Interesting that it is not just the posts that attract the eyeballs but the comments do too.

Michael Totten has been doing some policing of his comments lately and it has worked to keep the commentary civil. I have no idea how he does it or how much work it is to manage.

Kevin Drum's site used to be a favorite of mine but I gave up because of the often nasty tone of a lot of the comments. That isn't Kevin's fault, just the way it goes.

Can it also be true that as the tone of the comments degenerate those that would usually engage in civil discourse give up and depart, leaving only the flame throwers behind?

Kevin Drum used to have fairly reasonable commentors. However, that seemed to change about the time he started his quest for Bush's National Guard records. One of his posts was linked to by FreeRepublic, and several of those wacky FReepers left bad comments. Some of his posts at that time got 200 or 300 comments, and he's still getting over 100 for many posts.

Most of those comments are worthless, and those worthless comments are almost always posted by those who agree with Kevin: cheap jokes about Halliburton, Bush, etc., followed by a comment from "Dave." "Dave" is an Atriosite whose comments are all a variation of "shut up you moronic wingnut troll."
Kevin has himself to blame for his comments descending to Atrios level; if he wanted to encourage more intelligent comments he could. Instead, he seems to want a orthodoxy fest.

The allure for commenting is this -- you can make a statement on issues that interest you before an audience without investing a whole lot of time in the exercise. When the group that actually posts comments is fairly small, your comment stands a fairly good chance of being read, understood, and maybe even challenged, discussed or debated. Personally, I find that stimulating, and I like the intellectual combat. Oftentimes, I end up learning something, or at least ending up wiuth a position that is thought through.

When that group is large (Kevin Drum's site -- the only other place I post), the chance you'll get read seems fairly small. I can see why his comments section has become so -- best word I can think of is "loud". It's hard to get attention unless you make an outrageous statement. I notice that my posts over there either get a hard edge to them, or they sink without a trace.

Hmm...of course this commenting could just be a pathetic attempt at attention by someone who is just too lazy to get his own bblog...I'd just prefer not to think about that.

I don't see what all the handwringing is about. they are just words on a page. So sometimes comments can be inane, obnoxious or downright mean. sounds like life in the real world. Learn to deal with it. The best way i know to deal with boorish behaviour: IGNORE IT. Don't let others drag you down to their level. When you see something outrageous in a blog, before responding, ask yourself whether its worth it. Sometimes it will be, if you can have a rational, well-reasoned rebuttal. Often there will be no reasoning with the flamethrower. So just move on.

I've stopped commenting on some sites because of the nature of the comments (which have degenerated considerably as the traffic has increased. I don't mind disagreements or different opinions, I just don't like insults and profanity - unless we're talking about clever insults and profanity, which they never are sadly enough). I take McG's advice. I ignore the trolls and stop commenting on those blogs, for the most part. If I have something to say and I respect the blog author, I will e-mail him or her directly. To my surprise they often respond. Maybe the 'increase' in flame-throwing is really just the polite abandoning the rude....

While shoddy writing may get you more noticed by your opponents, good writing gets you noticed by your allies. See, for example, the belmont club

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

In the long run, getting noticed by your allies is more valuable.

If you can delete any comment you want, then how can you honestly declare that the comments are reflective of your reputation? An edited comments section is "letters to the editor" with you, the editor, deciding what feedback is worthy of your publication.

When you're at the point of blessing your software for making it easy to purge comments, it's time to get rid of comments entirely.

Blogs can't enable true two-way communication. They're broadcast mechanisms, with an owner whose primary interest is getting his own view out, not soliciting other views. Comments are a reassurance to the beginning blogger as evidence that someone's reading. Once you're important enough that comments are a hassle, it's time to stop pretending you care what others think.

I think Matt's onto something that's common in a lot of writing; thinking back to graduate seminars, the biggest debates we had were about the worst (or at least most flawed) pieces. And, writing a shoddy critique of someone famous' work will get you a nice bump in the SSCI that might not result from a more reasoned piece--heck, some folks in our discipline have made pretty good careers out of doing nothing but nitpicking others' work.

I also think there's an understandable temptation to toss out red meat to your "amen chorus" of commenters or blog fellow-travellers in hopes of an Instalanche/Atrioslanche.

Lonewacko: exactly how am I to blame for this state of affairs? I sure didn't ask for the Freepers to descend on my blog, that's for sure. Overall, I don't know of any answer aside from a considerable amount of moderating, deleting and banning, and I'm just not willing to spend the time it would take to do that.

And I have to admit that although I'd personally prefer a more civil atmosphere, there's something to be said for a raw, unmoderated comment thread. It may not be pretty, but it does reflect the genuine emotion out there pretty well. There aren't too many places you can go to get that.

User rating systems? Why not let users rate the comments and then you can browse at a certain level (i.e comments with an average score of 3 of 5). People who want to see everything can, people who only want to see the good stuff, can only see the goodd stuff. Slashdot has been doing this for a while, and it works pretty well imo. Why don't more political blogs (with lots of comments) employ this method?

Dan (Daniel),

Your comment delete policy is the following:
"6)When it comes to the comments feature, remember that I control the horizontal and the vertical. I will delete comments that I think are personally insulting or so incoherent as to pass all understanding. My space, my rules."

I would appreciate it if you would update that policy a bit. I've discussed this with you by email - at one point I posted a couple of comments that were off-topic to the thread, and they were forthwith deleted with no explanation. When I emailed you about why, you made a valid point, that my post, while not incoherent or insulting, was way WAY off-topic. (I was excited about the breaking news that George Bush had hired a lawyer regarding the Plame incident - so I posted about that)

So your point about way way off-topic is definitely understood.

But if you could add this to your comments policy (posts that are way way off topic may be deleted), I at least would appreciate it.

Is this tedious, and annoying? God, I would think so. I feel silly asking, really...but I figured pendantic clarity might be better than "unexplained deletions".

Best

I don't know how representative that is Kevin. There's that silent majority that just doesn't bother contributing when they see that mess. I've stopped commenting on blogs that I agree with because trolls come out with the same old stuff that has been thoroughly debunked in the past. It gets really old.

Who is Robert McClelland? This ONE guy is mindlessly crapping in blogs all over the place.

Simple. Anyone who think Kevin's comment sections are totally worthless isn't reading them. Many of the people who comment on the smaller boards comment there also, and comment well.

The signal to noise ratio is decreased by the quantity, and conversations can be difficult, but commenters comment for the reasons bloggers blog.

It has turned more to the left, but the youth and innocence of the blogosphere is clearly demonstrated by the apparent shocking realization that political discourse has gotten more strident in the midst of an important election year. Who'da thunk it.

You missed the worst of all: One Brad DeLong who assiduously deletes comments which take an opposing view, even if they are couched in MUCH more moderate terms than the posting to which they are a reply.

Which is barely justifiable if it is made clear that the comments sections is designed to be a post-facto echo chamber, but which is wholly unacceptable when the comments are presented as an honest reflection of reader opinion.

User rating systems? Why not let users rate the comments and then you can browse at a certain level (i.e comments with an average score of 3 of 5).

About.com has this (well I don't remember if they have "browse at a certain level) and it quickly degenerated into a "rate your allies at 5s and enemies at 1s" type of thing.

Daniel,

Interesting post and an equally interesting thread. One perspective I'd offer from our recent experience at Command Post: for us, the issue was not a scaling issue. Since the beginning (the start of the war) our daily traffic has oscillated between 100,000+ and 10,000+ daily visitors across our multiple pages … but only recently have our comments degenerated to the point where (1) they we no longer something we could be proud of, and (2) they were no longer fun to read or manage. There are clearly secondary variables at play.

One which strikes me right out of the gate is the distribution of commenter viewpoint. Early on, our readers were from all across the map but not doing much to present political viewpoints … everyone was simply fact-checking the moment-to-moment flow of news from Iraq. Over time, though, our commenter population settled into a generally conservative bunch (not necessarily reflective of my and Michele’s views, BTW) with some hearty liberals keeping them honest. Over the past several months, though (and as a result of the left taking our 2004 page more seriously), our readership has become increasingly wide-spread and we’re back to having more readers from differing perspectives … but rather than being focused only on “news as it happens,” they’re focused on debating the issues. As a result of less monopolistic commenting, we have more debate, and by extension, more opportunity for people to lose their cool.

But I think there’s another variable at play: increasingly shrill commentary from all sides of the isle. Our comment policy is extremely simple: all comments are welcome, as long as they are civil and respectful. In recent months this has been a more difficult standard to meet, including among some of our regular commentators. So in my view, it’s not just traffic, and it’s not just a diversity of viewpoints … personally, I see in our comments casual evidence of what the polling firms have been saying for some time: that left and right are becoming increasingly entrenched, and by extension, less tolerant and civil in debating opposing viewpoints. This is complicated by another factor: I believe “regulars” come to feel nearly proprietary ownership for the commenting forum, and they’re increasingly less likely to tolerate “outsiders” over time … because of the community blogs can create some come to see it as their sandbox, rather than ours.

And if you buy that blogs (especially those with high readership levels) are points of collection for opinion leaders … well, it may be we’re seeing a leading indicator of less civil debate in our classrooms, breakrooms, and political conventions. As I Michele and I said to each other on the phone just this evening: we may be in for another summer of 1968.

Speaking only for myself, I didn't mean to imply that Kevin Drum's blog is made worthless by the (sometimes/often) nastiness of his comments. But I am looking for value: challenging ideas, an opportunity to add to the debate, and an opportunity to learn from the debate. With hundreds of comments, invective & foul language, trolls fragging the discussion, and comments that could most charitably be described as tangential, I just find that my limited time is best spent elsewhere.

Kevin,

The problem is twofold. On the one hand, your blog is now little more than a pom-pom waving cheerleading session for "Kerry for President" and any potential bad news on the economy, from Iraq, or anything else that helps your candidate and hurts Bush. So almost everyone who reads your stuff is either a diehard leftist, or a blogger/journalist on the right who wants to track the memes on your side of the aisle. This means the comment session is almost always a full-fledged echo chamber of the first order.

The folks on the right tend to be a lot more balanced on the whole, willing to criticize policies they disagree with, and with a much more diverse body of commenters. For example, Drezner, Totten (really a centrist), and Roger Simon. You will find lots of reasoned debate on their comment fora.

I'm leaving out complete partisan cesspools like DU, the Freepers, and LGF. Both sides have this kind of nonsense.

If you want your comment section to improve, you are going to have to stop being a hard-core partisan hack with nothing good to say about Bush and nothing bad to say about your own side. But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change.

There`s a battle brewing;one only needs to visit a range of sites.Those with blogs see the hostility. Left vs Right have now become a battlefield,now as in the past what is the first to fall ...with this instant on cyber transfer of info be it factual or not doesn't matter, there is a group ready to gobble it up and react..Sooo,patience,thick skin,always take the high road..just an opinion...

Kevin Drum writes: Lonewacko: exactly how am I to blame for this state of affairs? I sure didn't ask for the Freepers to descend on my blog, that's for sure. Overall, I don't know of any answer aside from a considerable amount of moderating, deleting and banning, and I'm just not willing to spend the time it would take to do that.

Mostly what Matthew Cromer said. When I complained about the S/N ratio, I wasn't referring to "the FReepers," one of which I happen to be. The FReeper Invasion seems however to have been the precipitating event. The FReeper Invasion perhaps caused opposing forces from Hatrios to be brought in, and they've stayed, including the ever-charming "Dave." I wouldn't suggest banning people - one of which might include me - but I would suggest that if you're going to throw out some red meat you remind your guests to mind their table manners.

Perhaps, like Bill "DailyPundit" "I coined the word Blogosphere" Quick you could create a post specifically designed for off-topic posts. However, in your case the goal would not be redirecting the off-topic posts so much as the worthless comments about $hrubCo, Halliburton, the wingnuts are getting desperate, "shut up you moronic wingnut fsck", etc. etc. i.t.d.

Matthew Cromer writes: I'm leaving out complete partisan cesspools like DU, the Freepers, and LGF. Both sides have this kind of nonsense.

A thread I posted on FreeRepublic 1.5 hours ago has, as of this writing, 253 comments. About the strongest invectives there are variations on BushBot.

Is civility an endangered species in the blogosphere?

Hell, no, Idiot, and I'll kick anyone's ass who says it is...
(Monty Python mode off)

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Seriously... a few thoughts:

The answer to your question seems to depend utterly on the blog under discussion. As has been indirectly suggested here, different blogs do tend to deal with the issues in different manners. You do have a pretty good crowd here which is one big reason I keep coming back.

The Instant One mentinons Usenet... and while I certainly understand his point...(Being a 10 year vet of Usenet, and of GT and FIDO for years before that) I submit that most places have a long way to go before they reach the level of USENET.

That said, a direct comparison of the content found on Democrat Underground and Usenet's political groups finds not enough difference between them to mention... both in political position and in shall we say, less than pleaseant discussion. Take your own meanings from that one.

That's a lie about Brad DeLong -- I repeatedly call him to task for what I believe is blatantly egregious copying that is not fair use, and he has never deleted any of my posts.

Glenn Reynolds is a fluffer -- it's not that he would rather blog than deal with comments, it's just that he doesn't want to be called on all of his smears.

You bloggers cry about the trolls but you all, including you Daniel have been guilty of trollish behavior yourselves, including name calling.

Instead of shutting down comments, just installed better software. MT sucks and you guys deserve the MT headaches.

Use registered email logins, or get user moderation. Or get a life and stop blogging. Or get a sense of humor and get over yourselves.

FARK and /. do just fine with moderation systems. You're a so called economics expert -- invent your own damn system and get someone to build it for you.

Until then, stop whining.

Welcome to the world of signal to noise ratio. S/N is not zero. What are you going to do about that? Turn off the signal or install filters, amplication, etc.?

Stop thinking like a historian, or an application luser, and start thinking like an engineer.

Pinhead.

"If you want your comment section to improve, you are going to have to stop being a hard-core partisan hack with nothing good to say about Bush and nothing bad to say about your own side. But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change."

The fair and balanced moderate here makes a civil criticism, and I am convinced. Darn it, Kevin, get your act together so Republicans like you again!

I must admit it shows much bigger cajones to run a blog with comments than without, and shows more confidence in ones reasoning and arguments. The quality of the dialog can be very good, and ideas become much more polished and the bad ones thrown away. That increases my respect for folks like Drezner (although I disagree with him very frequently) and bothers me about the many bloggers who do not.

And I may have judged the Freepers too harshly, I retract placing them in the same category as LGF (which I am very familiar with) and DU. I don't have enough personal familiarity with Freepers to claim it as part of the "cesspool". I was partially relying on word of mouth, which is very often unreliable.

Bob,

There is a difference between being someone who is partisan, generally prefers one candidate / party, yet frequently and vociferously disagrees with "their" party, and someone else who is a red-meat knee-jerk party mouthpiece. The latter are much much less interesting.

The rabid foaming at the mouth of the ABB crowd may be thrilling to the 15% of the electorate who would rather see Dick Cheney in a cell than Osama Bin Laden, but the other 85% of us somehow find it less than appealing. A pox on the Ann Coulters of the world too.

The simple answer is registered accounts. You need to be able to set up an account with a registered IP to post - otherwise you need to have to give out personal info to be able to post. Once people are not anonymous - they don't want to be a pain in the rear as others can point and say thats the guy that has a problem with everything else alive.

Per something I posted on Kevin Drum's site, a lot of this discussion is reminiscent of debates in Slate's Fray three or so years ago about the level of discussion, moderation and so forth.

I have to say that what really forced the issue there was 9/11, which exponentially increased the number of posters and in fairly short order led to a decline in the quality of the discussions. The Fray was and remains loosely moderated, as are most blog comment sections, and this invited trouble once the number of posters got beyond a certain point. That point, per what Alan says above, may be reached later in the case of blogs that update news or deal with matters of fact more often than do with opinion. It's clearly already been reached on Kevin's blog -- which is too bad considering the generally high quality of his own posts.

One thing I've noticed about Dan's blog is how engaged Dan is with the comment section, not necessarily in censoring posts but in letting posters know he's around. That helps, I think. Some comment sections -- and Slate's has definitely been one of these -- deteriorate because posters get to thinking they are shouting just at each other. Most people are more civil if they think someone else is watching, and I suspect there are a lot of posters who would mind having a comment deleted less than they would having it responded to publicly by the site proprietor with a note that it was inappropriate for reasons of tone or language.

It's not foolproof, and Kevin Drum may have too many posters to his site for it to be practical there. I'd try it a few times if I were him, though.

Dan Drezner wrote:
"Look, I'm an academic, and this stuff is nothing. I've attended seminars where the paper presenter ran out of the room because s/he was crying."

And that would probably be just the tip of the iceberg, if academics were allowed to use sharper instruments than tongues or pens.

I think a large part of the problem is technological. Comment technology in most of the popular blogging software is way behind that available in the latest message board technology. It's quite possible to have support for things like threading, rating systems, sorting, filtering, registration, e-mail notification, etc. And since the demand is there, I wouldn't be surprised to see these things added in the short term.

Commenter registration and viewer-customizable filtering (specifically, a way for each viewer to hide comments from specific people in a "troll" list) would solve a good part of it right there.

It is called civil society for a reason isn't it? Seriously though, bloggers who succeed at pushing people buttons may get their fifteen minutes or even fifteen years, but if that is the goal then who cares about them. Like them there are plenty of academics who publish scandalous, poorly researched, and sometimes offensive work, but maybe their goal is to get tenior and not improve our understanding of anything. So even when we can't get rid of all of them, and even if they are annoying,we can at least rest knowing that their impact is not up to them. After all the reason why publicity works is because we have the faculty to judge.

Zathras wrote:

One thing I've noticed about Dan's blog is how engaged Dan is with the comment section, not necessarily in censoring posts but in letting posters know he's around.

I also wish to make a random observation, in the hope that it is helpful for thinking about civility in comment sections. The observation is that, usually, the more technical the subject of the post, the better the comment section.

I am just wondering what it says about blogs that reflecting on the rules, management, and role of blogs in the broader media has become a major theme of all the blogs I like to read.

I don't know the answer, but I know that it makes them all less interesting to me...and I write a blog myself...albeit less frequently.

Isn't there some witty saying that describes this situation?

As an update to my earlier comment: I've just installed TypeKey comment registration on Command Post and we're testing it on our Publisher's Desk page. I've been using it for some time on another less visible blog, and while Six Apart certainly didn't do us a any favors on the engineering side, the coding gap was filled by some good Samaritans out there (most notably TweezerMan) and the templates are close to acceptable again. Once the install is done, the actual process for users is quite straightforward.

I expect we’ll move it to the news pages soon. Today was our first day without comments on the posts, and while we received a number of supportive emails (“it’s a news site anyway, not an opinion site”), one of the things I’ve always liked about the site was the ability of Joe Citizen to interact directly with a news item via commentary and fact-checking. The ability to participate in media is a big part of the open-source journalism we’ve enjoyed on the site, and without it I feel we’re just not the same destination.

Of course, the functionality and the willingness to articulate and enforce a clear comment policy are two very different items. TypeKey is a better tool,, but the practice is the thing, and I think that’s the place many bloggers get caught up: managing to equitably enforce a policy. Michele and I have tried to remain very politics-blind in our enforcement of our policy … we just haven’t enforced clearly or often enough, I suspect, and as voices become more shrill the invective took on a critical mass we could no longer tolerate.

So we’ll see how it goes …

" I get questions about the vitriolic tone of the comment section here with some regularity, and my answer is usually the same: there's just not much that I can do about it."

This is funny. Charles Johnson of LGF says exactly the same thing about his comment section, yet his blog gets called "racist" because of some of his commenters.

1. Re: Roger L. Simon's site. As a frequent comment there, just to set the record straight, I don't think there has been any significant deterioration in the comments there. That post was a reaction to one particularly persistent troll who is has polluted many sites (probably including this one.) His name was mentioned above, but I will not speak of it.

2. Everyone seems to be assenting that this blog is some kind of exemplar of a comments section. I have tried commenting here before and not found that to be the case. On the multiple threads I attempted to join, several dominant lefty commenters took to calling anyone arguing a point-of-view slightly to the right of say, Ralph Nader, a "fascist", "nazi", or the even more sinister "freeper". (I honestly didn't even find out what that word meant until a couple of weeks ago.) This was all coupled with a tone of snide condescension employed by multiple regular commenters (and on occasion, in my observation) by Mr. Drezner himself. Perhaps this is related to the background in academia? If this has improved since the last time I tried to actively participate, I withdraw the comment.

3. It's ironic that more mainstream left bloggers like Yglesias and Drum are trying to distance themselves from their more extreme commenters when Ygelsias (I'm sure) and Drum (I'm pretty sure) both were involved in the most recent round of sanctimonious finger-wagging (which resulted an attempt in having the site dropped by its host) about the commments at LGF. If they hold Charles Johnson responsible for his commenterss then why should we not hold them responsible for theirs.

4. I'm sorry, but the comments at even the supposedly better partisan Democratic sites are puerile. I was at Yglesias once, and once of the first comments was a guy ranting about how "Raising a child in George Bush's America is child abuse." I mean, more power to the guy if that's what he thinks, but not exactly, you know, a good taking off point for discussion.

5. It is annoying how reflections on the act of blogging and commenting itself have become such a concern of the blogosphere. The reason it's happened, I believe, is that there has just been a significant decrease in the qualify of comments as of late. I blame Michael Moore.

I've always felt that comments were one of the main reasons to blog. They're a key part of the conversation that - for me - is the best analog I know to blogging.

WoC has managed to do OK on the quality of comments, in part because all the authors participate in the threads, but also because I think we've worked to make it clear that we're a certain kind of party - and that puking in the punchbowl is going to get you tossed out, instead of a high-five. I've had a few 200 - 300 comment posts (one in specific where I was criticizing Charles Johnson), and while it's work, it's not unmanageable. I do think that the blog author owns some responsibility for the tone of the comments, much in the same way the host of a party owns responsibility for the tone of the event.

And I'm sad to think that this responsibility may lead people to close their parties down.

A.L.

Bithead -- "I submit that most places have a long way to go before they reach the level of USENET."

Blogs haven't been in action long enough to hit that mark, but it won't take them long, and the pace of this thing is picking up.

Coming off long experience in Usenet, I made up my mind instantly on setting up my blog that there would be no comments. It's not about "cajones" -- which is a curious allegation coming from someone who doesn't blog at all, far less under his real name, like some of us. It's about experience, and having had enough of that sort of thing. And I was utterly astonished at watching people set up comments at political blogs. I could not remotely imagine what they thought was going to happen, but it's happening. It was as predictable as sunrise.

"All politics in this country is now rehearsal for full-blast civil war."

(WJB III -- 2004)

Well, quite an interesting thread, I have to say. (I was thinking of being a troll for once... just to try it out... but I didn't want to do that to Dan.) Anyway, it has become clearer and clearer to me that the real trick to dealing with trolls... most of whom are working out their own "issues" (to think they are actually trying to persuade someone politically is ludicrous)... is to ignore them. Unfortunately, like Zen meditation (also a worthy technique), ignoring these people takes incredible discipline.

The fair and balanced moderate here makes a civil criticism, and I am convinced. Darn it, Kevin, get your act together so Republicans like you again!

Repeat that comment 100 times, varying it a little bit to include $hrub, Chimpy Chimp Mc$hrub, John A$$croft, etc. and you have a typical Calpundit comments section. I mean, Lord knows I'm not above posting the occasional sarcastic comment, but after you see variations of the same 100 times you get a wee bit sick of it.

I mean, it's like being stuck in a room with a bunch of pre-teen Mark Morfords, ya know?

"Repeat that comment 100 times, varying it a little..."

ok lonewacko, read my first comment, then read m cromer's 1st comment, and then judge the fairness of your response and then try to understand why i don't want any of you people in my area of the blogosphere.

"If you want your comment section to improve, you are going to have to stop being a hard-core partisan hack with nothing good to say about Bush and nothing bad to say about your own side. But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change." to quote cromer, about Drum

And this is the fair and balanced guy, and I am the jerk. I am so outa here, Dan Drezner.

In your particular case, my comment may not have been fully warranted as I did not read your previous missives. However, my comment about the tremendous amount of needless sarcastic comments at Calpundit stands.

You moderate your position on me, yet you have not yet criticized mr cromer for what i considered incivility.

"Mostly what Matthew Cromer said" above you seem to sympathize with mr cromer. So when he says about Drum:

"But I suspect you wouldn't get paid to do that, so I'm not expecting any change"

which fairly clearly says that Drum takes his political positions and principles solely because he is paid to do so, I may presume you consider it both accurate and civil.
...
Now this is somewhat trollish, and disingenuous, for I am not Mr. Nice Guy. My recent viciousness is unmatched in the blogosphere. Not here, today.
But elsewhere my compatriot commenters have critized me when I go too far. Since the right and the left will be experiencing a separation for the next few months, as they probably should, I suggest we watch our own rather than each other.

These are the type of difficulties you get when humans are involved. As readership goes up, the comments become more attractive to the trolls, wackos, and interlopers. If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you chase the traffic, how can you complain when you get it? If it's too much effort, stop.

The difference between a wannabee and someone's who's successful is the amount of personal contentment one has. If you get 100,000 readers, yet you complain about your commenters, you're a wannabee. If you get 500, and you are satisfied with your product, you are a success. It's all a matter of self esteem, really. The other side of that coin, is ego.

People in Iowa were selling Bush and Buying Kerry hard. 12 cent swing

http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm

Possible double digit bounce in the polls in Kerry's favor could be coming real soon.

I wouldn't worry about it.

I've been on Usenet since 1985 (yes, nineteen eighty five), and while some groups have devolved and died, and others are past their glory days (alt.folklore.urban was once one of the best things on the Internet), civil discourse is not only still possibly but extrememly widespread.

The advantage bloggers have is that when they get trolls, they can stomp on 'em. Do it. I'm not talking about civil disagreement or a regular who loses their cool one day, but the poster who never says anything worthwhile. Shut 'em down, hard and fast. If they want to spout off, Blogspot awaits.

Don't just ignore them. Delete them and ban them.

Daniel,

Interesting post. I want to keep my comment section because I value the feedback I get. I think that the discussion is continued in a good way and you could have an exchange of ideas by providing features like comments and trackbacks. I don't worry so much about trolls and hecklers at this point, although it could have an affect on your mood, as I described in my post, ANNUAL BLOG REPORT II.

All the Best,

Martin Lindeskog - EGO blog.
Gothenburg, Sweden.

Bob,

Perhaps you have another explanation for why Drum went from being a mostly civil-tongued moderate liberal at Calpundit to a flaming, raw-meat demagogue once he landed his paid gig at Washington Monthly?

Sorry, I call it like I see it.

The rise of uncivil behavior is not particular to blogs, but to political discourse in general.

Maybe you folk could try reminding the commenters that the comments should be to the blogger and about what's been blogged. Allowing the comments section to become a forum/bulletin board invites the problems described.

Step back and look at the media in general, not just bloggers, and you'll see that you've paid too much attention to the blogger trees and not enough to the media forest.

This is a very widespread phenomenon, which I think started with the horrific Supreme Court decision (Times vs Sullivan) that made it virtually impossible to win a libel suit in this country. Since then, most any "journalist" (which now includes bloggers) could say most anything about anyone who qualified as a "public figure" without fear of serious consequence.

If the courts aren't going to revisit these "standards," then we have to hope that self-policing--what Jefferson called "the force of reason"--will defeat malice. It's probably not going to heppen. Paul Krugman of the NY Times just slimed my daughter--a new low even for him--who committed the unpardonable sin of volunteering for duty in Iraq, where she worked for six months. He claimed--falsely, and with no "evidence"--that she'd gotten this terrific job because of her last name.

In a sane society he'd be punished, since that meets the normal standard for libel--false and damaging. In the rough-and-tumble world we live in, responsible writers and bloggers are supposed to stigmatize him. I didn't hear many people calling him to account.

Cheers

I would like to stress that there really are tecnological solutions. See Slashdot, DailyKos, Kuro5hin for examples.

Sigh.

Luddites.

I think that a great deal of the problem is with the software people are using to manage comments on their blogs. MT doesn't seem too good these days, as far as I know.

I switched from MT to WordPress and I love the tools available to manage comments. It's soooooooo easy to deal with them. I highly recommend considering a switch if you want an easy way to deal with them.

I outlined some of the tools available in WordPress in my own entry on my blog about this. Hopefully that will help some of those who need better tools.

My own feeling is that comments add to a blog, they make it feel more like a community and provide alternative points of view to the blogger's own perspective.

Oops, one other problem is that some blogs (including my own at this point, shame on me! LOL) don't provide a code of conduct for users. It's very important in terms of community management to have a document you can steer people to that outlines what is expected in terms of civility, etc.

Here's what we use on one of the forums I manage for Ziff:

http://discuss.extremetech.com/n/nav/start.asp?webtag=extremetech#guidelines

It outlines pretty clearly what kind of community we want and what is expected of forum members. It helps us avoid having our well poisoned with vitriol, so to speak. I think the same thing could work well for blogs that require registration & login in order for members to post.

If Slashdot is an example of a technological solution, we're doomed. I mean, have you ever looked at one of the threads that wandered into political territory (e.g. outsourcing)? About the only thing that it accomplishes is the same thing that Dan does with MT-Blacklist: delete (or mark-down to invisible for people browsing at higher than -1) complete trolls and the goatsex link.

Personally, I've become more and more indifferent to comments on blogs, at least ones that touch on politics. I'll still sometimes look at the ones here, and on Crooked Timber (although lately I often regret it--do I really need to waste a moment of my life reading some nitwit who thinks that Eugene Volokh is an idiot who shouldn't have been awarded a law degree?), and sometimes Centerfield, but that's about it. As for the rest, it hardly even matters whether the commenters are being civil when all the comments are the same no matter what the blog is or topic of the post was.

If that was truly Mr Ledeen, it may be the most famous person I have ever seen comment on a blog.
Mr Drezner is to be congratulated on the quality of his audience.
....
I have heard of other instances where the Ledeens have defended their daughter, and they should be respected for an extraordinary loyalty.
....
The "Green Zone" volunteers should be respected for their courage and self-sacrifice in volunteering for a dangerous assignment; which does not directly bear on the judgement of those who made the CPA staffing decisions, anymore than the management of the war reflects on the courage of the soldiers who fight it.
....
As for the reasons for her selection, a process in which merit is the only consideration used in political or bureaucratic appointments is not one I find very plausible or even attractive.

"Perhaps you have another explanation for why Drum went from being a mostly civil-tongued moderate liberal"

One, I mentioned above, tho I do not claim it is the entire explanation.....we are six months farther along in an election year. I expect all partisans to do their duty and and express their opinions with a bit less balance and a bit more fervor, and to intentionally irritate and demoralize their adversaries.

I like politics, and don't expect it to be dispassionate at all times.

Beck mentions he doesn't have a comments section, due to his long Usenet experience.

Billy, I gotta tell ya, I struggled a long time with that one, myself, and I know where you're comin' from.

I ended up going with one, though... initially against my better judgement, for reasons I don't think I ever really thougt through. I guess I figured if it didn't work out, I could always pull the code.

As a result of having one, I've decided that it takes a certain level of courage either way... putting up a comments section, or not. Putting one up, for the obvious reasons of exposing one's work to idiots, and not putting one up, thus exposing one's self to critics who would doubtless claim you're not allowing 'free discussion'. Usually, the self-same idiots.

In my own case, my fear in setting one up was the usenet idiots, as well, given that at the time I started blogging I was still quite active there.

My fear, as it happened, was unfounded; I've ended up having banned only two people from participating on my comments section. They're both related, and one of them died just recently.

I can't tell you what finally caused me to allow a comments section, though in fairness to myself, I should mention that Blogger didn't at the time have an internal comments section... the final straw came, thogh when I found a free external commenting service I now use.... and still use, despite Blogger having coughed up a comment section.. and a good one, I hear. Too much re-design in my template to get it working, at this stage, though.

Billy says: Blogs haven't been in action long enough to hit that mark, but it won't take them long, and the pace of this thing is picking up.

Perhaps. But again, I submit that tends to depend on the blog in question. Usenet (and the FIDO and GT echoes before it) got that way because people put up with it... and people put up with the idiots, because like it or not, it was the only game in town. Not so the blogs... one can always find a new one. BTW? that's the other part of putting up a comments section being a gutsy move; when doing so, one risks readership numbers.

I guess a question I've not seen addressed is; is this situation being caused by blogs and their format? (Comment, no comment, contentiousness form the blogger, etc, etc) Or are blogs simply a reflection of what's going on around us?

If it's the latter, is htis a bad thing? If I recall right, most blogs in their most basic sense, are intented to be a spot to write about what goes on around us, and what holds our attention... and holds the attention of our readers.

So, I guess the shorter question would be, are w suffering for simply doing what we intended to do?

Charles Johnson of LGF says exactly the same thing about his comment section, yet his blog gets called "racist" because of some of his commenters.

No, I'd say his blog is called "racist" because of what he chooses to post there.

Hey ledeen, Krugman didn't slime your daughter -- there is nothing wrong with being young and inexperienced. He disparaged the process by which she and other political partisans were chosen.

I still get the giggles remembering how you and your old crow came to brow beat Josh Marshall when he debated Perle.

Joshua, the point about /. is that even assuming it is the bestest system on the planet (and who could doubt that such economics and blogging experts such as Drezner could invent a better system?) it is a volunteer system that works pretty damned well (sorry Michael Powell). Drezner is worried that comments will soak up all of his publish and perish time, /. and k5 show that volunteer moderation works well. Tenured fluffer Reynolds has no excuse for not posting comments, except that he is rightfully scared of the fisking that would become immediate apparent.

Hey Ledeen, can't blame you for defending your daughter -- but answer me this -- who hires an MBA to run accounting? MBA's are for finance and don't know shiat about accounting apart from knowing to hire a CPA -- folks that learn, study, and are accredited in accounting. I know this cause I have an MBA too. Cal '97.

Aha.
The plot thins.
I'd wondered when we'd see an example.

You'se guys are so proud of yoru mad web blobber skilz, but your software is the sux0r and you can't get eMpTy to do yur thang.

Why not rollz yur pwn with some opensource software?

And learn from the giants that literally wrote the book on community software. There's still a lot in Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, including how to deal with idiot trolls such as me!

Come on Drezner, is there no CS/BusAdminIT/J at your school? No room on your budget for interns/producers? Can't get some J school students to become producers to get some experience? Can't get some Ph.D slaves to do this for you?

Hey, Dan, thanks for the "published" response.

"Actually, I'm blessing the software because without it, deleting a comment takes 10 minutes of rebuilding; without it, it takes 10 seconds. In a world with spam, that's not a minor convenience, it's a major one."

My point is still the same: deleting comments should not be among the first 100 features mentioned about a software package. When it is, it's time to give up on comments.

I wasn't implying that you deleted a large number of comments; in fact, I'm sure you do not. But once you begin deleting, you are editing them, and as such you are presenting a massaged view of the feedback.

In the early days of a blog, comments are useful to the blogger because it reinforces his will: look! people are reading! They're moved to respond! How cool! Once readership numbers make validation unnecessary, it's time to turn off comments.

Comments eat up the blogger's bandwidth and energy. Either the comments themselves will give the wrong idea, or the energy spent monitoring the comments will take away from the time spent writing.

So as you continue to debate the subject, just keep your primary objective in mind. Presumably, you keep a blog to broadcast your ideas for a wide audience. Comments are orthogonal to that goal. If you want feedback, you can read your email. But why do you allow people open access to publish their thoughts on a site that you pay for? How does that further your goal?

LGF is not racist. All it does is show how vile and sick muslim culture is.

Daniel,

Just started visiting your site and find it interesting, especially on the subject of civility. I read maybe half a dozen political blogs a day plus a few relating to computers and I have one simple rule: I do not return to a site that allows flame wars. This might not be fair but part of the way I judge if a blogger is worth bookmarking is by the quality of the letters, emails or comments the blogger posts on his or her site. I have no interest in reading what someone has to say if they start out with a 'Jane, you ignorant slut' line.

It's an interesting exercise in software design and optimization to consider what on earth MT could be doing that would require the "rebuilding" of your site after the deletion of a comment. And require that it would take ten minutes to do so. You may wish to run a contest hypothezing pessimal possibilities.

I'm dead but that implementation stinks worse than me!

You are correct "Compared to academia, this is a tea party"! I argue that there OUGHT to be more civility in academia. Too often the writer is concerned with their own ego--demonstrating how smart they are, rather than offering careful, constructive criticism. You can't review a manuscript without being nasty toward the writer? The comments can be brutal....I think there should be "rules of decorum" for the review of manuscripts.

Honestly, bloggers that whine about the lack of 'civility' in the blogosphere need to grow a thicker hymen. Take 'Daily Kos' post on the massacre in Fallujah for example. I don't know about you, but my civility kinda goes out the window when people like 'Kos' Zuniga start claiming that Americans who serve for private security firms in Iraq, many of whom have distinguished military careers, are 'mercenaries' and deserve to be murdered and mutilated ('Screw them'). I find those kinds of opinions objectionable and I'm not going to be shy about voicing my objections in the most colorful terms on the blogger's site. Call me "uncivil" if you wish.

Muslims are evil. Have you forgotten 9/11? They were ALL Muslims, not buddists. Charles is telling the truth!

I've written my own thoughts about this issue, for what they're worth:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/michaelduff/204361.html

Matthew Cromer: If LGF is "partisan" which party would they represent? There is no "anti-idiotarian" party yet.

As for the comments topic, let it go. If man chooses to be uncivil and chooses to simply attack, never defend, and excuse all statements on the grounds "they're necessary", then let it be. If the natural course is to destruction and the objects are strings of "ones and zeros" then what is lost? It's software people.

I concur that my point is simplistic, but I just don't see the erosion of civility in comments as a bad thing. If anything, it's good. Those lacking quick wits have all the more reason to pay attention as the skill can carry you far beyond the realm of competitive blogging.

Personally, I find that comments are not as good as hosting a forum. Technology sites that I visit usually have an open forum to talk about anything, yet they also have a specialized forum reserved for discussions on the published articles of the website. Here readers can add new details and further information to assist the reader in understanding the context of the article as well as elaborating upon it. The forum works because if you wish to be uncivilized there are many opportunities to present yourself without occupying the the civil conversation attached to a published article.

Many thanks to ledeen.is.a.liar for making my points so effectively.

Neither he, nor Krugman, has the vaguest idea of how our daughter got her job or what her job was. He doesn't bother to ask, predictably. But he has strong opinions on both, and he's delighted to express them.

Fine with me, as i say, it makes my points.

Simply too many bloggers encourage irresponsibility with their own irresponsible comments to get the "juices flowing".
In other words, bloggers like this:
http://www.rabbitblog.com/2004_06_01_rabbitblog_archive.html#108629445051052740
who apparently see themselves as internet messiahs spreading their own "Great Commission" delight in the effect that, once their rabbit has been revealed, it's much easier for others to mimic.
As this person is a syndicated professional, it makes it all the worse.

If I want civility, I'll read a boring newspaper or The Economist.

As long as it doesn't go over into dirty tricks, such as impersonating people and the like, the blog wars make for some entertaining reading.

This thread is great! Democracy in action! I'm sure they are doing the same thing in Baghdad now too!

No, I'd say his blog [LGF] is called "racist" because of what he chooses to post there.

posted by: Bob on 07.07.04 at 10:25 AM

Clearly, you are disturbed that Charles posts articles highlighting terrorisim committed in the name of Islam, while he fails to be fair and balanced by posting articles like "Muslim saves kitten, praises Allah."

Is that about right?

What the bloggers who have posted to this discussion fail to realize is that blogging sucks.

"He doesn't bother to ask, predictably. But he has strong opinions on both, and he's delighted to express them."

Welcome to the blogosphere! Since I hate to see good people smeared, I'll ask. What is her job and how did she get it? Not that it's any of my business, nor do I particularly care.

Wildly Off Topic,

Incidentally, I don't agree with your asessments on Iran's nuclear capabilities. I remember hearing years ago that the Iranians would have nuclear weapons by 1997. Seven years later and most assessments still have them four years away from a functioning device. I think that, not unlike Libya, Iran probably purchased a lot of hardware to enrich Uranium on the black market. Perhaps some weapons designs, possibly even enriched Uranium. However my suspicions are that Iran lacks the technical capabilities to actually create one. In short, much like Saddam Hussein prior to GWII, the mullahs are bluffing. Your thoughts?

BUSH IS HITLER!!! BLOGS ARE FASCISTS!

just kidding ;)

"I am not an accountant," the icily composed Mr Skilling [Harvard MBA, former CEO Enron] told one senator after another. "I relied on our accountants. Andersen had taken a hard look at this structure. They believed it was appropriate. The board approved it after accountants signed off on it."

posted by: Bob on 07.07.04 at 10:25 AM

Clearly, you are disturbed that Charles posts articles highlighting terrorisim committed in the name of Islam, while he fails to be fair and balanced by posting articles like "Muslim saves kitten, praises Allah."

Is that about right?

posted by: Lewis on 07.07.04 at 12:41 PM

The above exchange is indicative of what Daniel's trying to say. But notice it's the left who isn't replying in a civil fashion. Lewis tried to question Bob on his views, and Bob hasn't responded. And Bob's first post just spouts off some opinion, with nothing to back it. Or we have "Ledeen.is.a.liar" with the ad-hominems.

Let's call it for what it is. The left is being less civil than the right. The only time you see the right uncivil is when they realize that they can't get through to someone on the left.

Believe me, we try. It's like talking to a wall.

TV (Harry)

, I don't know what is. Bob never tried to counter

Who is Robert McClelland?

I am.

This ONE guy is mindlessly crapping in blogs all over the place.

No, I only comment on four RW sites on a regular basis and another 4 on a sporadic basis. What you are seeing are the Robert McClelland impersonator(s) leaving either stuff that they've cc&p'd from my site or calling everyone a reich whinger.

As for the topic of civility, I always let those already posting on the site determine the level of discourse. If my dissenting ideas are met with rudeness, I respond with rudeness. If met with civility, I respond with civility.

I find this response is most often dictated by the bloggers themselves. If the blogger is coarse and spits out a daily dose of hatred toward one or more groups of people then their commenters mirror that in their own behaviour. That's why LGF's comments for instance, are a cesspool. Compare that to Matt Y's comments and you'll see the difference between the two bloggers is that Matt doesn't spew hatred in his posts.

I forgot who mentioned it, but the decline of civil discourse has been underway for some time now. Maybe started with the politics of personal destruction under Clinton, but it has rised to new heights with Bush hatred.

If anyone is going to discuss civility, please do not mention Yglesias or Kos as examples. There are many on the right who are equally as coarse.

"I forgot who mentioned it, but the decline of civil discourse has been underway for some time now. Maybe started with the politics of personal destruction under Clinton, but it has rised to new heights with Bush hatred."

It was started by the left. Rememeber Nixon, Bork, and Thomas?

Most people go to blogs to read the comments section anyway.

I'd rather read the comments section of blogs than most blog articles anyway.

Why can't we have a blog that is just a comments section, where all non-bloggers can congregate and discuss how much blogs suck?

We could do a lot to raise the level of the discourse by strongly encouraging people to blog and comment under their real names with properly functioning contact information. Anonymity and disguise give people the feeling that they are not answerable for their behavior.

Not alot of leftists realize the fact that leftists are idiots. This fundamental oversight tends to lead to breakdowns in civility. Not alot of rightists realize the fact that rightists are smarter. This too breaks down civility.

The best we can hope for is for leftists to realize they are stupid and for rightists to be smart enough to not waste time talking to them.

Now I see that it is Daniel Drezner's "blog" that has become a "cesspool" of anti-semitism, nazism and blatant Islamic supremacy!(Of course you LLL types are going to attack LGF every time because you hate the J-O-O-O-O-s and blame thenm for all the failures in your pathetic inferior little lives.) Also you are scared to argue with people who can actually FACT-CHECK YOU ASS! Maybe when the islamofascists finally force you to wear burkas someday then you realize you were wrong to criticize Charles Johnson who is actually willing to fight for his freedom unlike you Michael Moore fans!

Sorry to interrupt the LGF-bashing (and phony trolls pretending to be LGF fans), but we now have registration for comment posting at LGF, and the posts by freaks like those above, using fake email addresses and names, have dried up completely.

You may now proceed with your regularly scheduled bashfest.

I find it notable that Charles Johnson is coming out against identity concealment among commentors. Do other bloggers want to follow suit?

An important post, Dan, thank you. One aspect of this challenge you did not mention is that the blog host can post an entry about the commenters if he or she has concerns. I did this and got a very nice response.

I find allowing a comments section is helpful because you don't get to chose who may comment or your blog, whereas those who do not have a comments section exercise more "control." The freedom involved in an open comments section is one of the challenges of the blogosphere than keeps bloggers more honest.

Thanks, Kathryn. Coming from someone who posted (what she thought was) my personal address and phone number on her blog and invited her readers to harass me, that's ... uh ... rich.

While I was writing this, I see we have heard from Charles Johnson.

Here are links to some posts about LGF implementing commentor registration.

I don't like registration myself (although I have registered at Charles's site): I prefer to remain anonymous, and also believe that removing the opportunity for anonymous comments can inhibit open discussion. However, I have no problem whatever with stricter standards being applied to posters who conceal their identity. Anonymous ad hominem attacks or mindless ranting should simply disappear without further explanation or notice. (Which requires monitoring the comments, which presents a problem for individual bloggers. Fred at Rantburg addressed this by giving several of his trusted regular posters editorial access to his site.)

AFIK, rating systems and volunteer moderation packages aren't yet ready for prime time, at least as far as non-techie bloggers are concerned. (To suggest that anyone but a true geek try to build a blog around Slashcode is ludicrous.)

That said, civility is ultimately the responsibility of the commentor. If enough don't want to be civil, well, screw 'em ;-)

Wow Charles, nice to hear that LGF has cleaned up its comments section. It was truly awful for a while. I might try reading LGF again, there was some very useful stuff posted.

Now I don't have anywhere I can describe as a right-wing cesspool comments section.