Friday, August 18, 2006

Moderate THIS, pussies.


Back here, commenter Simon points out that blogger Glenn Greenwald already has a lengthy post that disembowels the gamut of asinine, ignorant, illogical and stupefyingly uninformed right-wing talking points related to the recent smackdown of Commander Chimpy's unconstitutional snooping program.

In fact, I knew about Greenwald's blog entry when I posted that earlier piece but I thought I'd hold onto that gem as part of a little experiment in conservative bubblethink.

Only minutes after I linked to Strong Conservative's piece, I also submitted a short comment to that same article under the name "Anonymous" -- a comment which consisted of nothing more than the words "No, they didn't," where the last two words were a link to Greenwald's posting. I was informed that comments at Mr. Strong's site are moderated, so I thought it would be amusing to sit back and see how long it took before Mr. Strong finally released my comment.

As you can see, there's nothing vulgar, profane or inflammatory about my little comment, so there's little reason why any moderator wouldn't accept it. And yet, here we are, some 20 hours later, and still no comment. Am I surprised? Not really.

I will, of course, be chided by folks complaining that, hey, give the man time, he probably has better things to do. I'm sure he does, but I consider that a particularly flimsy excuse. If you have a blog, and you offer a public comments section, then there's at least a small moral obligation to allow people to comment there (within reason, of course).

If you allow open comments, terrific. But if you choose to manually moderate your comments, then I think you have a responsibility to be timely in reviewing and accepting or rejecting submissions. Things happen so quickly in the blogosphere that it's unacceptable to allow quick-reaction comments to languish in a queue somewhere while the news cycle moves on and the story drops off the front page.

As it is, Mr. Strong has had his piece up since yesterday, accompanied by two complimentary comments, while anyone who might have submitted a dissenting view has been put on hold. How convenient. And how totally goddamned gutless.

To Mr. Strong (and other right-wing bloggers like, oh, Adam Daifallah who are such fucking pussies that they can't handle a little give-and-take in their comments section), let me suggest that you either grow a pair and accept what comes (again, within some reasonable boundaries of civility), or just remove your comments sections entirely.

With some exceptions, having a moderated comments section is just another way of saying you're too much of a fucking coward to deal with other folks' opinions. But I guess that's the whole point of the wanker echo chamber, isn't it?

AFTERSNARK: As "canucklehead" points out, a flurry of comments was suddenly approved at SC's site, including mine which is the third one. Why I bothered to comment is a mystery since not a single person after that addressed the claims in Greenwald's piece to which I linked.

As the saying goes, trying to educate a wanker is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of time and it annoys the pig.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

booyah CC, booyah

Anonymous said...

Looks like it's up now, CC.
Third comment on the page.

Saskboy said...

I worry that my spam filter will moderate a dissenting view and the poster feel slighted. I'll let someone post almost whatever they want if it's ontopic, since they are the ones responsible for making them, and if someone is libelled, I'll abide by the law and take it down with a court order or perhaps even a pleasant request from either offended/offending party.
I've seen too many Internet wars over poor moderation.