Thursday, January 13, 2011

Beware the bloggers

Bob Norman has this piece up today about a Broward County Commission who is afraid of bloggers. It's easy to poke fun at some of the dramatic comments she makes.

But, I actually think Norman makes light of what is a more serious issue -- anonymous commenting on blogs. Rumpole and I have discussed it and dealt with it in our own ways, but it's not an easy problem. The anonymity of commenting makes for (unnecessarily) hurtful speech, and oftentimes takes over the blog itself. I haven't found a good solution for this yet. Currently, I moderate comments, but it makes it difficult for a good dialogue to occur in the comments...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

f*^k you F*^$ing P*%sy

Anonymous said...

Why not try lifting the "comment moderation" for a trial period and see how it goes?

South Florida Lawyers said...

It is a problem, and it can be a buzz kill. I agree there's no simple solution and relying on the "kindness of strangers" ala Blanche DuBois will usually get you burned.

Rumpole said...

Just the other day David and I were at Joes discussing this and as we agreed at the time, there is really no acceptable answer. I don't know about the high-falutin readers DOM has, but you would not believe the nasty vicious crap my readers try and post. Calling someone ugly, fat, insulting their children and then spreading a false rumor about them sleeping with a staff member is a fairly run of the mill comment I will not post. Indeed, having made my policy clear to the judges at the REGJB, they mostly stopped writing them anonymously.

But moderating comments doesn't give DOM the excuse for this wretched spam verification bs. All it does is save him time at the expense of the readers. Come to my blog, where readers come first!!!!

Shoot The Lawyers said...

I thought F. Lee Bailey died at least 10 years ago. I am serious. I hit the link thinking it was an article 15 years ago. Amazing!