d suggest that the original poster is very often listened to when he or she suggests that a thread has gotten off-topic. Saying, “Okay, look, that’s a different issue; let’s get back to the movie itself [or whatever]” can remind people who are caught in the trees what the forest is supposed to be, and can keep a thread from becoming hopeless as those two did.
Thanks, Tomemos, I’ll do that in the future.
In the case of the Shakespeare thread, I didn’t expect much of a conversation at all. I just made the post as a point of information. Had I anticipated . . . well then I would have framed the issue in the way that Jonathan Mayhew attempted, as a meta-issue.
Will definitely attempt to provide more angular comments in future. Possibly rhomboid.
-J
I wanted to talk about The Dark Knight too, but then I’d be an infantile little child in need of ice cream and a choo-choo train set. Grown-ups only!
For what it’s worth, Bill, I agree with Tomemos that you were right to close down these threads.
Certainly, after the first half dozen comments on the Shakespeare thread, no-one was saying anything ‘new’ and Tony showed tremendous resilience and patience by repeating his case for de Vere - I wasn’t convinced by his arguments but admired his tenacity (I also found the joking around good fun)!
Even on the AB thread, though, there have been a few times when personally I have felt ‘that’s been said - all right, already’ (and been less than popular for saying so with some) but I guess you’re walking a tightrope on blogs as wide in scope as this.
Anyway, as a newcomer to ‘The Valve’ I’d like to say thanks for all the time and effort everyone puts in - long may the ‘beat’ go on.
Eh, I’ll try to avoid your threads in future, Bill.
I once tried to gather a coalition called Pedants Unite! but we got hung up on whether the name of the organization should include a comma.
Again, my apologies to Bill for not sticking to the topic of the film—we’re between baby-sitters and have not been able to go out much lately.
By the way, for those who are interested, the discussion of superheroes and fascism is continuing under my posting as “Guest Author” for the “Reading Comics Event.”
I think your response (including the no warning) was appropriate.
Something that I’ve done on my own blog that sometimes works is to then make a new post opening another thread, with a clear warning that off-topic comments will be moderated away. Clearing away the circular rants and starting with a clean slate seems to help.
Of course I rarely get Valve-quality trolls.
Bill, I don’t think it is a good idea to kill a thread simply because it’s going in a direction you don’t like. Moderation is a good way to prevent uncivilized debate, but not a good way to deal with, say, circular reasoning. Certainly there are many fallacies in these threads—and in some articles. They should all be shut down? Better to tackle that issue with less draconian methods. To say you killed a thread because the commenters didn’t give you what you wanted—well, hell, man! I doubt anyone considers (or should consider) the personal desires of an article writer before posting a comment.
What Trent said.
Alternatively, you might just stop reading threads that bore you. That’s what us plebes do.
Or whatever—your house, your rules.
One of the worst things about blog comments is that people seem to view them as a place to “spout off” on a given topic, often with little relation to—or even knowledge of—what the post actually said.
For the really big blogs, that effect can be desired, as it presumably cuts down on the number of creepy e-mails—people can just be creepy in comments.
Cultivating discussion means weeding out certain comments, much as that cuts against American “free speech fundamentalist” tendencies. A White Bear recently suggested viewing comments like classroom discussion—you don’t just let people spout off endlessly there, nor should you.
I’m with you, Adam.
Nor do I have any interest in vetting comments in a discussion that’s devolved into a time-sink for scoring debate points. The debaters may be eager to keep on scoring off one another, but I see no reason why I should enable them.
The thing is, if you’re registered here, your comment posts as soon as you submit it - though it may be cut later on. But if you’re not registered, then someone has to vet your comment. As trolls generally do not want to give-up a valid email address, this is a way to weed them out. But someone has to do the vetting. Who? Anyone who has authorship privileges here can vet comments. But we have no explicit system for doing that.
If there’s a conversation going on at one of my threads, I’ll check in every so often to see if there’s a comment waiting for approval. So, I really can’t just walk away and ignore a conversation I feel is going badly. Well, I could, but I don’t think it would be kosher. OTOH, why should I let it go on? That’s what I asked myself in these two cases and the answer came back: “you shouldn’t.”
Note that, in the case of the Dark Knight thread, at least one person (rq, above) has indicated a desire to discuss the film, but not at the expense of being dive bombed by an intellectual commando. Perhaps others felt the same way. Perhaps we could have had a nice discussion, but not under the conditions prevailing in that thread.
So the people who participated are “intellectual commandos” now?
I’m with Adam too. Pretentious, patronizing people who view the adults who comment on their posts as students in a classroom should go ahead with keeping order in class, because after all no one has to read their material. Unlike their real-life students, who probably dearly wish that they’d gotten someone else. Although I’ve noticed that in practice, these posters mainly seem to have gotten their ideas of how classrooms work out of Heathers.
Rich, I find your response mysterious, though admittedly I unsubscribed from that thread shortly after my last comment there. From what I saw, it didn’t even occur to me that Bill was talking about you.
So, it was all Tony Christini and Steven Augustine who had no “sense of limits”? That makes me feel much better. But I understand that your intent is to make this about me, so I think that I’d better exercise my sense of limits now.
Oh, one more thing though. Moderate your threads however you like. But insulting your commenters after the fact? Not cool.
Bill,
The way this thread is going you should be more than ever convinced that you were right to kill the others.
From my very limited blogging - but thirty years teaching higher ed. - experience I know that interesting ideas are often ‘twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools’.
Both threads could have been fun but were highjacked by a few folks with a personal axe; not worth lowering yourself or this superb blog to their level.
Once again, unqualified support and a high five from someone who thinks your handling was ‘cool’!
Mr Puchalsky: ‘insulting’? To pun on your name, that’s ‘Rich’, you could give lessons in abuse - in fact, you try to!
Rich, dude, normally you’re a lot less wack than this. In fact I’d say you’re one of the more reliably sensible regular Valve commenters. The worst I can imagine accusing you of in re the Batman discussion is feeding the trolls. I’m just the peanut gallery here, but I don’t think Bill’s out of line either in what he says above or in shutting down those two threads, and I think you’re taking this way too personally.
Good Lord! This Internet discussion is not sticking to the original topic! I have never heard of such a thing and must act immediately to stop it!
Next week: By Saint George! This “Boeing 747” can support itself in mid-air without touching the ground! It must be possessed by a demon! Quick, shoot it with this crossbow!
Speaking not so particularly about the two threads that started this, but about comments at The Valve more generally, my own experience is that there often seems to be a tone to threads at The Valve that I, at least, find a disincentive to joining in. There’s a hard core of long-term, regular commenters, which, though it speaks to the success and longevity of the blog in some respects, is also intimidating to newcomers, I think--some people have long histories here that sometimes turn threads into a kind of personal point-counterpoint, and who wants to jump into the middle of that? It’s good that debate should be strongly felt and rigorous, but I agree with Bill that I enjoy a more cooperative tone.
An observation that may or may not be related: there are almost no women posting or commenting here (though it’s hard to be sure, of course, given the use of pseudonyms): at the risk of lifting the lid on Pandora’s box, I read this thread with interest some months ago when I was on the verge of turning my back on The Valve myself, partly for the reasons I’ve noted above.
I agree, Rohan.
As a newcomer, I have felt the appearance of exclusivity to which you refer and as I have continued to contribute have felt somewhat marginalised by this ‘hard core’ (even subjected to quite unnecessary abuse by one individual, who would not let a minor disagreement over interpretation rest and I had to adopt a pseudonym to continue).
This almost made me turn away from ‘The Valve’, too, but Bill’s courtesy and friendliness helped tremendously which is why comments alluding to his being ‘insulting’ to contributors is so unfair.
Many years ago, it was pointed out that the lack of women among active participants in The Valve was the fault of me and Anthony Paul Smith. Since Anthony never comments here any more and I have sharply scaled back my participation, I’m at a loss as to why the perceived inhospitality to women continues. Has some other factor intervened coincidentally with Anthony and me receding, or—and I know this would be difficult to comprehend—was there some factor at work even when Anthony and I were participants that continues uninterrupted, for which we were unfairly scapegoated?
As with the question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, the world may never know.
Adam K.: “Many years ago, it was pointed out that the lack of women among active participants in The Valve was the fault of me and Anthony Paul Smith”
In all fairness, Anthony is such an unpleasant person - approach him along whatever axis you may choose - that it would be quite reasonable to expect that the half-life of his bad influence on any given intellectual or spiritually charitable venture might be measured in years, not months. (This is his choice, and we should respect it, while scrupulously washing our hands. That’s what being a good liberal means.)
In short, it strains credibility that Anthony was unfairly scapegoated. Although this might turn out to be a Gettier case, as it were. (That’s analytic philosophy humor. Mehar, mehar, it is to laugh. If you see what I mean.)
Perhaps this might be part of the problem, eh? But I’m such a friendly fellow. Game-theoretically, I play tit for tat-tat-tat. That is, you have to be a complete jerk to me three time before I lay down the law. Ah me, ah my what is the world coming to. Lawks and lordy.
I see. Anthony’s unpleasantness would then be a kind of “original sin” of the Valve. The question is who will now redeem us.
I was thinking of writing a humorous post about Batman. Not that I mind the chore. But the fact is: I have written so many fundamentally good-willed posts. If they have, en masse, failed to redeem Anthony’s fundamental ill-will, then I somewhat despair of the endeavor. Fortunately, I don’t much care whether it is possible to redeem Anthony’s intellectual and spiritual blog-sins by good deeds. My good deeds will, and remain, their own reward.
Would you like me to make a funny post about Batman?
I should add: it is almost 1 AM Singapore time, and my good deeds, although sempiternally sympathetic, may be somewhat nocturnally neutralized by need for sleep. Upon request, I will produce a pre-prandial Batman post, breakfast-wise. All ladies are invited.
The whole thing with original sin is that it corrupts everything, even your good deeds. As Calvin said, the virtues of the pagans were but “splendid vices.” According to the traditional method, then, we need to find someone completely innocent to pile on and scapegoat in order to wipe away that stain. But who?!
I suggest we go after whoever tosses the first stone, assuming that it is honestly tossed in the absence of sin.
’All ladies are invited.’
‘Ladies’, Sir, Ladies’? We are living in the post-pc 21st Century! Women, man, women!
And if we need to be ‘invited’ we are, by definition, currently ‘outsiders’: QED?
(Funny, never thought of myself as feminist before, just female ...)
I’m Spartacus!
I have no idea who Anthony Paul Smith is. Maybe I would if I’d followed every embedded link in the post I referred to, I don’t know. In any case, I’m not necessarily saying that this blog is “inhospitable” to women; maybe it’s unappealing, or uninteresting, or unknown--who knows. But whatever the reason, it is the case that there aren’t many heard from here...but then, there aren’t that many different people heard from here in general. One suggestion in the old thread was that new commenters be made welcome with a quick “hello and thanks for joining in” response--I think that would be a nice, small way of breaking down the (mis)perception that The Valve is somehow a closed shop.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Anthony, rather than writing about Batman. (There’s time enough for that later.) By posting an insulting comment, when the truth is that I haven’t interacted with him for months, I did the thing I always used to accuse him of: starting stuff. I don’t know that Anthony is an unpleasant person. All I know is that I got in a bunch of blogfights with him, which it is my sense that he mostly started. But clearly I have the bile for that behavior, so who am I to get all high-handed?
As to the ‘ladies’ business. I was thinking about this old post:
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/why_the_valve_is_so_good_plus_bonus_cfp/
I was rather proud of the graphic.
’As to the ‘ladies’ business. I was thinking about this old post.’
Ah, my deeaah Professor, what a simply ripping jape! My own little oeuvre could not hope to compete with the masculine mind at ‘full throttle’, so to speak. (Was that remark a little risqué, do you think? I blush to imagine so.)
I chanced upon this superlative publication whilst scenting a few little linen handkerchiefs and was tempted to test my feeble-wits by offering a few little English lady’s thoughts - I had no idea The Colonies had progressed so far! Whatever Mad George was thinking of letting you slip away, I cannot think but it is wonderful to see that ladies are truly valued in the ‘New World’ quite correctly by ‘invitation only’ (jolly good way of keeping out the riff-raff, too).
I shall long treasure the splendidly rendered illustration and shall attempt an embroidery of it if my husband permits. Though I fear the mere thought of the convolutions of the production of your periodical were beyond my comprehension and gave me an attack of the vapours - oh, for the mind of a man!
I just read that link Rohan posted with interest. (I lurk on The Valve but rarely comment. I am also, for what it’s worth, a woman. So there you go.)
I have talked to other women in academia who blog who have said they just don’t follow the postings at this site anymore after being turned off it, so they won’t comment/join in because they’ve left. If The Valve has changed its tone to become more welcoming, they won’t know it.
However, that only covers past readers --- the fact that women (and men) in general are still not joining in as new readers implies that, maybe there is still something off-putting or exclusionary in the tone.
Personally, I only jump in when I feel a) I can contribute something interesting and useful to the discussion or b) I have the opportunity to make bad puns. A lot of the time I’m not interested in the topic or know nothing about it. I think the George Eliot summer reading project is a wonderful idea and step in the right direction, marred only by the fact that I hated _Adam Bede_. (And I don’t have time to reread _Middlemarch_ right now.)
What if we (sorry: you) started up a series of discussions on shorter stuff, say a short poem? It has the advantage of brevity so that everyone can easily catch up if they haven’t done the reading beforehand. Maybe I could pick up tips on how to teach poetry without wanting to strangle my students.
Gosh, I’ve been out-ironied. I guess that’s what comes of being a rough colonial in Ameriky, albeit the Singaporean corner of it.
As to inviting women? whether we’ve changed our tone? I dunno. The problem, back in the day, was all the Theory stuff. We did our “Theory’s Empire” event and it’s now a book and everything and I think it’s pretty nice, “Framing Theory’s Empire”. I’m proud of it, anyway. But the comment boxes got all hot and bothered. I don’t think that was us - the authors at the time. That is, if you read the posts now it’s fairly measured in tone. I think that was us meeting a bunch of commenters who were mad, and in many cases offended by, the choice of “Theory’s Empire” for the event. Then it kind of got meta. People would show up just to fight, and then grumble off, complaining that it smelled like a locker room. So we didn’t set out to hold Fight Club. But everybody came anyway. And then everyone complained that it was Fight Club. (That’s not very Tyler Durden, if you ask me.) But this curiously persistent dynamic of people coming here to fight about Theory, and coming here to complain about the fact that fights were going on here about Theory, is what got us our reputation as a ‘masculine space’. And then, vaguely, we were forever more associated with the Theory’s Empire stuff. Even though almost all of those angry commenters have long ago gone off elsewhere, and most of our original posters have more or less retired - or at least stopped posting.
So the whole thing has gotten a bit middle-aged, perhaps. In need of some fresh excitement, perhaps. (This is supposed to be Scott K.’s problem now, but the lad is busy finishing his dissertation, or whatever he’s up to.)
Discussion of short poems? Could be, could be. The Adam Bede event seems to be going quite well. I’m not really into that, didn’t have time to try to get into it, but it’s getting a lot of interest from other people. That’s good, I’m sure.
Still talking about this? All right, I’ll chip back in, even though this is a Bill Benzon thread.
The atmosphere in comments here sucks. And, as usual, the people who complained most about it are engaging in massive feats of projection.
For instance—Sue G-J. Poor, put-upon, insulted Sue wrote this, with no apparent provocation except for her dislike of parody and her feeling that she needed to act as teacher for the thread. So now poor Sue whines about how she needed to adopt a pseudonym (it was transparent, Sue; you used the same Email address, but no one cares anyways) because, for some strange reason, this guy who had never insulted her didn’t like being called obsessive, presumptuous, and self-indulgent for writing something that was intended to be fun. When you insult people out of the blue—why, they’ll insult you back! Gee, I wonder why that is?
And saintly Bill likes to, hmm—do things like tell someone that they might want to check out Cliff’s Notes if they think the pacing in a novel doesn’t feel right.
I think that the Adam Bede event is going about as not-well as it can possibly go and still be continuing, myself, because the likes of Sue and Bill can’t just disagree with someone and present their own view and then go on. They can’t even just wait for Rohan, as discussion leader, to say “OK, now I’d rather we went on to something else”. They have to assert that something’s wrong with someone for going on for longer than they think is appropriate. Why, is there comment box rationing in effect?
And this thread? Bill didn’t get the response he wanted to a link post and to a movie review that basically said “I don’t know whether it’s art or not, but I’m thinking about it.” So he went on to say that the people who wrote something connected to those topics—though not exactly what he wanted—first had no sense of limits, then were intellectual commandos. Well, thanks there Bill. I think that it was a mistake that the Valve ever made you a poster. If you were a commenter, you’d be just another going-on-too-long guy, commenting over and over about your particular thing, just like Tony Christini, Steven Augustine, or any of the other people who you dismissed.
Lastly, I’m losing patience with the whole tone-of-the-site issue. It’s an excuse for people with ancient grudges, like Adam K., to go for one more round. But most of all, it always ends up dissing the people who actually comment here in favor of some hypothetical group of people who need to be greeted when they first comment or they won’t feel welcomed enough to comment any more. Do those people actually exist? If you read back over the thread that Rohan linked to, there are important, insightful comments by two people with the vaguest possible pseudonyms, “withheld” and “prefer not to say”, that address this. I think that people should start there if they want to go back to this issue.
Rich, I don’t apologize for still being a bit sore about being accused of helping to create an uncomfortable environment for women—I found the accusation ludicrous and insulting.
I felt that the fact that The Valve apparently continues to have the same problem was something of a vindication in that regard. I would not have brought the topic up on my own, but felt compelled to remark on it once it came up independently.
In any case, this was the second to last of my outstanding grievances against the Valve, so the whole nightmare could soon be over.
For the record, I do not think, and never thought, that either Adam Kotsko or Anthony ever created an uncomfortable environment for women.
Rich - When I started this thread, it wasn’t about you. So why are you working so hard to put yourself at the center of it?
Because you don’t control where the thread goes, Bill, evidently—it’s now persisted and transformed itself into something about Valve comments as a whole. And I don’t know any way to comment on that other than by giving my personal opinion, which I can’t pretend is some kind of impersonal view from on high. But frankly, the whole “you’re making it about you” thing is, as far as I can tell, just another dismissive gesture.
People have written before—for instance, in the thread that Rohan linked to—that they perceive barriers to entry to comment at the Valve because they feel like they need to be expert on the subject matter, and that women have especially high psychological barriers in this regard because their whole professional career involves being challenged unjustly about their expertise. Rohan said the barriers are due to a long-standing pool of people having long-standing arguments. Well, with either of those, the people who preferentially comment are going to be a self-selecting group of people who for whatever reason don’t feel those barriers. In other words, people who go on and on.
If those people aren’t good enough for you, it’s your responsibility, as poster, to moderate the comments to your liking. If you don’t want to? Then don’t insult the people who do contribute.
Rich, if I can bring it back to the two threads I stopped. It’s not the people commenting in those threads that bothered me, it was the comments themselves. They weren’t going anywhere except in circles. In the case of the Dark Knight thread, as far as I can tell, no one commenting had actually seen the movie.
As for my “intellectual commando” remark, I’m sorry if you felt insulted. But I certainly didn’t have you in mind when I made it; Steve Augustine is the one who was arguing that superhero films were, almost by definition, facist. As I recall, you took rather the opposite side on that issue. So if someone who’d seen the film had dared to comment that they liked it, I don’t think you’re the one who would have gone after them. And for all I know, maybe SA wouldn’t have either. But I know I was not going to chance defending the film myself as I did not want to take a chance on getting drawn into an argument that really didn’t interest me.