As a general rule, I avoid aggressive monitoring of comments. Megan McArdle explains my reasoning well in describing her own similar policy:
As y’all know, I exercise a pretty light hand on the comments section. That’s a tough choice. I could probably have a more civil comments section if I were more willing to delete nasty comments and ban trolls.
On the other hand, I don’t trust myself in the position of censor.... One will always find most outrageous those people who disagree with one’s own pet notions. If I started deleting comments, the net effect would be to pull the comments section towards agreeing with my particular brand of libertarianish, market-loving philosophy. This is not, to my mind, the point of the comments section. So I delete comments only when they are obscene or intolerably nasty; I ban people only when they have a history of repeatedly derailing threads, defaming my family, or similarly doing things that would get them kicked out of any decent private home.
So I have to ask you guys to do it for me. Play nice. Don’t call people names–any names, not just profane ones. Don’t characterize people as having bad motives. Don’t make absurd statements about how liberals, Republicans, or some other group are less virtuous, clever, empathetic, rational, pragmatic, civic-spirited, patriotic and so forth, than the fine, upstanding Americans on your side.
In the first place, it’s incredibly rude. In the second place, it’s basically never true..... And in the third place, while you lightheartedly believe that you are opening your opponents to justified ridicule, in reality all you achieve is to start everyone else snickering at you, because you sound like such a bigoted, arrogant fool.
I disagree slightly with Megan’s analogy between comment moderation and government censorship. The latter is far more dangerous than the former. Nonetheless, aggressive moderation is problematic for the reasons she describes. I also agree with Megan’s point about comments that attack motives, and would add that even if your opponents really do have bad intentions, that doesn’t prove their arguments are wrong, so it doesn’t really help make your case.
I could perhaps overcome the tendency to favor commenters who support my own views by adopting consistent bright line rules (e.g. — ban anyone who call anyone else an “idiot” or “unpatriotic”). But such rules have serious shortcomings of their own: they are insensitive to nuance and context, and can be cleverly circumvented once they become known (e.g. — using various euphemisms to substitute for “idiot”). A related problem is that I don’t want to devote my limited blogging time to careful analysis of comments to determine which ones deserve to be deleted, issued warnings, and so on. I think both my goals and those of the readers will be better served if I devote as much of my blogging time as possible to actually writing posts.
For these reasons, I rely mostly on the good sense of commenters and social norms (weak as they often are on the internet) to police the comments. I only ban people in very extreme cases, and have resorted to it only about three or four times since I’ve been on the VC. I’ve probably deleted individual comments only a handful more times than that.
That said, if the proportion of obnoxious and stupid comments gets high enough, I could rethink my tolerant policies. If at all possible, I prefer to use the velvet glove to deal with commenters. But if really necessary, I reserve the right to bring out the iron fist.
UPDATE: Steve Bainbridge responds to this post here:
My policy on comment moderation is based on the moment in the 1980 Presidential campaign when Ronald Reagan declared “I paid for this microphone.”
This is not a public forum. I pay for it. So there are no rules. There is simply an arbitrary despotism in which freedom of speech depends mainly on how cranky I’m feeling at the moment. Granted, long time readers get more slack than newbies, but nobody has a “right” to be heard in this space any more than you would in my house. If you think that’s censorship, you’re wrong. It’s just private property.
Bainbridge misunderstands my argument. I don’t claim that anyone has a legal right to comment at the VC. To the contrary, the other bloggers and I have the right to delete whatever comments we want, for any reason we want. That’s why I said in the original post that I reserve the right to use the “iron fist” against obnoxious commenters if necessary.
My point, rather, is that aggressive comment moderation is likely to defeat the purpose of allowing comments in the first place, for the reasons Megan McArdle points out. The blogger will tend to treat comments antithetical to his views more negatively than those supporting them, which in turn will undermine the objective of having a free discussion with various sides represented. Aggressive moderation also strikes me as a poor use of my blogging time relative to writing more and better posts. Thus, I will only resort to it if things get so bad that there is no alternative. Even then, I might simply prefer to shut down comments entirely rather than spend a lot of time policing them. Ultimately, I blog primarily to express my views, not to supervise the way others express theirs.
Randy says:
I would like to comment on the comment policy, but that would seem like I’m entering a house of mirrors.
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February 6, 2010, 7:30 pmRobert Bloomfield says:
Randy captures the dilemma, which I will solve by linking to the distillation of every post ever written (with a comment thread to match.
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February 6, 2010, 7:42 pmzuch says:
Prof. Somin:
Few people have a motive to do actual evil (at least in their eyes), and those that do generally don’t post here.
But what about pecuniary motives? Is “follow the money” an attack? And, for a libertarian, is alleging a pecuniary motive an attack? ... or a compliment....
Cheers,
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February 6, 2010, 8:35 pmAnon Y. Mous says:
This post would have been way funnier if it was put up by Barnett or Lindgren.
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February 6, 2010, 8:36 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Annoying but true: There are very few comment-permitting blogs that even touch on political subjects where (1) the commenters don’t almost all come from one political perspective; (2) the commenters are generally civil; and (3) the commenters number more than half a dozen. This is (obviously) one of them.
McArdle’s Asymmetrical Information was in some ways more readable before it became an Atlantic feature. She had readers well to her left who gave her grief in the comments, but they were fewer, more intelligent, and less nasty.
Ann Althouse’s blog has a few annoying trolls and a few knee-jerk commenters of diverse political persuasions (plus a few impossible-to-describe denizens I have never seen anywhere else). But there again the political discussion seems to be substantive, relatively evenhanded, and seldom derailed.
Any other nominations?
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February 6, 2010, 8:42 pmDesiderius says:
Ilya,
Your comment policy also gives you a competitive advantage over other blogs.
Back when the interwebs were a libertarian playground and conventional liberals like Atrios, BillMon, Brad DeLong, et. al. first entered the scene, I assumed that they would pick up on (and even relish — being, you know, liberals) the tolerant atmosphere that had been the norm before their arrival.
The fact that they took a decidedly more active approach to cleansing their comment sections may have contributed to their long-term stultification.
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February 6, 2010, 8:54 pmOrin Kerr says:
Ilya:
I think it’s also worth noting that you blog on a group blog with some co-bloggers who are willing to volunteer more of their free time and effort moderating comment threads than you are. This permits free-riding: Given that the commenters tend to leave comments on threads of several different bloggers, you can benefit from the moderating efforts of co-bloggers without having to waste that time yourself. ;-)
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February 6, 2010, 9:19 pmjuris imprudent says:
Just a guess, but I would assume that Internet commentary, like academic politics, turns so nasty because so very little is at stake.
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February 6, 2010, 9:20 pmTCO says:
I think you are able to keep a pretty high tone here, because most of the fucking morons are just too lazy to read and think...so they head off to Just One Minute or Powerline and jerk each other off over there.
Usually I can’t even get a rise out of people over here. I guess they are too smart for me. I did enjoy that one time, I was driving a wedge between the co-authors by getting after that one blogger (forget his name) who always posts crap and then locks the comments (what a coward that guy is).
:) :)
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February 6, 2010, 9:56 pmzuch says:
Huh? I know that A’mur’kah invented constitutions and has the patent on democracy, but libertarians being the first denizens of the InterToobz?!?!? I suspect you have no acquaintance with UseNet....
Cheers,
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February 6, 2010, 9:58 pmNorthern Dave says:
Off to the “Scotsman” with ye :-)
On a serious note, the Glasgow Herald pulled the comment section as far as I can tell simply because the concrete information the commenters were giving consistently undermined the bias vector of the articles. The control of information — especially information sources considered reliable (eg I give the Speigel a fair amount of reliability for getting information on German issues and/or at least German points of view) — is a very, very high stakes game. On the ironic side, I rarely read the Herald any more as I have devalued their informational value since the check-and-balance that was the comments allowed after the articles has been removed.
I have found the Volokh to be a very respectful community, especially considering the strength of feeling with regard to contentious issues that posters will of course have.
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February 6, 2010, 10:09 pmNorthern Dave says:
Careful Zuch!
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-wants-ban-on-usenet-talk-091210/
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February 6, 2010, 10:11 pmChris Travers says:
On the LedgerSMB email lists (albeit not political lists but programmers are especially known to wage holy wars over inconsequential details), we take the following policy:
1) We post a “play nice” message from time to time.
2) If someone crosses the line, we send a warning. I have had to send maybe 5 warnings in 3 years.
Warnings are terse: “You are in violation of our community policy. You have been warned.”
3) In the event we ban, we do not generally delete the offending messages. There are exceptions (legally sensitive bits and spam) but in general we think it is better to allow a reference as to who got banned and why than to delete it. If we ban, it is public and the posts remain unless there is a different reason to delete them.
4) If one is involved in an argument and someone turns nasty, we get someone ELSE to send the warning.
We have had a couple cases where people left after getting out of hand (voluntarily), and other cases where fairly strong messages had to be made to some other individuals who stayed around. Thus far when folks realize their behavior truly is uniformly undesirable, they are more than happy to leave instead of fight it out with us.
We also make it clear we all discuss these cases beforehand so folks can’t play mommy against daddy.
As in many things, this isn’t the only way to handle things. There are other ways. I would suggest that arguments over being banned though be left ON the forums and when someone is banned, public notice is provided there as well
In general, though, I have to say you guys do an excellent job of moderating comments.
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February 6, 2010, 10:13 pmleo marvin says:
I don’t think that’s true if one is really intent on pruning only for civility. The most offensive comments seem to come as often from like-minded defenders of the ideological realm as from critics.
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February 6, 2010, 10:18 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
zuch,
I know that A’mur’kah invented constitutions and has the patent on democracy, but libertarians being the first denizens of the InterToobz?!?!? I suspect you have no acquaintance with UseNet....
I spent a lot of time on UseNet back in the day, and the bits I frequented could very easily be described as a “libertarian playground” — but only in the sense that present-day Somalia could be described so. “The war of all against all” but faintly describes rec.music.classical, let alone the abortion-politics forum I read for a while.
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February 6, 2010, 10:20 pmNorthern Dave says:
ditto for talk.politics.mideast — I didn’t spend very much time there as there was so much in sci.physics and its sub-groups that was worthwhile (mind you it was very much buyer beware.....I’d say most libertarians would be happy with the level of freedom)
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February 6, 2010, 10:26 pmMark Field says:
And isn’t that just like a libertarian?
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February 6, 2010, 10:48 pmNorthern Dave says:
You, you Centerist!
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February 6, 2010, 10:55 pmIlya Somin says:
I think it’s also worth noting that you blog on a group blog with some co-bloggers who are willing to volunteer more of their free time and effort moderating comment threads than you are. This permits free-riding: Given that the commenters tend to leave comments on threads of several different bloggers, you can benefit from the moderating efforts of co-bloggers without having to waste that time yourself. ;-)
You call it free-riding. I call it division of labor. By spending less time moderating, I can write more and better posts.
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February 6, 2010, 11:02 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Well, since we’ve found a solid externality, obviously we need a federal criminal law to force Professor Somin to pursue an aggressive comment censorship policy — in the name of civility, of course.
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February 6, 2010, 11:07 pmAn Excellent Comment on Comment Moderation | Liberal Whoppers says:
[...] more here: An Excellent Comment on Comment Moderation [...]
Mark Field says:
Come the Revolution and you’ll ... well, it’s a centrist revolution so you’re probably pretty safe.
Damn. I have this feeling Lenin would handle a situation like this much more firmly.
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February 6, 2010, 11:56 pmChrisIowa says:
I suppose that in this case, moderation in defense of justice would be a virtue. However, it would still be the case that extremism in defense of liberty is no vise.
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February 7, 2010, 12:18 amSebastian says:
You could always just try an iron glove, with a velvet lining.
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February 7, 2010, 12:22 amSteve Bainbridge says:
Speaking as a fellow blogger, and with all due deference, I can only say: poppycock.
My policy on comment moderation is based on the moment in the 1980 Presidential campaign when Ronald Reagan declared “I paid for this microphone.”
ProfessorBainbridge.com is not a public forum. I pay for it. So there are no rules. There is simply an arbitrary despotism in which freedom of speech depends mainly on how cranky I’m feeling at the moment. Granted, long time readers get more slack than newbies, but nobody has a “right” to be heard in that space any more than you would in my house.
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February 7, 2010, 1:03 amfjfjfjfjfjfjfj says:
Somin writes:
This excerpt epitomizes the fallacy in volokh.com’s hands-off approach to comment moderation: by failing to moderate comments, the site simply externalizes the costs of bad comments onto its readers.
Allowing bad comments in comments threads has dramatically harmed the quality of discourse on the entire blog because it forces readers to spend much more of their own time filtering out bad comments. Busy and productive readers tend not to have time for this, and thus tend not to comment. So valuable comments are lost.
In other words, it’s not that relevant whether it takes more of Somin’s or Volokh’s time to moderate. What matters is whether it is efficient for one moderator to read a bad comment once, and delete it, whether by contrast a thousand people each have to read and disregard the bad comment. Obviously the former option is more efficient and should be chosen.
It’s true in the early days of blogging and the web there were social norms operating that tended to limit comments to being halfway reasonable. Those days are long gone.
Nobody is forcing you to make blog posts. But if you do, you should take the time to eliminate irrelevant or trolling or sloppy comments. If you don’t, it’s best not to have comments at all.
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February 7, 2010, 1:21 amOrin Kerr says:
You call it free-riding. I call it division of labor. By spending less time moderating, I can write more and better posts.
I suppose that’s true of all free-riding: Not spending resources on a common good frees up resources that can be spent in some other way the person prefers.
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February 7, 2010, 1:24 amzuch says:
Maybe not everyone values this “common good” the same (if at all). Which would ‘justify’ different levels of investment/participation.
Cheers,
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February 7, 2010, 1:46 amzuch says:
What’s really weird is that some comments here belong on this post’s threads, and some from them belong here. Comment policy and libertarianism: a marriage made in heaven....
Cheers,
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February 7, 2010, 1:49 amzuch says:
Indeed. And I have my candidates for removal. You might cavil, but you’ll have to do it someplace else. ;-)
Cheers,
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February 7, 2010, 1:56 amArkady says:
Ah, nostalgia. Usenet, comments, and flamewars. Nothing I’ve ever read in blog comments comes close to the glorious infernos one would encounter on, say, comp.sys.macintosh.advocacy. The nearest thing I’ve found to those in this new age of the internets is some of the comment threads on musical Youtubes. Alas, the quality of those comments is decidedly lower than what I recall of the mac/pc flamewars of yore, pathetically lower. Sad.
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February 7, 2010, 6:50 amHans Clapton says:
*dips toe in water*...
(tick tick tick...)
phew!
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February 7, 2010, 8:25 amDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“I have this feeling Lenin would handle a situation like this much more firmly.”
Heh. Had we libertarians murdered your brother, no doubt your spark would burn more brightly...
LM,
“‘One will always find most outrageous those people who disagree with one’s own pet notions. If I started deleting comments, the net effect would be to pull the comments section towards agreeing with my particular brand of libertarianish, market-loving philosophy.’
I don’t think that’s true if one is really intent on pruning only for civility. The most offensive comments seem to come as often from like-minded defenders of the ideological realm as from critics.”
Well, it’s as much about temperament as ideology (see Zuch’s execrable bigotry, and utter lack of self-awareness, for instance; likewise with, say, Dangermouse). A market-loving tilt would not be lessened by letting go the haters, even left-haters.
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February 7, 2010, 9:04 amMark Field says:
The newest libertarian slogan: Free ride and call it a free market.
Well, in the particular case of my brother....
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February 7, 2010, 10:44 ampublic_defender says:
I suspect that, almost every time, a Volokh blogger who deletes a comment is doing the commentator a favor by removing the record of something the commentator will (or should) regret.
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February 7, 2010, 11:17 amChris Travers says:
The only issue with deleting posts is that it makes the censorship opaque. This leads to two things which (where I moderate forums elsewhere) I would just as soon avoid:
1) There is a bit of a feeling of being personally targetted and the loss of the post means the individual can’t come back later and re-evaluate.
2) It isn’t clear to anyone except those who pay close attention to the forum what actually happened, so you lose some deterrent value.
In general, the Conspirators do a pretty darned good job of moderating fairly here. I have watched exactly two people get banned where I could see what was going on.
However, I have been involved in online communities which were NOT fairly moderated in the past though, and a little transparency would have helped everyone see what was going on much faster. I remember being silently (and without warning) being silently banned from the SQL-Ledger lists (SQL-Ledger is an open source project aimed at providing small-business financial accounting software) with no warning or message simply because the moderator thought I was a threat to his control. He wanted a captive audience and I didn’t want to see that, so I tried to work with him on opening up things..... I ended up becoming a far greater threat simply because I was shut out though.
There is one area where I disagree with Illya though:
Good governance is good governance, and online communities must be governed like tiny countries. Some are run by dictatorial juntas (as in here), some by dictators (Linux used to be, but is becoming more republican as time goes on), some are democracies (Debian), and some (like the LedgerSMB project or the PostgreSQL project) are outright republics. Many of the dictatorships can be benevolant, so this isn’t meant as a criticism of the VC bloggers.
The only difference between owner censorship and government censorship is that one can easily vote with one’s feet and avoid problems. Hence dictators must be benevolent if they want to succeed or folks will just go elsewhere. (Indeed dictatorial and republican models generally work better than democracies on this scale, where folks can so easily vote with their feet.)
A good way to think of the internet is as a bunch of tiny countries with perfectly or nearly perfectly open borders.
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February 7, 2010, 1:29 pmzuch says:
I dunno. Maybe comp.sys.micro$oft.sux?
But alt.fan.karl-malden-nose was always — ummm, “interesting”, as were the Meowers on alt.flame. They’d put the best trolls here to flame/shame.
Then there’s Riley M. Sinder. ;-) “Riley” was famous for quasi-‘legal’ argumentation, and would fit in well here.
Cheers,
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February 7, 2010, 1:32 pmzuch says:
Really? Where? I just don’t see it. Of course, I am labouring under his debility:
Thank goodness for InterToobz diagnosis. Might you put that talent to better use elsewhere?
Cheers,
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February 7, 2010, 1:46 pmpublic_defender says:
A little opacity is fine with me. If a drunk crashes a party I’m at in someone’s home, I’m grateful to the host if he or she can escort the person out without the rest of us noticing.
And I don’t think the Conspirators come even close to “abusing” their power. I’ve sometimes made harsh comments, and I’ve never seen them deleted. All of the Conspirators who allow comments seem to welcome them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be Conspirators on this blog.
I also suspect that they generally are a little harsher on people they agree with than disagree with. They are here because they like to debate and argue, and you can’t do that with people who always agree with you.
I don think that lawyers and law students have a little bit of an advantage because the conspirators are lawyers and law professors. There is an art to making a tough legal argument. And a tough argument framed in the way lawyers are framed is less likely to get deleted.
In the end, I enjoy reading thoughtful comments, but I won’t wade through a bunch of name calling. The Conspirators are a little likely editors at a newspaper. They keep thinks on topic and worth reading. There are plenty of places for free-for-all’s. I’m glad this isn’t one of them.
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February 7, 2010, 2:37 pmmattski says:
WAYTA???
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February 7, 2010, 4:37 pmjuris imprudent says:
ChrisIowa sez However, it would still be the case that extremism in defense of liberty is no vise.
I’m afraid you’ve wrenched that quote out of context!
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February 7, 2010, 4:51 pmTCO says:
I think the conspirators here are are tip-top. Have no complaint about the posts of mine that have been deleted. They are honestly of the type that can allow their opponents to post without abusing censorship. I find other places that the host’s desire to have the last word, makes them eventually censor those that they disagree with. (And I have observed that they do this both when the other side is an idiot who just won’t admit it, AND when the host is arguably wrong.)
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February 7, 2010, 5:07 pmIlya Somin says:
In other words, it’s not that relevant whether it takes more of Somin’s or Volokh’s time to moderate. What matters is whether it is efficient for one moderator to read a bad comment once, and delete it, whether by contrast a thousand people each have to read and disregard the bad comment. Obviously the former option is more efficient and should be chosen.
Readers who are that afraid of reading bad comments can simply stick to reading the posts, which is what many readers probably do anyway.
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February 7, 2010, 6:44 pmIlya Somin says:
Orin writes:
I suppose that’s true of all free-riding: Not spending resources on a common good frees up resources that can be spent in some other way the person prefers.
I think there are a couple other issues here that go beyond simple “free-riding”:
1. I have a more tolerant approach to moderation than Orin does.
2. I would prefer to spend more of my time posting and less time moderating even if that meant that no one would do the latter. Posting is a vastly more productive activity than moderating (at least once moderating goes beyond more than a very minimal investment).
Thus, it’s not simply a matter of free-riding on a public good. It’s a genuine difference of opinion on 1) the scope of the good in question, and 2) how valuable it is relative to the opportunity costs of producing it.
I try not to lose sight of the fact that we have some 40,000 readers per day, of whom only a fraction write comments and/or read them in detail. I want to devote the lion’s share of my effort to the majority of readers who mostly or exclusively read just the posts.
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February 7, 2010, 6:48 pmDesiderius says:
Mattski,
“I know that A’mur’kah invented constitutions and has the patent on democracy”
Should I bust out my Cockney, or would that be as ludicrous as Zuch’s latest turd?
Still trying to figure out what he thought his gratuitous slur had to do with my original point...
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February 7, 2010, 6:50 pmChris Travers says:
First, I never said the Conspirators abuse power. In fact, I would hope it was clear from my post that I thought they did an excellent job. I don’t see my approach as the One True Way so much as being different and hence useful regarding food for thought.
One thing I see Illya saying in these posts is that if it becomes a problem, a harder line will be towed. This is reasonable. Some conspirators (Cassel, Bernstein) tend to be better at provoking incivility than others, while others (Kerr, Somin, Volokh) tend to be better at avoiding such provocation.
The eventual goal of all moderation efforts is to ensure that the long-term noise-to-signal ration is minimized. Nobody (neither myself nor the Conspirators, despite our different styles) would want to see a blog overrun by namecalling. The question is fundamentally “what works.”
It’s one thing to be a dictator in North Korea where citizens usually can’t get out. It is something very different to be a dictator in an online community where folks can easily vote with their feet by going somewhere else. In the former case, you can be as brutal as you think necessary. In the latter, if you aren’t really good and deserving of your dictatorial powers, and wise in how you use them, folks simply desert. The success of the VC blog shows the conspirators are not abusing power.
I actually mentioned this because it tied into many of Illya’s previous posts and might provide more thoughts regarding philosophy of governance. After all, it means that in a society of open borders, dictatorship becomes a lot less threatening because the people have an upper hand in bargaining.... It means further that “voting with feet” explains this difference here as well.
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February 7, 2010, 7:11 pm2 4A hea d Dot Com says:
You know what’s hilarious? A comment I left on this thread was deleted and so too have been the other comments I’ve left on this site (at least under my latest domain name; I’ve been commenting here for seven years).
I left a comment about this at Althouse’s: preview.tinyurl.com/ylz43o2
And, of course, I’ll be posting about this on Monday and harping on it for a long time.
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February 7, 2010, 9:45 pmEric Rasmusen says:
Iya Somin said,
Don’t be too sure of that. My prediction is that some time in the future people will realize that the comments sections of blogs can be even better than the posts themselves, and bloggers will come to act more as editors than as authors. When I used to read Commentary (and perhaps still–I just got out of the habit), I found their letters to the editor section as good as the articles, because they’d print interesting (if often wrong) letters and then have the article author do a wrap-up reply to them all.
But that requires very heavy comment moderation. To have a truly good comments section, the blogger would have to throw out at least 2/3 of current comments– which would take him little time, actually– since most comments are by people with no real information or knowledge and displaying no wit or thought. That’s OK– that’s the current expectation, but I hope for a better set of commenting customs.
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February 7, 2010, 10:24 pmChrisTS says:
Desiderius:
I think Mattski’s ‘question’ referred to the ascription of ‘execrable bigotry’ to Zuch.
I know Zuch annoys some people, but I agree with Mattski that the ascription just seems.. over the top and off the mark. (Bigoted about what, for example?)
That said, it seems to me that a regular reader can decide whose scomments to ignore. I cannot agree with fjfjfjfjfjfjfj (?) about distributing the effort. Why should the VCers have to moderate more than they wish to? They are already providing a service that, it seems, many of us appreciate. If I come to the conclusion that commenter X usually writes offensive or foolish things, I can just skip over her/his comments.
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February 7, 2010, 10:32 pmzuch says:
Desiderius seems to be trying to establish the limits on moderator tolerance for ad hominem attacks. I think that’s all he’s really about here.
Cheers,
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February 8, 2010, 1:59 amzuch says:
It might help you a bit if you didn’t snip the rest of my friggin’ sentence:
I was just pointing out some other popular misconceptions....
Cheers,
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February 8, 2010, 2:10 amzuch says:
The thought occurs to me that perhaps Desiderius thought this phrase showed my bigotry and lack of self-awareness:
But once again, I don’t understand the reason for any such conclusion. Does he think I was attacking him (and the other proud A’mur’kans that aren’t otherwise engaged in Nashville)? To be sure, I have no idea if Desiderius is an A’mur’kan. “Desiderius”.... isn’t that a Soviet name?....
Cheers,
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February 8, 2010, 10:58 amEric Rasmusen says:
A commentor said:
“The only difference between owner censorship and government censorship is that one can easily vote with one’s feet and avoid problems. Hence dictators must be benevolent if they want to succeed or folks will just go elsewhere.”
There is another, fundamental, difference. If the owner is deciding on a comment policy, he knows whether he is benevolent or unfair. If he is unfair, he’ll be unfair and it doesn’t matter what his stated policy is, because he can violate it with impunity. If he is benevolent, then he should exercise his benevolence by deleting comments as appropriate. I can’t see why someone who thinks they are fair should hold back, unless they believe they are too unconsciously biased to be able to tell whether *any* post is useless.
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February 8, 2010, 11:02 amChris Travers says:
How is this a fundamental difference between government censorship and blog comment moderation?
I am sure that Prof. Somin realizes that whatever is good for him is good for the Volokh Conspiracy ;-) (See the exchange with Prof. Kerr above.)
The differences are not in nature, but in the fact that the blog owner MUST cultivate a valuable resource to draw folks in (who vote with their feet by showing up). This is where the check against abuse occurs. Abuse leads to failure. Success is a good indication of either a lack of options or a lack of abuse.
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February 8, 2010, 11:52 amJMA says:
Hahaha! zuch, as much as is astonishes me to say this, that was a beautiful point. :)
“Maybe not everyone values this “common good” the same (if at all). Which would ‘justify’ different levels of investment/participation.”
:D
When I blog, I don’t delete comments. I do reserve the right to *edit* them. [insert evil cackling here]
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February 8, 2010, 3:27 pmDesiderius says:
Zuch,
“Does he think I was attacking him”
So bigotry is only execrable when one is being personally attacked?
Don’t play dumb. I’ve heard my share of nigger jokes cracked only to be followed by furious backpedaling when the jokester was called out to recognize the malice behind your slur. Keep your Tory (yes, of course, you’re Labour, try acting it) arrogance to the local polytechnic faculty lounge, where it belongs.
It doesn’t here.
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February 8, 2010, 5:18 pmDesiderius says:
And, yes, I’m familiar with UseNet. and listservs. and BBS’s.
The point of flamewars was that they weren’t, you know, actual wars. No one was actually hurt. Unlike, say, Somalia. The libertarian commitment to the open exchange of ideas in action. The comment cleansing policies of ostensibly “liberal” blogs stood in stark contrast.
As for the Somalian meme, it, well, misses the whole animating spirit of why libertarians are libertarian. The one thing we agree on is that the state should have a monopoly on coercion for the maintenance of order* (unlike, say, in Somalia), which is why we are not so excited about state involvement in walks of life that don’t benefit so much from either monopolies or coercion...
* — yeah, whatever, ask the libertarians on this blog.
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February 8, 2010, 5:28 pmjerry says:
Just this past weekend, a website I really enjoyed and found valuable took down their comments because it was too much a hassle to deal with.
And yet, I find all sorts of comments, friendly and foul to be very valuable.
It’s the spam I dislike.
But while it’s not often that technology can solve social problems, I truly truly truly truly have no idea why bloggers put up with such terrible, shitty, crappy, lousy, commenting systems.
Slashdot got it right in Commander Taco’s garage years ago and none of you jerky self-important bloggers will demand of your software vendors a commenting system that is 1/1000th as good as his.
Take all your worries about censorship and stuff them where the sun don’t shine, and let random groups of registered readers mod up/mod down/hide comments, and then let another group meta-moderate those moderators.
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February 8, 2010, 9:22 pmChris Travers says:
I am going to add something to this. The major issue here is that very often times flame wars surface because of deep-seated differences and there is a need to exchange thoughts (sometimes in a heated way) on those differences. Additionally, one can type so fast that it is easy to give the wrong impression (have an edge where it is really the bad day you had at work, etc).....
Even the most civil online communities I have been in have occasionally had flame wars. They happen. They are a force of nature. And often things, despite the namecalling and hostilities, the posts have real value.
I always tell folks that they should run their blogs how they would want to run a government agency.....
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February 9, 2010, 12:23 amzuch says:
I don’t listen to Rooskies.
But I think you mistake “ridicule” for “malice”.
Cheers,
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February 9, 2010, 11:25 amzuch says:
Flonking is actually quite painful.
But IIRC, there wasn’t any point to flamewars, much less the one you suggest.
What does that have to do with the price of theophylline in Sri Lanka?
I’d advert to my original statement (the one you seemed to take umbrage at):
Yes, indeed. It was “libertarians” that invented “open exchange of ideas” (unlike mere “liberals”, despite a couple centuries’ head start). Particularly, IIRC, the Objectionists. They could be relied on for many months of “open exchange” — but managed to exhaust the InterToobz’s supply of “>” characters. Some RAM chips had the pattern ‘00111110’ burned in so hard that bit errors started occurring when anything else was typed.
You mean in stark contrast to blogs like “Instapundit”, “Powerline”, and such, which avoided such cleansing by not allowing comments to begin with?
Cheers,
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February 9, 2010, 11:41 am