I'm policing the comments now. I've already deleted a bunch and banned several IPs, and it's amazing how much more civil the arguments are already. But apologies to any trolls who thought they had a safe harbor to troll, and wasted their precious time writing comments I deleted. There's no safe harbor. As of now, if I don't like your comment, I'll delete it.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
You tricked me! You Lying Liar, you!
Isn't this something the free market could have taken care of, Megan? Just kidding. Please don't ban me.
Good luck Megan,
I always feel bad for anyone who has to read what trolls write. I imagine that it is like picking through rancid garbage for a few pieces of edible fruit. Thanks to you and your intern for doing the dirty work. There are a lot of things you say that I don't necessarily agree with, but perhaps there can now be some actual discussion of them.
Thanks,
Sopchoppy
Megan,
Occasionally after submitting a post, I'll receive a notification that my post is pending moderation. Unsurprisingly, the post never makes its way into the thread.
What's the rule on which comments get sent into this purgatory? Now that you're actively policing the comments, is there any reason to keep doing this?
Way to go. I'm a regular reader but seldom comment, mostly because I don't want to wade through the bilious morass. Hopefully the tone lightens up a little after this.
So...don't leave us hanging. Going back to your last post before the administrative stuff ... What did your Mom say when you finally got her on the phone?
I'm still wondering if you're going to do anything about the idiots who post under other people's usernames, Megan. Or is this just about people who say mean things about you?
About time - though it was an interesting demonstration of the tragedy of the commons. If people were saying that crap about me where I worked, I'd be liable to shoot somebody.
Wow, I didn't even know that the Blood Elves and the Darkspear had even factionalized. Thrall's going to need a strong VP to hold the Horde together.
Thank you.
Oh, and there's NO hypocrisy about going on and on about libertarian and free speech, and then randomly deleting and banning people
Not if you also happen to believe in private property, there isn't. Somebody should ask our gracious hostess where she stands on it.
MoeLarryAndJesus, I am sure that your impersonators will stop bothering you now that you have forsworn the use of childish rhetoric.
ok, but what did your mother say?? What's her prediction??
Megan should have a separate blog-item category: Commenter Slapdowns.
Megan:
Was there not a great story of the guy who wrote Obama's speeches?
Why no one says: He read a great speech.
Why did all say: She read a good speech. Good delivery.
Is this a double standard? GOP and Democrat OR Male and Female?
What is the story here?
Ali
there was a great story about the guy who wrote Obama's speeches.
It's Obama.
anyway, it was in 2004 - the equivalent speech to Palin really - and its only time constraints now stop him posting.
Idiot.
What's going on here? Some of the comments civilly elucidating on the right of private entities to censor content on their own property have been purged, but an earlier comment containing the edifying term of -- ahem -- Frenchwit -- lingers on. Huh?
Chin up, Megan. There's a lot of us around that love ya.
You've been deleted twice now Matt.
Not sure why, but oh well. I need to learn not to feed the trolls sooner or later.
What's going on here?
I wonder if one of Megan's trolls is an Atlantic staff member with some access to the blog. Or maybe some kind of hacker. I am technologically impaired enough to not know if that is plausible. But "Technology Knowledge to Match Economic Knowledge" seeemed to realize the deletions had happened right away.
In any case, I doubt Megan would have deleted Matt's comments without also deleting Technology's, so something is amiss.
What confuses me is that Megan seems like a very moderate, reasoned person. I don't always agree with her, but even when she posts something I think is totally 100% offbase, I can see why she thinks the way she thinks.
Why does such a reasonable blogger attract such a vitriolic community? (I guess I should ask, why does such a reasonable community attract so many vitriolic trolls, since lots of Megan's commenters seem, like her, to be intelligent people with a variety of informed viewpoints.)
yo
Wow, a lot has gone on between yesterday and today.
Why not simply let the commentators and author choose which comments that they want to look at: banning the rest from their view?
There would be a competitive balance between various threads, some commentators who edited judiciously would attract substantive comments.
For example, if I was editing this thread, few comments would make it.
And perhaps if Finn was editing the thread, many comments would make it.
The audience would have a choice between: unedited thread, my edits, and Finn's edits. (By edits, I simply mean a binary choice to include or not.) Might be interesting to see what the crowd would pick, eh?
Like many others, I too think this is a very good decision. I've long marveled at the dichotomy between your insightful posts and the information-free "says you, smarty pants" comments.
Looking forward to a more civil discourse in the comments.
Not the most economically correct use of your time is it? Shouldnt the lower value intern be doing this?
Think of the opportunity cost!
Anyway, I\'m off to bed.
Night night
In short, being smart enough to think critically, and also smart enough to express the results of that virtue in an engaging matter, might just deeply annoy those who are incapable of either.
My hypothesis on MM's ability to attract such total, utter crap in her comment threads is echoed perfectly in Chapter 10 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the most relevant part of which is quoted below:
The question is why does Megan attract trolls like rotting meat attracts maggots? And why liberal trolls in particular? I think partly because of life story - she is an apostate, raised for a liberal sensibility in New York City, Ivy education, and now gone off the rails. She is also a really good popularizer, explaining mainstream economics and the consequences of dopey (as she sees them) policy choices, and why the lunch is never free.
So, a threat to people's comfortable, settled world view.
If only there were a superhero for this role ...
Because by all normal rules of American culture, McArdle ought to be a progressive. She's from the City, ivy educated with a frikkin English degree, single, female, and press-employed. This demographic will probably vote Democratic about 50:1. Most of them are true believers, the sort of people for whom Barack Obama is a messiah figure.
And yet -- she is not progressive. This is a deep affront to progressives, far more so than the knuckledragging know-nothings in flyover. To a true-believing progressive (as with other universalist religions), there is only one valid reason why a person is not progressive: ignorance. Megan can be accused of that, of course, and it is probably the most common charge of her detractors. But it is hard to maintain that she is ignorant of the Good News about progressivism, when she clearly isn't. She has rejected it, at least to a degree (she still claims she'll vote for Obama: shame!). Rejection is based on disagreement, and disagreement about religion from someone who by all rights ought to be in the church is apostasy.
Many true believers (of many faiths) believe that apostasy ought to be punished, and they often do it in anarchic fashion. It seems to be a human universal. I'd guess there's a deep-seated mental module for assessing in and outgroups, and feelings that are designed to punish traitors.
Megan, if you are banning IPs, I hope you're being careful to check where they are. Banning, say comcast.net, would affect a lot of innocents.
But, good for you taking this on. Like Leonard, I can't figure why you're not a liberal either. I think your having comments is a commendably liberal instinct, however. I notice most conservatives, other than the really nasty ones, don't like to have their readership talk back.
Leonard writes: "Most of them are true believers, the sort of people for whom Barack Obama is a messiah figure."
That's an idiotic statement, which is, of course, why so many idiots are repeating it. I'd just like to point out that on Leonard's blog he links to the execrable Steve Sailer. Just so you know where Lenny's anti-Obama stance is coming from.
The white cowl collection in his closet is very impressive, I'll bet.