Ah, savour the irony.
Three very simple questions for our readers:
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I've just got into blogging but have been involved with usenet and web-based message boards since the early 90s.
I've seen online discourse that began as respectable discussion amongst professionals (relatively few had access to usenet groups) and descend into the cacophony of web-based google group hell. I've seen the full spectrum.
The discussion here ranks pretty high for reasonable, respectful debate and opinion. I don't think there's a whole lot I would change if I were in charge of WoC. This is a blog first, and a discussion board second, after all.
Which way is the trend going, in your estimation? Up, down, or staying level?
the quality of a blogs comment section is in inverse proportion to the number of comments that appear.
I often check out blogs like Kos, Atrios, and LGF. They tend to be right or left wing echo chambers, and their commenters get quite nasty when other commenters disagree with them. I saw a humdinger of a fight on Atrios between two liberals who disagreed on a minor point of left orthodoxy. I haven't seen any comment section that is more generally civil (and is quite amusing even when it isn't) and tolerant of diverse points of view. I can actually have a debate here. We have Raymond, Andrew J Lazarus and every political point in between. Keep it up!
The quality of comments depends a lot on the topic. The gays in the military thread turned into a flame-out in my opinion. The thread regarding Huarte is exemplary in its collective attempt to establish a coherent explanation of a chain of events. (Full disclosure: I partcipated in both threads.)
I've been looking for an alternative blog/discussion board since I gave up on Tacitus quite some time ago. I used to find that engaging when I first discovered it but it turned into an echo chamber. I took it off my favorites roll some time ago and now it just looks neglected. But honestly, I value WOC more as a source of news than I do as a discussion board. It's just too much work for one individual to find all these alternative sources of news. I think what I'd do to keep it fresh is assign one of the regular crew the role of talent scout. That person would be formally responsible for introducing readers to new blogs or other sources of information possibly with an eye towards making the new talent a formal contributor - kind of like a visiting fellow at a think tank. I'm not saying this has to be done on a weekly basis - perhaps monthly. This sort of thing goes on informally already I know.
Joe
I find the blog to be highly worthwhile concerning current events and debate. There are some highly insightful people here who are more than civil and willing to work through the issues at hand. The diversity of debate on a multitude of subjects makes the experience a joy. I'll participate in some and others I read or ignore due to time constraints. WoC offers a wide variety and I can't say there is anything I would change. The level of discourse may get harsh even hot tempered at times but for the most part people here seem to keep themselves in check and that is a major accomplishment for WoC in my opinion.
Tend to agree with Fred and P.L., but P. L.'s boldly-worded heuristic is buggy for obvious reasons. If what P.L. means is that echo chambers generally suck, I agree. Re LGF: I find much to regard as worthwhile in Charles's outlook, but a lot of his commenters treat it as very much an echo chamber--or they did back when I bothered to read the comments for LGF. Sobriety can suffer. I suppose there's such a thing as a sober echo chamber, too, but so far I haven't seen it happen on line.
I find myself more wiling to take a chance here, but I can't claim to read enough of the comments to have a valid sample. See also my comment in the Simterror post, where I criticise P.L.'s first post in that thread, just a bit, for failing to do what I just did earlier in this run-on sentence :) .
/s/
Norius Maximus
Or, rather, what I tried to do. The link I put up doesn't work. Ah well, I tried. :)
1. Today, below average for WOC.
2. Staying about the same with peaks and valleys.
3. Enforce Rule 6
But I'm not sure that I would change much. Some of the topics lend themselves to problems, but I wouldn't want topics to be avoided for that reason.
Patrick
but P. L.'s boldly-worded heuristic is buggy for obvious reasons. If what P.L. means is that echo chambers generally suck,
well, I didn't go into all the corallaries -- the rule works only when a certain critical mass is established.
Quantity becomes a problem not merely because of the echo chamber, but because discussions tend to go off topic, or become obsessed with minutia (sp), or simply become repetitive.
And lets face it, there are really only a limited number of people with significant knowledge and insight to make their comments worth reading, and the more people you have commenting, the greater the odds are that you are going to run across something that is so incredibly stupid that your first reaction is to lash out at it....and unless (unlike me) you are a saint, you will eventually give into that urge.
Here's another rule....
Any comment section where people say "first" if they think they have the first comment on a given topic has outlived its usefulness.
1)Generally quite good. A like comments where you can both get educated and get in a 'good' dustup on occasion. Winds provides both in good measure.
2)Trending upwards in a big way imo. I think the better parts of CP ended up here.
3)A would silence my opposition and send them on a one way expense free trip to Guantanimo Bay. Then you people would hear some real truth!
1. The current state of Winds' comments sections.
2. Which way is the trend going?
3. What would you do?
Why do you ask?
As the guy who gets more of his comments nuked than anyone else, ( I encouraged them to do that )
No complaints.
Fred, Yes, echo chambers suck, what good are ideas that cannot withstand scrutiny?
And what kind of scrutiny can you get in an echo chamber ?
The diversity of views, and the peer review that offers, is of great value.
Which way is the trend going, in your estimation? Up, down, or staying level?
This is kind of a bad time to ask. The quality of discourse in the entire Blogoverse has tanked over the past couple of months.
At the risk of being an echo not a choice, I'll second NahnCee, Why do you ask? What do you want the comments section to be? What would you consider to be a superior comments section today?
Glen is also correct about the last couple of months. There has been a bit of a let down since the US & Iraqi elections. Most people have a pretty good idea that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train this time. And we have had an unusually lovely spring here. I've assumed a lot of folks have done like me and smelled the roses a bit.
Joe, Winds absolutely rocks. You have diversity in comments, both in orientation and quality. Some are good enough to spwan posts, some are a waste of bandwidth, some are far right, some are far left. Winds is unique.
The degeneration of commentary i saw in the blogverse over the last couple months is strongly correlated with the amount of commentary devoted to shiavo. I just have this to say as a scientist. Wishing for something to be true does not make it so.
And, Richard, that is not "light" at the end of the tunnel, but the reflection of the fires of hell ignited over the upcoming abortion debate.
Y'know, P. if you really think the quality of a comment thread is inversely proportional to the number of commenters, it would be very easy for you to reduce that number by one. But then I assume you meant only those commenters who aren't gifted with enough intellect to agree with everything you say.
"How would you describe the current level of discussion etc. in Winds' comments sections?"
Well above average. When I first started reading WoC I was surprised by the excellent signal-to-noise ratio as compared to some place like, say, Tacitus. I mostly lurk, but this is one of the few blogs where I regularly make a point of reading most of the comments (which are sometimes even better than the original post!).
"Which way is the trend going, in your estimation? Up, down, or staying level?"
I'll second what AMac and PD Shaw said. It's a crapshoot from one day to the next. The quality tends to be high as long as the discussion doesn't veer off into partisan politics and ad-hom; then it goes downhill quickly.
"What would you do to improve it, if you were given absolute power here?"
Enforce a hardline policy against deliberately abusive comments, inflammatory rhetoric and other such verbal diahrrea. There's no set test for this other than "I know it when I see it", but that's not a problem because most adults know where the line is. Don't be shy about editing and/or deleting comments which are clearly pointless flamebait.
On the positive reinforcement side, continue to reward thoughful commentary. Joe does a good job of this already by re-posting particularly long and thoughtful comments as blog entries, and occaisionally even giving long-time posters like AMac permanent accounts.
This is the only blog where I read comments, never mind write them, since it is the best.
My sense is that the quality has gone down somewhat, but I've been reading Winds for more than two years so maybe I'm just forgetting what it was like back then. I really appreciate differing perspectives but popularity seems to have brought in some people who aren't as committed to thoughtful discourse as you'd like.
Not sure what to do about it; its possible to be really annoying without going far enough to justify a ban or deletion, and overall freedom is probably better than tight control, if for no other reason than time management.
Joe,
I would say the quality here is better than at any other blog's comments section I read. I rarely comment because it seems someone beats me to a thought and the "I agree with so-and-so" post is useless. I strive to have the level of discourse that occurs here at my site.
That being said, the only thing I dislike is that occasionally a foul word pops up in the comments, and I am turned off by that. Just the other day I saw some refer to Ann Coulter with the "C" word. As soon as I read that I stopped readind that thread. Its not that I am against swearing, I do it all the time and can cuss with the best of them, but I think it is destructive to allow this in commenting. It encourages escalation.
I think the issue raised in a given post determines the quality of the comments. Some issues inspire more sobriety than others.
In the end, I don't think there's much that can be done about tangential commenting. That's part of the fun. I've posted stuff that lead into the most unpredictable areas -- sometimes frustrating, other times amusing.
My favorite gamut of comments start with Praktike's -- always biting and informed. Raymond's are always interesting. And many others. Compared to LGF, I think things are under control at Winds.
Ah, immediately, it feels better. Just raising the question every once in a while tends to keep people's eyes on the ball. I agree w/ the above commenters that it's best to avoid gross generalizations and ad hominem attacks, etc. It helps me to take a deep breath, too, because I'm not immune from CSDR*.
*: Comment Section Derangement Syndrome.
Fred... I know things got rather heated with PL the other day, but don't take his law as a personal slam. There's more than a grain of truth in it.
Think about it. Comments and discussions have what I'll call "High BFS" - High Bozo Factor Senstivity. It only takes a couple of them to bring the whole thing down fast, and this is made trickier by the fact that we're all bozos sometimes. By expanding the number of participants, you're sharply increasing the odds of bozosity in a high-BFS environment.
The question then becomes how to keep the BF low. As Praktike notes, it seems that just raising the question now and again can be helpful. I didn't expect that... but I'll remember it.
Ummm, I also think that during schiavo was the only time I have ever seen scientific inaccuracies presented on this blog. Usually the presentation of science here is accurate and focused.
Joe,
Point taken. I'm certainly no more immune than anyone else from occasional bozosity (great word by the way). Still, overall, I support the way the comments are trending on this thread. This is one of the most rational blogs I've been to, and it's momentary lapses of reason are often entertaining. The editorial tolerance is also a good thing. You guys apparently, like John Milton, "cannot trust a fugitive and a cloistered virtue" and let your ideas be tested by your commenters.
Think about it. Comments and discussions have what I'll call "High BFS" - High Bozo Factor Senstivity. It only takes a couple of them to bring the whole thing down fast, and this is made trickier by the fact that we're all bozos sometimes.
and often people don't even know it. USMC's comment equating homosexuality with "deviant behavior such as rape and sexual harassment" was INCREDIBLY offensive to me personally...but he still doesn't have a clue why it was offensive, and I have the feeling that most of the people on this site wouldn't have seen it as offensive.
Fred #25, peer review is powerfull, we built an entire operating system using it, its the most stable and flexable system on the planet. (linux)
Put em out there, let darwin sort em out.
Raymond : Peer review only works if:
A: the reviewers are honest brokers and
B: the people whose positions are discredited have the good grace to pipe down.
Peer review works in science because there is a shared ethos. It's never going to work between people whose essential principles are incommensurable or even opposed.
Engineer
They arent, leftist thinking is agenda-forward
They do not follow the normal process, to us normals, truth is a discovery not an invention, and opinion is a byproduct of fact and data. not dogma.
The Agenda-forward left, dont operate that way, there is the socialist program, and the use of tools of oppertunity to advance that program.
The end is already decided and variables are means, the world is sifted for tools of oppertunity.
Mass graves of kids in Iraq? . poof down the memeory hole, not usefull as a tool to attack freedom, so they dont matter.
Hockey stick presentation has been shown to be a fraud ? (entire Koyoto drive based on it) dont look for it to get the same coverage as its introduction.
Instead, those that made all the noise about it at introduction became even more in ernest, to get Koyoto implimented before the fraud was discovered.
Didnt work so far, but they are still doing what they can to suppress news of the fraud.
All the leftist activists are aware of this fraud now, did they change their tune ?
Theres been no sign of an honest broker among them.
A leftist never admits defeat, he changes the subject, they have an entire list of greivances and they will hop down the list.
To you and I, we lay out data that takes us somewhere, and the answer becomes self evident close to arrival.
To avoid arriving at reality they will continually jerk the discussion into the ditch and every side trail to avoid getting there.
Not any more, the left control achedamia, and their warped political thinking often has side effects in other areas.
Their utopian system kernel for example, but it would take a 2 day email exchange to explain the connections there.
There are now entire fields of the former hard sciences that are under attack or being dismantled
The behavioral evolutionists for example, and look what happened to certain character at Harvard recently.
To even hint of any admit of even bilogical differences is unforgivable heresy, and the death of your carreer
Never mind all the hard science that has proven the unisex fraud, to be a fraud.
To question Koyoto, is just as dangerous.
1# Saddam was involved in funding and supporting terror, he even paid the families of bombers, 10,000 bucks(?) for killing Jews.
2# So the leftie announces that Saddam had nothing to do with 911. its been their talking points for a long time.
Course, this is a good example of knowing intelectual dishonesty, the same as a lie. #2 is not an answer for #1, the leftie reframes #1 into an assertion that was never made.
"Bush Lied" ok so I guess Cherac Putin Schroder and even Hans Blix did too, since the whole world thought he had weapons.
Wrong isnt the same as "Lied", the leftie knows this, so how honest is he being with you ?
Is that evidence of oppositional principles ?
No, principle has nothing to do with it, its Agenda-forward, they hate Bush, they know they hate Bush, and thats what they know.
The search for usefull reasons for that hate comes afterwards.
So if your looking for a leftie to conceed a point, dont hold your breath, the others will see it, and thats good enough.
With few exceptions you will certainly find a better enviroment here however, its why discussion here is so enjoyable. I wonder what the magic pixie dust is that they are using. Im loath to even offer a suggestion on this thread other than applause, since whatever it is, its working.
All: I apologize for the digression from the topic of what makes WoC's discussion what it is.
I confess to reading very little of the discussion here; the essays are heavy enough, and the really good comments get cited often enough that I feel little need (and have little time) to pore over them myself. I'd rather read the source material to dig into the supporting data.
Consider this an endorsement.
What would you do to improve it, if you were given absolute power here?
absolute power?
I'd invent a program that could detect and delete posts that consist of little more than the ideologically driven construction of straw men based on false "facts" and disinformation. (see #29).
In general, I'd delete all posts in which the core argument consists of right-wing characterizations what "leftists" think and stand for, and vice versa.
I'm a leftist, a liberal, a progressive --- I know what I think and what I stand for, and what other like-minded individuals think and stand for. I don't need to be told what I think, or how I think --- and the grossly inaccurate and insulting stupid characterization of "liberal" thought is, IMHO, nothing more than "flamebait".
(Note that I'm fully aware that I'm guilty of the same thing myself at times....)
Having to read something like this:
>1# Saddam was involved in funding and supporting terror, he even paid the families of bombers, 10,000 bucks(?) for killing Jews.
>2# So the leftie announces that Saddam had nothing to do with 911. its been their talking points for a long time.
> Course, this is a good example of knowing intelectual dishonesty, the same as a lie. #2 is not an answer for #1, the leftie reframes #1 into an assertion that was never made.
is just outrageously insulting. I have a hard time accusing anyone of being as stupid as Fred claims that liberals are here --- with the exception that it would take someone that stupid to project something that stupid on others, and think it was a valid argument.
Like I said, I'm perfectly capable of accusing war-supporters of wanting to kill Muslim children, etc. --- but at least when I do it, I know what I'm doing.
But it seems to me that there are lots of people here who don't know they're doing it....
P, On the gays in the military thread you called me stupid for something someone else said, and now you call me stupid for something Raymond said. Dude, I think you need to change your reading glasses. I may be stupid, but at least I can read.
(1) Just keep up the good work by being diverisfied in the issues you discuss.
(2) Everyone has been inflamed of late. I have been surprised it has not reached the level generated by the Schiavo situation in discussing Pope John Paul II.
(3) Flame more people. I would have thought after the Artest situation no fan in America would physically attack another player but the Sheffield situation proved me wrong. So announce what the rules are and jail offenders for at least a year if they violate them. I do not know why but my gut says as more bloggers and posters go to conventions it is going to get physical so start now to maintain civility.
P, On the gays in the military thread you called me stupid for something someone else said, and now you call me stupid for something Raymond said. Dude, I think you need to change your reading glasses. I may be stupid, but at least I can read.
error acknowledge.
and I apologize for the error.