Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyApril 2nd, 2008
This is something we’ve never encountered before.
We try to maintain a certain amount of decorum on this web site while welcoming diverging points of view. We have a few regulars here who rarely agree with what we post, but I can say that I value their inputs. One commenter, the various incarnations of “qou,” is particularly adept at posting some very challenging and informative comments, and I always look forward to seeing input like his.
However, something has been occurring in comments lately which, frankly, is not particularly encouraging. And that is this: it appears we’ve been invaded.
The invaders appear to all come from one group blog that I had never seen before. If the number of comments on that blog are any indication (and the number of comments often aren’t), then it appears that perhaps that blog doesn’t have many readers. And if the commenters themselves are any indication (and in this, I think they are) they are limited largely to other authors of that group blog.
Now, look at the number of posts they’ve put up. Since last Wednesday, those eleven authors have put up eighteen posts. Not bad. But in that same period, four of those authors have dominated the comments on this humble web site, posting eighty individual comments on these two threads alone. Out of 246 comments as of this writing, they account for nearly a third of all comments.
I appreciate their passion. I really do. And I also appreciate a few of the issues they’ve raised. But as I have watched the sheer volume of these comments scroll past my desktop, it has become apparent to me that they’ve decided not to merely discuss, but to so thoroughly dominate a thread with an overwhelming number of posts as to effectively shout it down.
One beleaguered commenter said, “Rather than continuing this futility, I am going to go back to lurking for the time being.” That’s a shame, and it’s the last thing we want here. But if we allow this behavior to continue, others will follow that commenter’s lead and the argument will appear to have been “won” by silence. It appears to me that this is the intent of the members of this group blog.
In the midst of their eighty comments on this blog, that group has managed to log exactly one post on their blog that’s directly related to the posts by Dr. Chapman and Mr. Stanton. And you know what? It’s really not a bad post, although of course I don’t agree with it. I won’t be commenting there, but maybe some of you might look it over and share your thoughts. I would however ask that you show much more respect there than they did here. Be respectful, and don’t do unto them what they have done unto you.
Really, if someone is going to leave eighty individual comments on two threads of this blog, perhaps they should spend more of their time and energy on their own blog. To help encourage them to do that, I have made an update to our comments policy. I am also banning them from commenting on this web site for the time being. This applies to all members of that group blog.
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Patrick
April 2nd, 2008
I’ve noticed this strategy on other websites. If they do not wish to argue the merits of the argument, for whatever reason, anti-gay folks will deliberately change the subject of the conversation, try to overwhelm the opposition through many posts and academic-sounding language (which usually isn’t), or try to confuse the opponents (through obfuscation, using terms for which only they “know” the meaning, etc). When all is said and done, the one thing that remains is they never discussed the actual points being raised. You’ve witnessed a great example of this strategy. No matter how many times I go back and read their posts I either see no relevance to their argument or I cannot make sense of what they are trying to say. I’ve even had some of my smarter friends read their posts and they couldn’t figure it out either. It’s just a bunch of jibberish being passed off as if it were meaningful. It kind of reminds me of Jabberwocky – the words are used in grammatical ways but the meaning is nonexistent.
Jason D
April 3rd, 2008
No matter how many times I go back and read their posts I either see no relevance to their argument or I cannot make sense of what they are trying to say.
I could not agree more. I know I contributed to the problem, and did a few off topic posts in my zeal. My apologies to the BTB crew for my part in the insanity.
I was starting to get fatigued just from reading their posts. I know I can be long-winded, and use 5-dollar words, but wow.
TJMcFisty
April 3rd, 2008
And to my contributions as well, sorry about that…don’t feed the structuralist trolls!
I was exhausted as well. And to think I studied all that literary crit in college. Bleah! I’m positive Saussure’d be proud of them for carrying on the inanity, but I’m sure he’d even say that this is a bit much.
Joel
April 3rd, 2008
Opine Editorials:
Defending marriage on the firm ground of reason and respect for human dignity.
Encompassing the marriage related topics of gendered biology, kin anthropology, family law and policy.
IMO, you should let them say whatever they want to say, however ‘jaberwocky’ meaningful it might be. Maybe out of their 1000sentences, one might be worth adressing. I gota say, to understand these ppl it takes time… and if ‘marriage protectors’ all flow with their same ‘reason and respect for human dignity’ then its worth just hearing them out, so when time comes to adress the ‘marriage protectors’ that directly affects us, we already know what to answer.
Fannie
April 3rd, 2008
Thank you for doing this.
I am familiar with these bloggers and their tendency to completely overwhelm comment threads they participate and then declare victory when they are met with silence. They have a bold sense of entitlement in thinking that they have a “right” to monopolize comment threads, often forcing discussions way off topic. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, they are oftentimes unnecessarily aggressive and condescending.
They have been banned from a multitude of blogs (including mine) and they should really be asking themselves why.
Timothy Kincaid
April 3rd, 2008
In my opinion they committed the one great cardinal sin: they were boring.
Repeating the same phrases over and over and over and asserting their absolute truth was annoying. Their snarkiness, sarcasm, and condescention to anyone who disagreed with them was distasteful. Their run on paragraphs that, once decyphered, contained no substance was wasteful of time.
But I might have overlooked all that if they weren’t so very miserably boring to read.
Bruce Garrett
April 3rd, 2008
They have been banned from a multitude of blogs (including mine) and they should really be asking themselves why.
That kind of introspection doesn’t come with the breed. I’ve met this sort before on an ancient form of Internet discussion known as USENET. alt.politics.homosexuality was full of them, and probably still is. Timothy noted the basic technique in his previous comment, “Repeating the same phrases over and over and over and asserting their absolute truth…” Yeah. That’s mostly it. I used to call it Flag Waving, back when I was on Usenet. That’s really all it is.
Run on paragraphs are also a good indication that you’re dealing with that kind. Think of it as akin to letting your mouth do your thinking for you.
Ephilei
April 3rd, 2008
Here’s my honest opinion:
The point of blogs is to disseminate information democratically to a niche readership that may not warrant the scope a printed medium and does so with a slant. (If you think any blog of magazine is totally fair and balanced, you’re probably fooling yourself.) There is still some descent via comments, I do it myself once in a while.
I can think of only two reasons to read a blog: you more or less agree with the slant and you info from that point of view or you don’t agree but have an intellectual curiosity for the subject and point of view. It’s obvious that the above mentioned commenters aren’t of the latter group because people trying to learn are sensitive to realizing that talking too much impedes listening. I don’t know if they’re really trying to drown out dialogue, maybe they just love to argue? In any case, these comments definitely subtract from the quality and purpose of BTB.
Yes, the Web is all about freedom of speech, interaction, and having differing ideas, but the Web has evolved different channels. For this interaction, a blog is not a good or healthy channel. This deserves a forum – that classic place where flame wars flourish and everyone can argue to their hearts content while other’s are free to ignore them.
To the BTB contributers – this is your site and you have the right to limit our words. I was on a forum for ex-trans and ex-gay people once with some crazy rules like “no pro-trans or pro-gay theology.” It was harsh, but it was their site and their right and responsibility to create the space as they saw fit. As long as you’re open and honest about it, as you’re doing in this post, I see no wrong in any decision you make regarding this dilemma. On the other hand, people besides me will disagree, so choose your actions respectfully.
Jim Burroway
April 3rd, 2008
Ephilei, I agree.
I have no problem with people who post comments in disagreement. We have such comments all the time. But this isn’t a free-for-all, and flame wars are absolutely banned. We strive to disagree without being disagreeable, because in the end we’re all still neighbors and coworkers.
If I didn’t believe this with all my heart, I would never have invited Glenn Stanton or Stanton Jones to provide guest posts.
I know that the level of discourse in this country has fallen so badly that this is actually a novel approach. But we strive to be different. I think regular readers will find it’s not what they say, but how they choose to say it. Speak calmly, respectfully, intelligently and participate in the give and take, and everyone, no matter who they are and what they espouse, will do fine.
Violate our comments policy — which by the way is linked above and below the edit box for everyone to find — and moderation and/or banning is in the cards.
By the way, I have moderated and/or banned about as many “pro-gay” commentors as I have “anti-gay.” As I said, it’s not content; it’s decorum.
Jim Burroway
April 3rd, 2008
Ephilei
By the way, someone else on another thread suggested we start a forum. I’m interested in your opinion (maybe I should start another thread): Do you think this would be a useful tool for mutual dialog?
Grog
April 3rd, 2008
I encountered that bunch of clowns a couple of years ago.
They aren’t interested in discussion, facts or ideas that don’t mesh with their fixed ideas. From the two threads you reference, it appears that they have neither learned anything in the intervening years, nor has any glimmer of actual thought made its way into their arguments. (In fact, I’m pretty sure I pulled apart several of the same arguments a couple of years ago)
Bruce Garrett
April 3rd, 2008
The point of blogs is to disseminate information democratically to a niche readership that may not warrant the scope a printed medium and does so with a slant.
Blogs began as simple online diaries of people’s every day lives. That’s how I began mine back in 1998. Most of them were art experiments, and the initial response to them as I recall it, was that people who put their everyday lives up on the web for the whole world to see were crazy. But that is how it all began. They started as personal diaries.
That’s mostly what they still are. Blogs have become a bunch of different things in recent years, mostly I think, due to a growing dissatisfaction with the commercial news media. But most blogs still have this one thing in common: they reflect some deeply personal interest of the folks who created them. They’re really not open forums like Usenet, particularly the ‘alt’ groups, which aren’t moderated and which can be created almost at will by anyone. Blogs are personal expressions. They may invite comments. They may even invite critique. I don’t know of any that invite appropriation.
Blogs are personal creations. You are putting your one small voice out there for the world to see. If a reader dislikes what they see in one, they’re always free to start their own blog and put their own voice out on the web. And in fact, the folks who got banned from the comments here, Do have their own blog. So they didn’t really need this one too did they?
You can suppose that most of the regulars here have visited the blog in question at least once in light of all this to see for themselves. I’ve actually been there once well before this, as I’d seen it linked-to elsewhere some months ago. I found it to be pretty much the same-old, same-old and that’s why I’d not visited since, except for just now to see how they were responding to the ban. I was…unsurprised.
If they were creating anti-same sex marriage rhetoric they’d be more interesting, but they are simply regurgitating stuff we’ve all seen many times before from the usual suspects. And I have to disagree with Jim that the post he links to is really not bad. I find it thoroughly disingenuous, and in the usual slippery way of our enemies. I have heard what that blogger is saying there over and over and over again and it wasn’t any more impressive the umpteenth time I heard in then it was the first. And that’s pretty much the basic technique: Argue the same point over and over and over and over and over and over and over… And whenever your point is rebutted, just restate the point with a slightly different spin and call it a rebuttal to the rebuttal. Lather, rinse, repeat, wipe hands on pants… Why bother? Seriously. Why bother?
There are only two genders and they naturally complement each other, therefore same gendered individuals cannot marry. Right. And the reason the stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
PiaSharn
April 3rd, 2008
I have to agree with Bruce here – blogs differ heavily from site to site when it comes to what is or is not allowed in comments. For that matter, the same can be said of message boards and chat rooms. Some allow any and every post, some are highly restrictive, and most lie somewhere in between.
(Sidenote: USENET! Dear gods, goddesses, and minor deities, that brings back memories! And, yes, idiots have been around since the dawn of time, and certainly since the dawn of the internet; there’s no escaping them.)
And, for what it’s worth, I think that BTB has a very fair policy when it comes to comments. I do not feel that the mods were out of line in their decision to ban this(these) user(s).
Like others, I appologize for feeding the Troll(s) with my replies in previous posts.
woulfe
April 4th, 2008
I wasn’t going to dive into this discussion, but then I saw this.
On the subject of blog commenting policies, one of the more honest has to be Australian anti-gay campaigner Bill Muehlenberg’s – great, if all you’re looking for is a cheer squad.
Ephilei
April 4th, 2008
Sure, there are many kinds of blogs. I didn’t mean write for a dictionary, just describing BTB’s type of blog: niche news and analysis.
I think a forum could be useful to divert the debating off the comment threads. Only experimentation would tell. However, I don’t think it would foster healthy dialogue – it’s going to be just as ugly as the previous posts only without moderation. For that reason, it might possibly detract from the overall quality of the site just because the conversations in forums are often just ugly. I suggested forums because they give users a space where they don’t feel censored while keeping comments clean.
Another possibility is to limit posts to 1 or 2 comments per user. Everyone can voice their opinion but long debates dominated by a minority are avoided.
I think this comic is pretty relevant, too: http://xkcd.com/386/
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