Change in Policy on Comments
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 by Patrick Ross
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It is an unfortunate fact of communications on the Internet that conversation often devolves to the lowest common denominator, with attacks wildly disproportionate to one’s person or argument. I can remember on an X-Files Usenet board in the early 1990s being called someone who likes to do inappropriate things with one’s mother because of a particular theory I had regarding The Smoking Man.
I wasn’t the moderator of that board, but I am the moderator of this blog. Everyone who knows me is aware I am an ardent defender of free speech; I practiced the First Amendment every day as a freelance and salaried investigative journalist. It was with that spirit that I created this blog with the ability of anyone to post any comments they liked.
But the Internet is in many respects the very definition of free speech. Speech can be stifled when the outlets for said speech are controllable, but there is no limit to the fora one can express themselves on online. Many, many blogs and news sites allow comments. Many blogs permit guest blogs. One can tweet until one’s thumbs are sore. And of course anyone can create their own blog. In fact, one study estimated that a new blog is created every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
So with that knowledge in mind, I am shifting our policy here at the Copyright Alliance blog. We will still encourage comments, but they will be moderated by the author of the post first. The vast majority, likely, will still be approved. But we reserve the right not to post comments that are unconstructive.
What do I mean by unconstructive? Simple. The post should be relevant to the topic discussed in the post (you’d be surprised at how many have nothing to do with the immediate subject at hand) and should frame an argument in a respectful manner. It’s pretty simple, really; it’s the kind of behavior we were presumably taught growing up by our parents and teachers. It is sometimes known as courtesy.
Examples of what will not be approved, drawn from recent posts I have seen (and occasionally nixed): Accusations of Nazism, comparisons to feces, and allusions to pedophilia. It is shocking to me I even have to list those, but when I think back to my Usenet experience, perhaps it isn’t.
I’d like to close with a quote from a recent column by Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. It’s fair to say I often disagree with Gerson’s point of view, and in fact I’m not sure I agree with everything he’s written in the column I’m quoting. But I think this quote is apropos to the topic at hand. It is hardly a new insight, but it is instructive:
The practice of civility is important to democracy. In his book, “Civility: Manners, Morals and the Etiquette of Democracy,” Stephen L. Carter defines civility as “the sum of the many sacrifices we are called to make for the sake of living together. . . . We should make sacrifices for others not simply because doing so makes social life easier (although it does), but as a signal of respect for our fellow citizens, marking them as full equals, both before the law and before God.”
Respect makes cooperation for the common good possible. Civility acts like grease in the democratic machine; disdain is sand thrown into the gears. But civility is also a direct reflection of our belief in human equality. Even people we vehemently disagree with on the largest issues possess a democratic value equal to our own. Carter argues that this recognition does not preclude “passionate disagreement,” but it does require “civil listening” — and I’d guess it forbids hoping for the death of political opponents.
Thank you in advance for your understanding.
