Every blogger has to decide how to handle comments on his or her posts. In my case, I've opted for as much openness as possible. But now that I've gotten a rash of crazed commenters on my other blog, I'm having to rethink my approach.
Given that the blog is called Church of the Churchless, it isn't surprising that I attract quite a few religious true believers who are out to challenge my skepticism.
That's fine with me. I enjoy debating metaphysics and philosophy with fundamentalists, in large part because it is so easy to undercut their arguments.
(One of their favorites: "There's no proof that God does not exist." My stock response: "And there's no proof that gnomes aren't causing the flowers in our garden to grow." Meaning, it isn't up to skeptics to prove that God doesn't exist; it is up to religious believers to provide positive demonstrable evidence.)
I've tolerated rants, preachings, and insults, doing my best to ignore the comment craziness. I even put up an I Hate Church of the Churchless site where those who really despise my blog could vent their irritations and avoid having their heads explode with unexpressed rage.
But a few days ago some crazed commenters sorely tested my quasi-compassionate Buddha nature. I'd been arguing with a guy who went by "Walker" about the Ava Worthington case here in Oregon.
Our comment conversation revolved around his assertions that nobody knows the root of right or wrong, so what's the matter with sacrificing a child in the name of Jesus by not giving her medical care that would have saved her life?
I kept telling Walker that a jury found Ava's father guilty of criminal neglect. No reasonable person sanctions child abuse. People have a right to their weird religious beliefs, but not when an innocent child's life is threatened by an irrational interpretation of a Bible verse.
Since I was winning the argument, something must have snapped in Walker. He started leaving more and more bizarre comments. Then he started posting comments in my name, "Brian," pretending he was the Church of the Churchless blogger.
That deeply angered me. Plagiarizing a writer's words is bad enough. But to steal a writer's or blogger's identity, that's horrible.
Most strangely of all, Walker did this after leaving a comment accusing me of engaging in the practice of posting comments on my own blog under assumed names -- which I've never done. Then he does exactly that! Reminds me of all those religious gay-bashers who turn out to be homosexual.
When I discovered that the "Walker" and (fake) "Brian" had come from the same IP address in Germany a few hours apart, I whipped out a "Troll Alert" post. I didn't want blog visitors to think that I'd been posting the comments written by Walker.
The last fake one said that I'd banned Walker from commenting. And it came from Walker! He was trying to look like a martyr, I guess.
When I announced a new comment policy, I ended the post by saying:
Bottom line: if you support the churchless purpose of this blog and want to take part in a comment conversation on some topic, great. Comment away. But if your main goal is to disrupt, insult, disparage, and otherwise try to throw wrenches into the machinery of open discussion, please go away. And realize that any comments you do leave are going to disappear in fairly short order.
That seemed pretty darn reasonable to me. As it did to several other bloggers who commented on the post.
But not to some religious crazies who somehow clung to the belief that the Great God of Internet had decreed that they could preach whatever weirdness they wanted on any blog or web site they chose to.
Like, mine. I was compared to Stalin by one guy because I didn't want fundamentalist comment rantings to fill up my churchless blog. I responded with:
Loved the comparisons of me to Stalin. Nice creativity. So many people nowadays use Hitler as the archetype of authoritarian evil. It's good to see Stalin get some Internet rant time also.
Well, I'm reluctant to go to full-blown comment moderation, where a blogger approves comments before they're posted. When I leave a comment on a blog, I enjoy seeing it appear right away, so I figure other people feel the same way.
I'm taking two steps to help ensure that the crazies don't interfere with the vast majority of blog visitors who want to have respectful, reasoned, and intelligent comment conversations.
(1) From now on, comments on a post need to be on-topic, related to the subject that I wrote about. If they aren't, they'll be deleted.
(2) Off-topic comments can go into an Open Thread post. I won't allow either regular spam (ads) or religious spam (preachiness), but just about anything else will be acceptable.
It's unfortunate that respect for civil discourse has fallen so low.
The way I see it, visiting a personal blog is like being invited into somebody's living room for conversation. If they have a sign on the front door that says, "Please remove shoes before entering," you do it. Or, you don't enter.
Likewise, I keep telling people who can't stand my Church of the Churchless blog, "Why do you keep reading it if it bothers you so much? The rest of the World Wide Web is just a mouse click away."
Lastly, here's another strangeness that I don't get: today I read several comments that said if I criticized a religion, I should expect to be personally attacked -- because true believers don't like having their faith challenged.
Huh? Here's how I replied to that nonsensical notion:
I''m a vegetarian. If you say, "all vegetarians are deluded," I'll want to argue with you about the truth of that statement. But I'm not going to take it personally, because you didn't single me out as a person who is deluded. That is, even though I'm included in that group (of vegetarians), you weren't thinking of me specifically.
However, when some commenters on this blog get upset with my criticism of a religion, they take it very personally and start attacking me, when I didn't attack them. What they should do is attack my arguments, rather than me and my blog.
It's really an individual's problem if they identify so strongly with a certain aspect of themselves -- like religion -- that a criticism of that aspect is taken to be an attack on them. Like I said, I've been a vegetarian for forty years. But I just smile when people make fun of vegetarians because (1) it isn't a huge part of my identity, and (2) I'm convinced vegetarianism is the right thing to do....Driving home today I heard a conservative talk show guy, Glenn Beck, ridicule owners of hybrid cars. We own two of them. Why, I should consider that Beck is attacking me personally! Damn the bastard! Except, I didn't feel that way at all. Mainly I felt that Beck is a fool for not understanding the benefits of driving a hybrid.
Since I also read your other blog, I followed that conversation and think you were very fair in how you handled it. In reality what those commenters don't realize (or do and like the people at the town halls intend) is what they actually damage is what they claim to love-- freedom of speech, but freedom of speech where it's reasoned and relevant. People who insult or disparage, who threaten are the ones who put freedom of speech at risk. When comments don't relate or when they are meaningless, then they make others give up reading there at all. Your blog will still be read but comments will lose their value. It's really to protect comments that a host of a blog has to consider how to make it work. It is very much like a home for ideas and words.
The argument you got from them (if they really are more than one) about freedom of speech made no sense to me but a lot of what you were getting from several of those posters there (especially the one you referred to here) didn't make sense either.
Still it's always a hard call and whenever I have comment moderation in place, I don't really like it. It's more work for me too, but I keep it when I get crazies coming around. The last time it was triggered by someone coming in and not really threatening me but insulting all men who think like I do politically. Did that have logic? Trolls don't have to have logic. They come in off searches and are looking for every place they can find to ruin and throw out enough stuff to block any reasonable discussion-- consider it yelling in town hall meetings.
In my case, whenever I begin to see those kind of comments, I delete them; and if there are enough, put on the moderation for awhile. I always okay dissents from my viewpoint. For me, putting up moderation for awhile at least lost the nutcase fringe. When they knew nobody would read their 'clever' insults, they quit posting it.
When dissent is reasoned, it benefits the comment section. When it isn't, it's not helpful to the blog host or the readers.
Posted by: Rain | August 11, 2009 at 06:53 AM
The beauty of the internet is that you find a vast quantity of information and opinions. The ugliness of it is that it allows for total anonymity and gives some folks the notion that they freedom of expression is to violently attack others with their rants.
It sounds like you handled it very well.
Posted by: Eric | August 11, 2009 at 04:24 PM