Monday, May 07, 2007

Comments

In church we have to be scrupulously fair to everyone. It's not a club and we bend over backwards to make sure every voice is heard. This isn't church, this is my blog, and in this weekend of unprecedented traffic (who would have thought!) and commenting, I've been pondering what my rules for comments are.

Gosh, I do like comments. They are what turns a blog into a blog, rather than a personal journal kept on line. I don't get many comments, until last weekend, anyway, and it did add a bit of sparkle to my days. But I also feel that, since it is my blog, it is my obligation to keep some standards of communication.

In the end, I've removed three comments. One because it was a link to one person's unrelated obsession with the past history of his church, which I removed as quickly as I've removed the occasional links to commercial enterprises. It's my blog. The only shameless self-promotion allowed is mine.

The harder decision was to remove two comments because they went beyond my standards of politeness to others which in my opinion apply even more to internet communications than to in person communications. The verbal viciousness that characterizes lots of internet commenting is a great sadness to me, and I just don't want it here. After pondering for a while, I decided that I really didn't want anything on the Blog which, if I'd been a part of in a face-to-face conversation, would have made me leave the conversation. To the fellows who did it, I say..thanks for the defense, if that's what it was, but really...I can take care of myself.

4 comments:

Stephanie said...

I have such ambivalence about comments. Sometimes I think I should just turn them off. :) But I always appreciate it when others moderate their comments. I think setting standards for how to have a dialogue is important.

Unknown said...

I feel a need to apologize but also to speak up for myself.

I'm happy to abide by whatever comment guidelines a blog has. Philocrites, say, has different comment guidelines than, say, Chalicechick. When it's your pub, you get to make the rules.

But if I don't know the pub rules, I don't know what's out of line. I can be a pretty snarky guy, online and off. Snarky doesn't offend me, and I respect people who can snark back at me.

So I just want to say that I was posting unto others as I would have them post unto me. Which is to say that I don't think I was vicious.

My apologies if I offended. This is your pub, and I can respect that.

Christine Robinson said...

All good points, Chance. Thanks for commenting.

Robin Edgar said...
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