Comments on Re: Comments...

The best comments in the world have no substance whatsoever.

I'd like a ban on people posting song lyrics or poetry.

The tone of comment threads is usually set by the original post of the thread. If the original post, say by Josh or ECB, is hostile to the majority opinion, and seeks to act as if they are beneath contempt, the result will be a flame war.

On the other hand, we have people who post NSFW vids and images above the fold intentionally, for shock value, knowing that the editors are too lazy to read them and realize most of the posts are from people who are upset at the NSFW images and how badly they were abused by the poster doing such things.

It's all in the original post.

Well, except for Mr. Poe and some others, who just love to start fires ...

I'd agree with this.

Anyway, for now, I’d just like to ask some commenters to treat this more like a conversation, less like the wall in a public bathroom.

My analogy would be that it's like playing at Party Poker with fake money. If there's nothing at stake, everyone goes all in on every hand, and it's not like playing poker at all. I don't have a problem with TS censoring losers who are just out to amuse themselves and annoy 99.9% of the rest of the people. I might be tagged on that once in a while, and can live with it.

I have nothing to say on this subject.

I’m under no illusions about the likelihood of getting an unmoderated comment thread on a political blog to sound like Plato’s Symposium.

Good for you. Perhaps you might convince certain other Sloggers to no longer labor under that illusion. Perhaps you could also agree to implement user registration and comment scoring/user moderation. (Really! It works! We can downvote trolls for you! And you won't even have to worry about cries of censorship!)

Either that, or everyone could just accept, once and for all, that there will always be someone, somewhere on this vast Internet looking to piss in the pool.

YOUR WRONG! WRONG, I TELL YOU!
AND I'M TIGHT, RIGHT , RIGHT

Is ECB a commentator or a writer?

So many torn msucles from all those stretches, I forget now.

Open commentary is very important.

I was dissapointed, a little shocked and annoyed that you guys just stopped allowing comments on the whole Thomas St. Bistro "affair". Whatever the reason, it comes off that you can't handle the heat - that you're totally biased as a publication - and that you're stance as a "free wheeling" & "hip" stranger / slogosphere is total bullshit.

Other than that, you guys should maybe implement registration, real names, more precise 'moderation' and even 'tabled' moderation i.e. don't allow certain comments to be posted BUT allow those comments to be posted in a subsidiary 'bin' called "trash". check the traffic under "trash". than you can put this whole "people dont like reading that crap" and "peeing in the pool" ethos crap to the test.

Can you guys please do a daily or weekly post linking to older comment threads where there's an interesting discussion going on? Usually nobody reads comments on posts more than a couple of hours old and people miss out on some very interesting comments and potential discussions.

You'd get more than a couple hours of mileage out of your slog posts and interesting or insightful comments would actually get read.

Yes! That's a great idea and it's on our wish list for our site developers.

Allowing blog commenting is always a bad idea

I disagree about the Plato's Symposium comment. I'm sure that you could get lots of declaiming on the merits of man-boy love if you wrote a post for it.

@13 You'd think so, but sometimes online I wonder...

All and all, I'm totally for registration. If nothing else, it helps you identify which trolls are just hovering and posting a bunch to agree with their own original posts and look superior.

And, to be fair, I'm pretty middle-of-the-road, and Clinton supporters scare me more.

Free speech and democracy have already been done.

Seen it before. This is how a blog dies. True dat...