Welcome to Fresh Week
The level of discourse in the reader comments at the Portland Tribune has sunk sufficiently low that they've instituted a new comment moderation system over there. You have to include a valid e-mail address with your comment or it won't show up. (The e-mail address isn't published, but in order to have the comment posted, you have to let the Trib have a working address for you.)
Comments on a website are a tricky thing. After a while, the attitudes and positions of the commenters can be confused with those of the site host -- particularly if the commenters hammer the same points home over and over, week after week. The tenor of many of the comments that have been posted lately on the Trib site didn't speak well of the Trib. I applaud the management's efforts to clean things up, at least a bit.
I've been feeling some comment angst myself lately. As much as I love the readership of this blog, every now and again I notice that I'm reading the same comments from the same people. In the past I've dealt with this by instituting comment-free weeks, where I turned comments off entirely to try to get a fresh start, but that seems kind of drastic. This week, I'm going to try something else -- moderating comments aggressively so that the repetitive points that commenters make don't appear.
If you are a new commenter, you are especially welcome this week. If you are a regular poster commenting this week, be sure to say something new, or at least figure out a new way to say what you've said here before. If your comment disappears, it's my way of telling you to give it a rest. Or find a friend who agrees with you to come over and say it in your place.
As a long-range matter, perhaps we should assign numbers to various posts made repetitively by regular commenters, so that they can save us all some time, and me some bandwidth, by simply posting the numbers rather than republishing the old points.
| Posted at 8:20 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (14)
I think Godwin's Law and Bedford's Law will sum up most of my prior work.
Posted by Chris Coyle | July 28, 2008 9:39 AM
12.
Posted by Isaac Laquedem | July 28, 2008 9:53 AM
12.
Drat. Beat me to it.
Posted by Chris Snethen | July 28, 2008 10:19 AM
42
Posted by Lc Scott | July 28, 2008 10:50 AM
Nice Pacific City pic on you banner. I've got a little house there right about where that pic was taken.
Posted by butch | July 28, 2008 11:56 AM
Is zero taken?
Posted by cc | July 28, 2008 2:17 PM
Jack: every now and again I notice that I'm reading the same comments from the same people.
JK: My apologies, if I am one of the guilty parties.
Thanks
JK
Posted by jim karlockj | July 28, 2008 4:30 PM
Stop me if you've heard this ...
A baby seal walks into a bar and sits down.
"What can I get you?" asks the bartender.
"Anything but a Canadian Club" says the seal.
Posted by Tenskwatawa | July 28, 2008 7:48 PM
"JK: My apologies, if I am one of the guilty parties."
Jim, if other blogs follow suit, you and Terry Parker will be unemployed.
Posted by GLV | July 28, 2008 8:55 PM
Something new. (Surprised the clever wags missed this obvious post)
Posted by Grumpy | July 29, 2008 7:20 AM
Then there's this:
The Stupid Filter Project is Real, Has Code to Prove it
http://tinyurl.com/6o3nhh
Posted by Conrad | July 29, 2008 9:46 AM
How about a word count limit, say 60ish. Is that too restrictive?
Posted by genop | July 29, 2008 3:05 PM
As a consultant for many an aspiring blogger, I'd say that you, Jack, have a problem that many would be pleased to share. I'll be interested to see what you come up with.
Your readers may be interested in the free service mailinator.com provides. You can make up an email address on the fly, and it will be a valid address; for instance, "peteblogsatbojack@mailinator.com". Then, you can go to Mailinator.com and check that address -- no passwords, no nothin'.
Not a good idea if you're transmitting info that's private in any way -- but a great way to get past insistent web services that demand valid addresses.
Posted by Pete Forsyth | July 30, 2008 4:11 PM
As I understand it, the Trib sends an e-mail message to the address you give, and you have to click on the link in that message before the system will look at your comment.
Posted by Jack Bog | July 31, 2008 2:31 AM