As we come out of the past couple of weeks and the loss in Wisconsin and go into the week that may well see the defeat of ACA, we need to become more effective on this site. These thoughts are aimed at helping us and our progressive agenda survive in the midst of the awful onslaught we are enduring, due to Citizen's United. In my opinion, its time to get a grip, get some discipline and take and work for the long view.
How can we do that on this site when there are those commenters who continually waste our time by DERAILING DAIRIES. This is essentially sabotaging our work. Two very negative outcomes of these derailing diaries are: 1) A good discussion of the important topic that the diarist has written about either does not take place, or is very hard to have. 2) It is supremely frustrating to read the diary, and so tempers flare and fights ensue. Neither of these options help us win back the House, elect the President or move forward the Progressive agenda. It keeps us mired in THE PROBLEM, RATHER THAN CRAFTING AND WORKING ON A SOLUTION.
We MUST STOP THE DERAILERS. We must establish and enforce better boundaries in our diaries.
Markos is to be thanked for all the work he has done to clean up all the 'gangs' and their wars on this site. However, I think that there is more cleaning up to do. There are single players who still wreck havoc on this site and they must be stopped, if we as a community are to get on with our work. I believe that we must expand the ability to Hide Rate to apply to those who obviously DERAIL A DIARY, but perhaps cannot be 'proved to be a troll.' I have read one too many diaries which have been sunk in the water by arguments started with derailing comments, often right at the top of the diary. Often these are of the 'ad hominem' or 'flat earth' variety. Consider this example I came over this morning.
I have been thinking these things for a long time now, but when I read the comments in 71 Billion Forget the Corporations Tax the Churches this morning (highly recommend that everyone T&R this excellent diary,) I decided that I have to speak up.
From my point of view, the author presented a well thought out thesis which I would summarize as "If the churches want to become political players in the political process, then they should lose their 'tax-exempt' status." Simple. One would expect that those on Daily Kos would have enough background to understand the political involvement of churches, from influencing Prop 8 in Ca, to various anti-abortion/contraception/women state sponsored efforts, to anti-gay legislation, etc, etc.
Instead, we find the following comments directly under the Tip Jar:
Tip Jar (92+ / 0-)
If altar boys could get pregnant, contraception would be a sacrament.
by tiponeill on Sun Jun 17, 2012 at 08:33:07 PM EDT
not all churches (5+ / 0-)
are political.
by ljean8080 on Sun Jun 17, 2012 at 08:48:12 PM EDT
Perhaps not (23+ / 0-)
neither is Disneyland, but it isn't tax exempt.
If altar boys could get pregnant, contraception would be a sacrament.
by tiponeill on Sun Jun 17, 2012 at 09:11:51 PM EDT
so you hate all religious (0+ / 0-)
people?
by ljean8080 on Sun Jun 17, 2012 at 10:07:21 PM EDT
So, can you guess what happened in that diary? If you have been around here for a season or two, you can probably write the next 20 responses without reading the diary. People:
1) were aghast at the AD HOMINEM* ATTACK (provocative emotional attack) of the commenter on the diarist, which did not provide a rational alternative to the point of view presented in the diary and would have promoted a discussion.
*ad ho·mi·nem [ad hom-uh-nuhm ‐nem, ahd-]
1.
appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.
2.
attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.
2. Some commenters in the thread got angry or spent time trying to explain to this 'flat earther' that the churches were, in fact, inappropriately politically active. All of this derailed the diary into focusing on one's person's ignorance and 'ad hominem' attack on the diarist. And to this extent the discussion was sabotaged. This is a great comment in that that illustrates this:
Straw man argument alert (8+ / 0-)
The thesis of this diary is most religions abuse the tax-exempt status and should separate their charitable activities from their religious ones. Nowhere in the diary is there a tone that expresses hatred of religions.
Moreover, this is a deliberately false attack. Should the IRS and Congress move to clarify tax exempt status of churches, religions would still be free to meet and congregants could still practice their religion.
by Dirk McQuigley on Mon Jun 18, 2012 at 08:48:39 AM EDT
If you look at the provocative commenter's comment history (who has no diaries which I sigh to say is one of the usual patterns of those who either through their ignorance or trollish intent take us severely off topic,) there is a clear pattern of starting fights. My question is that why are we allowing this person to derail diaries and our work? Why do we allow others who do the same thing to sabotage our work? We need better boundaries.
My question is:
HOW CAN WE GET THE WORK DONE HERE, fighting for our collective lives, when we cannot even stage a decent discussion? This is ridiculous. We waste time on comments that should not be allowed to be posted. Period. We need to have a broader mechanism to allow us to hide rate derailing comments. I cannot tell you the amount of times I have logged off from DK furious with a commenter doing this and destroying any productive discussion.
But what guidelines can we have, that we do not have? Well, I find Talk2Action's Guidelines much more business like and oriented towards productive work.
They list their purpose clearly and what their basic assumptions are and what they will tolerate and what they won't tolerate. It is crystal clear.
Statement of Purpose
Talk to Action is a platform for reporting on, learning about, and analyzing and discussing the religious right -- and what to do about it. It is not a forum for discussion, dialog or debate with those who sympathize with or belong to this movement. There is an editorial framework for this site that is different than you will find on other major blog sites, so please read this carefully: We are pro-religious equality and pro-separation of church and state. We are prochoice, and we support gay and lesbian civil rights -- including marriage equality. Therefore, debates about the validity of abortion and gay rights are off topic. We understand that some people who share our general concern about the politics of the Christian Right may not agree on all of these matters. That's fine. Anyone who agrees with the purpose of this site is welcome to participate -- but bearing this in mind. It is our intention to take the conversation forward, and not let it be held back by debating what, in our view are or should be, settled matters of human, civil and constitutional rights. Similarly, religious debates are off topic, especially debates between theism and atheism. Finally, we are nonpartisan. While political discussions are welcome, -- even central to the purpose of this site -- we do not wish the site itself to be a platform that is necessarily for or opposed to any particular party.
.....
Don't be a troll. People who are offensive or abusive, are trolls. People who willfully hijack comment threads outside any reasonable discussion of the good work of the diarist, are trolls. People who write diaries or make comments obviously beyond the purposes of the site, are trolls. People who do not share the purposes of this site but join anyway, are trolls. Trolls and trollish behavior will not be tolerated.
I appeal to Markos to expand the definition of Troll to anyone DERAILING A DIARY so that their comments can be hidden quickly and a productive discussion had as soon as possible. Any comment that is "ad Hominem' should be immediately HR'd to get rid of it and not allow it to derail a diary. And I would appeal to members of this site not to engage these 'derailers' in discussion but immediately HR them so that the important discussion can be had without having to explain to them that the earth is not flat, etc.
Unless we protect the boundaries of our discussions, we will not be able to have them. If we don't have these discussions, we will not be able to contribute to the Progressive Cause. Period.
Folks, there is some serious shit coming down. I don't feel good about the outcome of the ACA this week. We need to clear the decks so we can put our heads together and gain strength and begin to plan for the long haul. Because in my opinion, that is what it is going to take.
Let us reinforce the boundaries of this site to protect us all and enable us to get on with our work.