How the Grinch Stole Comments
It amazes me that during the one time in the year when we step out of our daily lives to celebrate our shared humanity with friends, family, and loved ones, there are still people out there who are so sad and lonely that they have nothing better to do than attack me over my last post about Chowhound:
Chowhound Board Nazis (the Conclusion) - [Crazies]
Because food has always been the primary focus of this blog, I've decided to enable comment moderation after much deliberation. Believe me, the irony of this situation has not been lost on me. However, the last thing I want to see happen here is what happened to the blog of my beloved Food Pornographer when bigots invaded.
Chowhound is full of passionate, wonderful people with a deep love for food. Many of them have similarly powerful feelings for the site and its management. That's great. One of the first things that drew me to the site was the strong sense of community I could feel on its boards. However, every group has its demons, and every online community has its trolls.
(Bad Chowhound troll! Bad! No cookie for you!)
My philosophy about comments on my blog is simple. Every comment made, whether I agree or disagree with it, will be displayed. I'm a strong believer in the First Amendment rights. All I ask is that commenters be respectful of one another, and of me. I will not permit personal attacks towards either myself or one of my readers. If you have a personal beef with me, fine. Email me directly or express it elsewhere. If you disagree with something written on this blog, that's fine as well. As long as your rebuttal is presented in a respectful manner that does not attack the person with whom you're disagreeing, your voice will be heard. Dissenting opinions are as valid as assenting ones, if not more so, because they present a differing point of view that the reader may want to consider.
If we can't love our fellow man during this joyous time of year, can we at least respect him?
Posts
2 comments:
Chowhound is a bit nazi-like in its moderation, but no community is perfect: the under- and unmoderated ones will be teeming with spam / obviously promotional posts and "reviews" ~ whereas overmoderate ones will (more than) occasionally delete a good post in the name of inappropriateness. CH tends to lean towards the latter, and while I don't agree or like it all the time, I do respect it -- in the same way that I respect your decision to just be done with CH.
and Wow, I feel so bad for what tfp is going through, but was laughing my butt off at some of the comments (particularly the one "I came for a recipe . . . only to find this cauldron seething of lesbians") ~ so, when did you get YOUR sex change? ;)
HC,
I'm right there with ya. I respect the right of the Chowhound moderators to delete questionable posts. But, I also feel that they're much too aggressive in weeding out "insiderish" posts. What does that even mean?
I really think that the Chowhound mods are so vague about what constitutes an inappropriate post because it gives them the greatest possible freedom in policing the boards and pulling posts/threads. While that's certainly convenient for the moderators, it also alienates frequent posters and leaves a number of users sitting out in the cold. So, rather than spend all my time guessing about what they would or wouldn't approve of before crafting a post, I chose to move on.
Hey, "cauldron seething of lesbians"? Count me in and pass the popcorn. =b
- Chubbypanda
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