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/

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.

(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.

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.

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)

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.