I thought long and hard about this, as I'm sure this will cost me some commenters. But it's simply gotten out of hand. Every time I've gotten a link from certain liberal blogs, I've gotten a flood of commenters who believe it is the height of wit to call me (or other commenters) names, or speculate on the wilder details of my sex life. Over time, those commenters have accumulated, and they're now chasing away people who want to have a conversation beyond "Here's what I hate about [liberals/conservatives]!" or spewing insults at a third grade reading level.
The rules for banning commenters remain in force. Sock puppeting other commenters will no longer be possible, but constantly derailing threads in a hostile way, using excessive profanity, attacking other commenters rather than their ideas, and a pig-headed refusal to concede even small points which ends up derailing threads into pointless backs-and-forths are all on the potential hit-list. I'll ask my large population of cherished commenters to avoid responding to the small number of offenders. I'll take care of them. I always warn before I ban--but a number of the commenters have been warned, so please be advised that it is now easier than ever before to flick off your access if I think you are being disruptive.
No doubt a number of you are sure that this is all about deflecting criticism of myself--and you are free to express that view in the comments to this post, if you can do it without getting excessively personal. All I can say is, I've run open comments for eight years--and I don't feel that I am legally or morally obligated to spend precious minutes of my lives deleting graphic references to my gender, person, or private life.
Megan,
I absolutely despise registering for sites, since it seems, in general, to generate spam, but this is the one blog I'd make an exception for. It's sad, but expected, that soon or later, everyone will have to do this too.
Thinking about that further, maybe I'm wrong.... perhaps its good that if you want to be a jerk, you'll have to stand up and identify yourself directly. Maybe anonomity is a bane to intelligent discourse.
Doug
Registered comments tend to create a large pool of voices shouting in agreement with one another. That might be better than a large pool of idiots screaming insults at you, but I hope you consider this change as an experiment, and watch to see if you get fewer intelligent dissents.
Megan,
Thanks for doing this. The personal attacks were getting ridiculous.
Great. Now, can you do something like this?
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-04/st_thompsonFantastic article. I was unaware of any sites that used disemvoweling other than The Consumerist. It's a pretty good compromise between those wishing for good discourse and those who would cry censorship. The problem still lies in identifying abusive comments. The stakes for preventing a political majority from declaring minority comments as trolling is high and any site with a large commenting community (as whitehouse.gov inevitably would be) needs humans in the background. We all know what that leads to.
Life is messy.
"Disemvoweling" is a particularly cowardly practice that I've seen over at BoingBoing applied to those who raise disagreements with the groupthink. There are definitely legitimate reasons to ban people or delete comments, but those only involve commercial spam, those who are way, way, way over the top, those who copy 'n' paste the same thing over and over, those who make threats or divulge personal information, and so on.
Any other form of banning/deletion is simply an attempt to enforce groupthink and is a strong indicator that the blogger realizes their arguments won't hold water. Junky entries result in low-wattage food fights; better entries attract better commenters who know enough to ignore those who are simply trolling.
P.S. There's a list of sites that have banned me or delete comments here; see if you can find an exception to my rules above:
http://24ahead.com/s/deleted-comments
I'm not very fond of registration either, but it beats the alternatives: rampant trolling / flaming or no comments altogether.
This won't solve all the problems, but it will at least inconvenience those who come here to start trouble. A good thing IMHO.
I refuse to commit myself not to making personal attacks, but I solemnly promise to make them as witty and urbane as possible. You won't be all, "Hey! That hurt my feelings!" but more like "Hey! Is that Dick Cavett on my blog?" It'll be great, trust me.
zzrr: I try to cultivate dissenters like Brooksfoe and Freddie, who get quite angry at me, but don't make it too personal. On the other hand, I agree that self-auditing is always hard, and believe it or not, I worry about this quite a bit. So if you--or any of the other commenters here--think that I'm creating a land of yes men, please tell me.
Don't forget you can't trust your new commentators' opinion on this. It is, after all, the feedback of people who bothered to register. So, it's kind of pointless, right? If you do create a land of yes men, you'll never hear it from the yes men themselves. Anyway, just wanted to say I agree with your decision, Megan (yikes!).
Precious minutes of your lives? Either you're a cat, or you have multiple personalities. I doubt you meant to let that one slip out.
Oopsy daisy.
Here's hoping this improves commentary
I don't feel that I am legally or morally obligated to spend precious minutes of my lives deleting graphic references to my gender, person, or private life.
Either you're quite good at it or I'm not paying attention because I haven't noticed your comment section being particularly unruly. Of course, now that I've typed that, it occurs to me that if there are a large number of comments, I rarely read more than the first handful. Mabye those are the problem threads.
Good move.
Uh oh, I've already turned into a yes man!
I don't think *you* will create a pool of yes men-- you seem fair-minded to me. Rather, I think that commenters will do it themselves. Those who disagree are less likely to sign up. Those who sign up are less likely to post their thoughts in disagreement.
Registration is a good idea for most blogs. Not just because of its filtering function, but because it helps to align commenters with stable identities (whether their real names or stable pseudonyms). Sockpuppets, faceless guests, and so on are a really corrosive force in most commentariats.
But two notes of caution:
1) If the writer of a blog sets a standard of minimum civility (wherever they set it), the author has got to work very hard at enforcing it in all directions, at all commenters. Which has to include people who otherwise agree with the blog author. Sometimes that enforcement has to fall short of deleting or filtering: it should just be a "Please be respectful" reminder when a thread heats up.
2) If you want to avoid building an echo chamber, it helps to cultivate principled dissenters, both by engaging them seriously and substantively and by protecting them in some measure from the hostility of commenters who agree with the standard or default position of the blog author(s). This too has its limits: at some point, any blog author has a right to be wearied even by a respectful commenter whose base-line positions are a million miles away from the blog author's argument. You don't want to feel like a jack-in-the-box who has to pop up every time someone wants to post some treatises on your wall. But there is a danger that registration walls will keep out not just uncivil people but principled disagreement if you don't take some care to play fair and show some appreciation for dissent.
Megan, I continue to act as an ass in support of you.
I figure that might counter the bad people...
The nested comments are pretty sweet too.
At least registering once is better than having to deal with barely readable captcha phrases every time.
I fraking hate movable type but for you Megan, I registered.
The registration is fine, but the new format for the comments is horrible. The 'Reply' getting its own line, the comment name is kind of hidden, the blue text color doesn't really contrast with the black. And the biggest problem, is nothing demarcates between the comments so they all just kind of merge together. Lots of different styles look fine. Look at econlog for a better example.
Much better!
I think the best strategy is to have an official site-wide comment moderater. That means that no one can accuse the blogger of weeding out posts that upset him or her (and removes some of the motivation to do so- a genuine, understandable motivation that comes when people make even legitimate points in a cruel manner). Ultimately, however, it is your blog, and you have the right to coordinate the comment space however you'd like. I'm not sure about the notion of banning people who won't concede a small point. People have radically different views about what points are important, and whether or not they should admit fault or stick to their guns. Whatever, I'm sure it will be fine.
I once made a very, very polite comment that disagreed with a certain Northern Californian economist on his blog, and he took it down. Needless to say, I have a lot more respect for you, considering that you've expressed concern about the possibility of over-editing.
so that's why you haven't been posting
Lol. Yeah, you could say I'm overly bitter.
adina has a good idea there. Another thought is a Slashdot style moderation, with a moderator/moderators assigning + or - scores to a post. Thus a reader could peruse the blog at, say, "+2", with the highest scores first.
I love that model. Also, I wanted to try the reply thing.
Count me as not a fan of that, at least not for AI.
On a blog that deals with sensitive political topics, the ratings turns tendentious and the higher ratings are more the artifact of an echo chamber than the post's inherent insight.
Bravo, Megan!
Well done.
Hey! I resent that.
But in general, it's a good decision, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. We'll see how many liberal-leaning people like myself survive the bottleneck. I don't think the effort to register is such a great barrier that you run the risk to transform commenters in a cheerleading squad.
For that, you would have to use the commenting model of Hot Air and Michelle Malkin: do not let people comment or register as a rule, and announce very short periods of open registration once in a blue moon, so that only very frequent visitors catch those periods. Over time, that definitely contributes to the autistic/other-wordly feel those sites have.
Omigosh!
I love the concept, but actually signing up was frustrating.
Hmph - and it didn't automatically create a clickable link to my blog. That IS, of course, one reason to leave named comments, to attract other readers.
The Cranky Professor
I had signed up for the business channel, tried using the same logon; worked half way, claimed I needed approval from the blog owner.
So either I've been rejected by the blog's owner or need a new log-on ID.
Either way, I'm glad you've done this, Megan. The tone of the comments, sexism in particular, were very disturbing.
May I suggest a few objective criteria? If someone makes references to 'libs', 'libbies', 'libtards', 'Nanny State', 'leftists', etc, could we have a public strike for the first offense, possibly limited banishment for the second? And of course the same going in the opposite direction - no 'wingnuts', etc allowed. I'm a firm believer in tit-for-tat(as are most people, I think), but will also readily concede that it's very easy for that strategy to get out of hand on a blog. Especially with egregious offenders who never seem to get called on their behaviour.
Megan,
I've certainly had some, ahem, spirited debates in threads here, and occasionally with you personally. Do you feel that any of my past rhetoric qualifies as a "pig-headed refusal to concede even small points which ends up derailing threads into pointless backs-and-forths"? If so, I'll tone it down; I'd just like some clarification on what you want and don't want. Thanks.
Gosh, no, Adam; you're a very welcome contributor.
And yes, SoV: a sample of verboten words includes "libtards, rethuglicans, dimmocrats, glibertarians". "Lefties" and "Righties" are allowed, but I reserve the right to ban anyone who annoys me with constant sweeping overgeneralizations about their ideological opponents, with or without swear words.
As to Timothy's comment, all I can do is agree again. This has nothing to do with left or right--there are some righties and libertarians (you know who you are) who have been warned, though unlike some of the lefties, they've mostly taken the warnings to heart. I have no interest in shutting out people who disagree with me, or cultivating people who do. I have an interest in shutting out people whose idea of disagreement, or support, is to shout "I hate you I hate you I hate you you stupid jerk!!!!" over and over at the top of their lungs. If anyone feels that the comments are losing their edge, I hope they'll tell me. If anyone feels they've been banned unfairly, they're also welcome to bring it up--though I won't ban you without a warning unless you are over-the-top inflammatory. Over-the-top commenters who have been banned instantly in the past fell into one of three categories:
1) Virulent racists
2) People making graphic sexual comments about me or my boyfriend
3) People imitating other commenters
I didn't feel any of these people were striving to be taken seriously, though of course, the white supremacists probably disagree.
"I reserve the right to ban anyone who annoys me"
The rule set would be a lot simpler if you just reduced it to that ...
This seems like a reasonable thing to do, though it's a pain in the a-- to have to register/sign in for every blog. Two comments on moderation that may or may not be useful:
a. If there's any way to get a View All By button on the comment threads (like Making Light has), it's worth doing. The benefit here is that, if you're trying to understand what some other commenter is saying, you can just look at other posts he's written. This also gives a sort of permanence to your words that, at least on ML, makes people think twice about what they're saying. This isn't just disappearing into the ether, it will be associated with my later comments.
b. Disemvowelment seems to me to be a better way to handle abusive non-spam posts than deletion, in most cases. There are a couple of reasons for this:
(i) Deleting a post that's already been responded to leaves a hole in the discussion. If Alice flames, Bob responds in an interesting way, and then the moderator deletes Alice's flame, Bob's response doesn't make much sense. If Alice's flame is disemvoweled, it's clear what's being responded to.
(ii) A fluent English speaker can usually reconstruct a disemvoweled post without all that much difficulty. That means everyone can see what rules are being enforced. Not "there was an abusive post, now it's gone," but "Bob, you're a rethuglican wingnut" becomes "Bb y rthglcn wngnt". Everyone can see what the offense was that led to the loss of vowels, and the whole thing is more transparent.
I've no idea whether either of these comments are useful to you....
This seems like a reasonable thing to do, though it's a pain in the a-- to have to register/sign in for every blog.
Every blog? I have to click "sign in" before leaving every comment. I don't get the point of this; it recognizes my cookie so it's not like I need to login again. Am I doing something wrong, or is this just some wonkiness with Movable Type?
1. Those leaving comments here are helping Megan by a) demonstrating a user community to her bosses, and b) providing content that search engines can index. The fact that commenters are usually helping a blogger in that way is usually ignored for one reason or other.
2. They're just blog comments, not papal announcements. No one should get upset about minor things like name-calling.
3. Editing someone's comment is a pss thing to do and may distort their meaning in a way that could get the blogger into trouble.
4. If someone calling someone else a "rethuglican wingnut" results in a flame war or there's an endless line of ThinkProgress-style comments, that indicates that the blogger writes ThinkProgress-style posts. And, that's not a good sign.
I have always wondered why commenters think they have a proprietary claim on a blog. Its for the blogger to decide on how to maximize signal to noise, and everybody else should accept or and go and start their own blog if they are that unhappy.
rfhs:
It depends on how much of the value of the blog is in the comments. On one extreme, nearly all the value is in the original posts. Felix Salmon's blog, Naked Capitalism, and Brad Delong's blog all have this property, at least to me--if I didn't see the comments, I'd only miss out a bit. By contrast, on blogs with really good comment threads--Making Light and Marginal Revolution are good examples--the commenters are providing a large part of the reason to read the blog.
In order for that to happen, it seems like a community of commenters has to grow around the blog. And those commenters will feel a proprietary claim about their community and their comments. More to the point, changes to the moderation or comment policy on those blogs can destroy or drive away that community, destroying much of the value of the blog.
Boo-hoo! My dissent will be crushed! My freedom of speech is abridged! I'm too dumb to start my own blog!
I for one welcome our tall, dark (haired) and feminine overlord.
In all seriousness, this is a good idea. Our hostess has great ideas and her core commentariat are very smart. It is a shame when it gets thread-jacked by trolls.
Done.
Thank you!
It's been downright frustrating lately, especially with the impersonators. This is overdue.
Hmm... So these words are now not allowed in any circumstance? Perhaps making a list of forbidden words is not such a good idea. I'd suggest it's better to err on the side of tolerance, cultivating a thicker skin and letting mildly offensive posts stand, to just intervene when extreme stuff is posted.
I don't get the "sign in" thing either, it seems completely useless. On the other hand, it's just one more click.
The major complaint I have of the AI page is the fact that the search bar, unlike on the Sullivan or Douthat blogs, runs searches that are not specific to posts in AI.
I can has Freddie SN?
I completely understand your reasons - and I notice that TNC is doing the same for his blog as well. I have been reading your blog for some time and while I often disagree with you I appreciate the opportunity to get another intelligent opinion on a given subject. You, Ross, and Andrew are the anti-Limbaughs - your reasoning is well thought out and consistent, even if I may disagree with it. I have never understood the mentality of trolls of any persuasion - trolling denies discussion.
And finally, for those who claim that you will use this as a means to suppress dissent, I ask that they look at the record.... I have never seen you delete a post that disagrees with your point of view, as long as it does not contain a personal attack on you. The first rule of posting on a civilized board is, "Attack the post, not the poster."
Megan (and everybody else for that matter) has every right to censor posts for whatever reason they want. I think she invited much of the comments about her sex life, and that complaining about it reminds me of woman who sport plunging necklines while complaining that men always stare at their chests.
Still, it's Megan's blog and good manners dictate restraint on the part of the guests. I for one will endeavor to make all future comments relevant, tasteful, on topic, and as adversarial as possible.
The paloelib/Austrian viewpoint deserves to be represented by a better mind than me, but I will do my best until that guy or gal shows up.
The elimination (to the extent possible) of sock puppets, impersonators, and other nonpersons is justification enough, I believe.
Bearded Spock,
I disagree with your comment that Megan invited comments about her sex life. She did mention the subject of "having a boyfriend", but this was not her choice, other writers had already brought up the subject because of a perceived conflict of interest, and so she was kind of forced into it.
Mentioning you have a boyfriend after others bring up the subject is hardly "inviting" some of the very offensive comments that were (temporarily) posted.
Which is why she's gone and adopted registration for comments. Which is hardly as onerous as reading through several paragraphs of filth to read the unmoderated comments.
Note that this comment section never got that bad, but it was headed that way, and apparently Megan was having to work to keep it as clean as it was.
Anyway, with Scent of Violets managing to be registered without having the Wallstreet/Banking/Media Industrial Complex enforcers kicking down the door, I don't think we will have much censorship of ideas, as opposed to stupidity.
I didn't say that she invited all of the comments about her sex life. I said that she invited much of them. Clearly some were of them were inappropriate and I my self admit to stretching the bounds.
Before the conflict of interest issue even came up, she was writing things like the following:
"I had better be prepared to defend unmarried cohabitation, hadn't I?"
People shouldn't ask questions if they don't want anyone to answer.
I'm sure talking about talking about someone's sex life is not much of an improvement than simply talking about someone's sex life.
More importantly, who cares anyway?
Would it violate the new policy if I suggested that any comment with the monosyllabic sentence "Sigh." in it also be deleted?
It is a shame but necessary. I can see why some of your colleagues don't allow comments. I'd stopped reading your posts when the comments were huge. I don't like this but if it gives you less time removing potty mouthed posters and explaining what it all means - go for it!
Steve
I like moderation by commentariat more than any other system (e.g. Engadget. Not sure if Movable Type supports that however.
Bearded,
you're doing a fine job, though, probably thankless, upholding the paleo/Austrian viewpoint.
if you find a better g/g, let me know.
this: "Megan (and everybody else for that matter) has every right to censor posts for whatever reason they want." though, is the key take-away.
Hello? It's her Name on the weblog. Many should take a page..
Sure Megan has every right to censor what she wants (except perhaps for some restrictions imposed by The Atlantic), and that's why saying so ads so little to the discussion.
If, for some, reason, a blog author decides to ban the word "green", that's up to him/her. But that kind of, you know, stating the obvious...
Freddie
I trust that neither you, nor Megan, will become less pig-headed.
I think this is the way to go. Reader vanity is such that it's hard to get a big readership if comments are absent entirely--Sullivan is the big exception here--but nobody should have to tolerate gratuitous abuse as the price of blogging. This blog is the perfect storm of two abuse magnets- a female blogger in a still-majority-male medium (x2, economics + online) and a libertarian, an ideology which is substantially unloved except by those who love it.
Yay! I think this is definitely the way to go. I'll only slightly miss speculating on the wilder details of your sex life, and a little courtesy goes a long way in making the comment-reading experience less irritating.
I think registered comments is an overall positive change. Too many times the intersting comments get lost in the trolls. Here's to the return (beginning?) of civility.
I like the registered comments, but I dislike the threaded discussion model. Anyway to turn that off and have it replaced with just the "replying to username" indicator?
I like the registration if for no other reason than I don't have to type my information over and over again (and risk typos). I also like knowing that someone posting under a given name is most likely the same person posting under that name in other threads.
I don't know why it asks me to "sign in" each time, but at least it automagically signs me in.
I actually considered signing up under my real name but given how easy it would make to find (trust me, it would be very easy) and the hostility of some of the posters, I chose not to. Maybe in the future.
I HATE disemvoweling. It butchers a comment and as someone who has been on the receiving end of it, it's like public shaming. A deleted post is just gone. A disemvoweled post is up there for everyone to see and, as it can be reconstructed anyway, might as well just be left alone with a note saying "We hate this post". It may have colored my view that I was disemvoweled on Boing Boing for making posts that were contrary to the Liberal groupthink and when I complained was basically told that dissent is trolling and Theresa(?) whatever-her-name is like the BEST moderator EVAR and if she disemvoweled my post than I MUST be a bad person.
Cool. I guess this means I won't have to type in my information every time.
Darn. It looks like we no longer get a link to our URL when we post.
Okay, I hate the nested threads... they're fine the first time you read comments but every other time after that you have to go through the whole thing and look at timestamps to see which ones are new. Since I won't have time to do that, I'll no doubt miss a lot of comments.
Megan - for what it's worth, I used to comment on this blog quite a bit (years ago, when you were blogging from Ground Zero). I stopped for the very reason you've described above: a flood of off-topic comments that were too difficult to read through in search of useful nuggets.
Maybe I'll start commenting more often again now. Good move...
About time. Thanks.
I disappear for a bit and everything looks different now. And what was that... someone mentioning a boyfriend too! So we are all registered now. A sign of the beast.