As readership has grown here—a circumstance that pleases me no end—so has the level of acrimony in the comments. All too often the comments devolve into a shouting match, with readers calling each other names, accusing each other of lying, dominating the threads, and completely ignoring the original post.
Now I don’t mind a post inspiring discussion that is tangential; after all, those tangents can be enlightening. But what I do mind is a level of aggression and name-calling that seems to be increasing.
Let me, then, reiterate a few policies of this website. Sadly, I have to do this all too often.
1. No name-calling. It’s okay to call creationists in general “morons,” but have some respect for your fellow commenters, even if they’re creationists. Do not accuse them of being “liars”; if you do catch them out in a misstatement, deliberate or not, just correct them. Do not call them any names; they are human beings and have feelings that can be hurt.
Extremism in defense of truth is no vice. But there’s no need for incivility. I’m serious, and will reprimand those who are uncivil. If they don’t tone it down, they’re gone.
2. Try to avoid one-on-ones. Too often a thread devolves into a mano a mano argument between two people. Neither, of course, ever changes their minds! If two people together are making more than, say, 20% of the comments on a thread, then they should either stop the discussion or take it to private email.
3. If you’re religious, provide evidence for your views. My policy has always been this: if a creationist, or some other vociferous religious person, appears, I first ask them for the evidence for their beliefs. Before they are allowed to post further, or become a regular commenter, they have to give that evidence. This is, after all, an evidence-oriented website, and if you’re going to make statements about a god, or the veracity of scripture, you have to support that with evidence. My view has always been that many religious beliefs are indeed scientifically testable, and so you have to adduce your evidence. This isn’t one sided: I’m constantly giving evidence for evolution.
Since I’m travelling these days, I’ll leave it to readers to challenge any religious commenters. Ask them how they know what they’re saying about their faith. If they don’t answer but continue to comment, let me know by email. If they do, feel free to challenge their beliefs.
UPDATE: Three more roolz:
4. Don’t insult the host. By all means go after my ideas, but a sure route to ticking me off is to make derisive comments about my boots, love of cats, appearance, and so on. That is rude and unnecessary. I don’t make a penny from my posts, so give me the benefit of civility.
5. This is a website, not a blog. Don’t argue with me about this or quote dictionary definitions; it won’t change my mind. I dislike the word “blog” because it’s ugly and declassé, so please indulge this quirk as a lovable peccadillo.
6. Please not embed videos in the comments. Just provide the YouTube link. It eats up bandwidth and is awkward.
Can we still say sky-fairy and zombie jesus? 😀
FWIW, I appreciate the atmosphere you work so hard to maintain here. It’s the main reason I continue to enjoy reading your readers’ comments (and contributing myself on occasion), unlike comments on…other similar websites.
+1
This is why I keep coming back. You keep your house tidy while putting in a huge amount of effort. I get a sense that the readership acts accordingly.
Bob
Are we allowed to call this forum a blog?
😉
Or even a “notablog” (which I guess is Italian for “website”).
Wasn’t there a famous website design by René Magritte bearing the inscription
“Ceci n’est pas un blog” ?
+1
I liked Musical Beef’s “blobsite” …
/@
🙂
See above.
“Weblob”?
“it’s ugly”
That’s an objective-seeming statement about a subjective condition. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (My other incarnation frequently argues with people who maintain that a normal, healthy human body part, as carved by Michaelangelo and painted by Leonardo, is “ugly” unless it has been surgically reduced, with a greater or lesser degree of scarring. I find this incomprehensible.)
What makes it ugly? The sound? Are “smog” and “fog” and “frog” and “jog”” ugly? How about “blob” and “blond” and “block”? If not the beginning or the end, some unique combination of the two? Do any other XXOX words suffer from this ugliness? Or only bXOX, XlOX, XXoX or XXOg words? The objective ugliness of the word “bl*g” deserves investigation.
“and declassé”
Ah. The class structure of (I presume) the United States is something of a mystery to me, but I was under the impression that it mainly involved money, and birth only in New England. What do they call w*bl*gs in Cape Cod, CT? The Cabots? The Lowells?
How about a comments policy that is accessible permanently by a link from the red side-bar on the left??
Dr. C.: Thanks for da roolz. It’s why your site is so intersting and enlightening. (I don’t find being sworn at very enlightening.)
I very much like what Winston Churchill once said (among many other things he said that I like): “It costs you nothing to be polite.”
And:
“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” – Isaac Asimov
Lack of context is the first refuge of the undocumented.
Churchill’s complete quote has a somewhat different ring to it:
The context: Churchill, deputising for the absent Eden as Foreign Secretary, penned Britain’s Declaration of War to Japan on December 8, 1941:
“Sir,
On the evening of December 7th His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom learned that Japanese forces without previous warning either in the form of a declaration of war or of an ultimatum with a conditional declaration of war had attempted a landing on the coast of Malaya and bombed Singapore and Hong Kong.
In view of these wanton acts of unprovoked aggression committed in flagrant violation of International Law and particularly of Article I of the Third Hague Convention relative to the opening of hostilities, to which both Japan and the United Kingdom are parties, His Majesty’s Ambassador at Tokyo has been instructed to inform the Imperial Japanese Government in the name of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom that a state of war exists between our two countries.
I have the honour to be, with high consideration,
The diplomatic formality was criticised at the time. Churchill retorted in his war memoirs:
[Winston S. Churchill, 1950: The Second World War, Volume III : The Grand Alliance; Chapter 32 (Pearl Harbor)]
Churchill is another particularly outstanding example of the type of statesman leader from the recent past who might find it difficult to appeal to a majority of the present electorate in many countries, particularly the USA and Islamic fundamentalist states. A politician from antiquity (e.g. Caligula), on the other hand, would command enormous super-PAC contribution levels/caliphate endorsement.
Wow. That one had to come as a surprise to Lady Astor.
Maybe come morning, while Her Ladyship was still very ugly, the Prime Minister would wake up sober and polite.
Lady Astor: “Mr. Churchill, you’re drunk!”
Winston Churchill: “Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.”
That’s sharp and direct; but is it rude?
You tell me, you ugly son-of-a-gun.
Occam,
Thanks very much for the context. I read the entire six large volumes of his History of the Second World War and that’s where I picked it up, though I did not remember the context. Probably because I read it 20 years ago.
The particular context, IMO, makes it even more apt in this case. Destroy his argument; but do it politely (and devastatingly.) It stands, generally, regardless as wise advice.
There are many other wise things in that book, as would be expected from someone like Churchill at that stage of life. I’ve applied many of his ideas directly and with good effect and continue to do so.
Thanks for making the point that even the most devastating argument can be put forward with a modicum of civility.
Let us not delude ourselves, however: a seasoned parliamentarian like Churchill perfected gracious insult and polite invective to a high art, often quite ad hominem:
And on another occasion:
I for one would welcome a more parliamentary style of debate; but I do not entertain the highest hopes of a plurality among participants preferring such oblique barbs to the more directly robust give-and-take hitherto prevalent.
Thanks! Those are prime! I too would welcome a robust debate.
Indeed, we should remember Paul Kurtz’s eupraxsophy and show compassion and benevolence in our relationships with others.
But stupid and incoherent ideas should get short shrift!
/@
There’s a problem, though, when those stupid ideas actually aren’t incoherent and are instead open endorsement of horrific atrocities.
How much compassion and benevolence does William Lane Craig deserve when he expresses dismay at the mental anguish of Moses’s merry men when YHWH made them rape and / or murder and / or enslave every last Midianite, young and old alike?
b&
None; but you do yourself proud to take him down politely.
OK… “… stupid ideas and incoherent ideas alike…”
(And I thought the copy-editors at work were tough.)
/@
Calling someone a liar is harsh. Yes, they might get their feelings hurt but that just might make them reconsider their willful attempts to take away my ability to make an informed choice. Oh well, different websites, different rules.
Simply calling someone a liar does nothing to help everyone else make their own informed choice. If a poster is wrong then better to reply, citing the evidence.
Mike.
I’ve read where Churchill, to maintain some civility, instead of calling someone a liar, stated that the person in question was prone to “terminological inexactitude.”
factually challenged …
…separation from reality….
b&
In my experience, it’s very rare that anyone “simply” calls someone a liar. Would you find it okay if one would say “You have said “x”. “X” is wrong and this is why…… If you repeat “x” then you are determined to remain willfully ignorant and you have made yourself a liar.” To me, this would get the information out, and use the message I think we’ve all learned from preschool on up, that liars are not acceptable, to reinforce the lesson.
What you’re not appreciating, Professor, is that (especially on this website) … someone is wrong,/i> on the internet.
… someone else was also wrong, on the internet.
… still wrong, on the internet.
“The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.”
H. L. Mencken
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
H. L. Mencken
Is there a reason why the top left of every page can’t be changed:
As it stands, it causes confusion.
The same problem exists elsewhere on your website.
Please forgive me if this has been addressed before.
That was WordPress’s template and I had no control over it. Just remember, THIS IS NOT A BLOG, no matter what WordPress says.
I remember, and have never called it anything but a website!
The important thing about “da roolz” (for me) is that they deter those whose only weapon is to shout abuse at people or quote scripture. This leaves mostly thoughtful commenters who are worth reading. I’d hate to see anything much change.
Jerry – you can call THIS anything you want
“O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.”
I was called a liar a week or so back and I wasn’t impressed. I could easily have been wrong but did not consciously lie.
I like Bob Thompson’s blog http://www.ttgnet.com/journal precisely because it’s very civil 99.9% of the time, even though we disagree a lot. Well, Bob has been known to use the word “bulshit” on occasions.
Regarding embedding YouTube videos, I don’t think people always intend to do this.
When you post a link to a YouTube video with the intention of obeying the rule, WordPress automatically converts it into an embedded video after the comment is posted.
If there is a way to avoid this, it would be worth mentioning in the article.
Jerry, If I may offer some solution on this point. Without being able to edit my comment, I have to assume this are going to work the same.
However, it is correct that wordpress automatically embeds videos from certain sites.Here is a wordpress page on the topic.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/comments/embeds/
Since I also use wordpress I have found just one option to turn off the auto embeds. This requires a “Pro ugrade”, which it appears you are not using (based on the URL). Here’s the setting if you have it available.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/media-settings/
The only alternative left is to ask readers to remove the “HTTP” protocol from the URL prior to posting.
Here is an example (forgive the video, I hope this works).
To post the catvertising video, a recent advertising trend, paste
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkOQw96cfyE
[Explanation added by GCM: in Cremnomaniac’s submitted comment, there was no “http” in the above link. The “http” you see is added by WordPress software. Note, however, that it is just a link- the video does not embed within the comment.]
Note that doing this results in the “http” being added by wordpress without embedding (my blog does it).
adding the http results in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkOQw96cfyE
I hope that helps.
I had this same issue. I included only the YouTube address, and the video automatically appeared in my comment. Rest assured I won’t do that again, but if there’s a way to avoid this, someone ought to pass it along!
In other news: Blog? Site? If people are obsessing over the use of one or the other, then they really need to be on some site other than this one. Maybe we should start a web site for those who wish to argue that it’s a blog, and also start a blog for those who wish to argue that it’s a web site!
Ok, disregard the ‘someone ought to pass it along’ comment. I added that because I couldn’t make sense of your explanation, but after waking up some more, I succeeded! Thanks!
Late to the discussion here which appears to be over, but one final point about #6 and embedding videos. As noted posting just a link may be auto-embedding, but I wanted to address the bandwidth point. Embedding YouTube videos or videos from other popular providers most certainly does NOT use your sites bandwidth. So if your concerned that as the site gains popularity you’ll be hitting a monthly bandwidth cap imposed by your wordpress site (not sure if then even have that) then don’t worry about that. YouTube is eating all the bandwidth for embedded videos, not your website.