Personally, I don't mind these. On Glenn Greenwald's blog, for example, you find side discussions from well-informed and thoughtful regulars. Or sometimes, it's an amusing (intentionally or not) back and forth between passionate commenters with diametrically opposed views. Or, it's friendly banter and scatological nonsense. Or a flame war. To me, these are part and parcel of the community that open comments make possible.
Other people are not so sanguine. They complain about the burdensome scrolling, the RSI-inducing paging, the sheer awfulness of it all. The horror! They ask for a firm authoritarian hand to come and make it all better. They tell everyone else to shut the hell up so they can talk, or at least get their points in sometime before the first 75 pages of comments.
There's a win-win here. After the first 20 posts about libertarianism, for instance, or why your favorite presidential candidate is getting a raw deal, or how the forces of evil are keeping your favorite conspiracy theory from getting wider play, you might be tempted (or told outright) to take it somewhere else. By all means, bring it here.
A little structure, though, might help. So here are the rules for this site:
Rule No. 1: There are no rules.
Serving Suggestion No. 1: After a rigorous analysis, I've concluded that relocating all the OT threads from high-traffic sites to this one could generate somewhere between 640k and 979 petabytes of traffics. No one wants to suck the life out of another site. That really isn't my goal here.
So, link back to the discussion from whence you came. You can do this by putting the link in your comment, or by linking at your screen name when you write your comment.
Serving Suggestion No. 2: It would be nice if you summarized the argument, or the most contentious points, or just your own point when you first show up so that others know what the hell you're talking about. It'll be good for you too, like cod liver oil. Not necessary, though. (Cod liver oil, blegh).
Serving Suggestion No. 3: Identify your interlocutors, so that you don't just look like that homeless guy at the bus stop talking to himself. Also not essential, just a little value-add.
Serving Suggestion No. 4: You're welcome to flame all you want. Better in here than in the middle of a relevant topic somewhere else. I don't mind, really.
But could you try to make your flames at least a little clever, or interesting? Displaying your obsession with fecal matter, and your theories about others' activities with same, over and over again, is a protected form of speech here but it gets boring and doesn't persuade anyone else that the other guy/gal is a doo-doo head.
Lemma One: Name calling is also protected speech, but the level of protection I'll offer is very mood-dependent. If in this blog or anywhere else I've commented, you've called me three or more of the following names (or shown a tendency to hurl these epithets at others):
- Liar
- Coward
- Murderer
- Rapist
- Woman-beater
I'll probably delete you unless you have something to say that is worthwhile to everyone else. (The first two are misdemeanors, and if that's all you've got you'll probably skate).
So, with that in mind: Open thread. Bash away.
14 comments:
Cool.
Then I'll paste this here. In response to Steve Rockford: http://tinyurl.com/5ulkgs
Marketing 101
... “what people want” is really “what we can successfully convince them that they want”. A basic principle of Marketing 101 is that the consumer is a blank slate.
Which is why when a marketing-type begins speaking my eyes glaze over and I stop listening until they move onto a more interesting topic. I'd grant that any number of businesses are in business following this advice, but those in it for the long haul tend to take a different perspective. As in, figure out what your customer needs and produce it.
One need not look much further than the American auto industry to see how well following the first option has worked out for them.
Hey bystander, thanks for stopping by. I was hoping someone would want to make use of this little off-ramp. And one of my favorite commenters, no less! :>
I agree with you, this is a diseased and cynical view. It may have some truth to it, but it's easier to see more truth than really exists if you confuse advertising with marketing. But then, I didn't go to business school.
Compare the view of consumer marketing with business-to-business marketing, where you have to actually solve a problem (preferably one where you can quantify the 'pain') before the customer will part with a few million bucks. Consumer choices are lower-ticket and lower risk, but still ...
You've created a new dilemma for me, quickstrategy. In the past I've written responses like that in Salon's Letter editor and then deleted them. I get the benefit of writing them and getting something off my chest, and then killing it so as not to derail the thread.
Now, I have this decision to make. Kill it? Or, post to Hot Off the Topic? And, if I post it, am I then responsible for sticking around to see if I need to 'account' for it.
Sheesh! I spend too much time off the reservation as it is. ;-)
Which of course creates an opening for me to ask you the rudest, most vile and rage-inducing of all possible questions, i.e. "How's the dissertation going?"
:>
By all means, post your sacrificial children at HOTT. Responsibly ...
Great Idea, QS.... I'll come over and peek whenever the several YKW's get going..... Just to hide out.
Please do, m'love --- and add some of that high-grade side commentary I appreciate so much on UT!
Also, I'm looking for ideas about how to make this a valuable venue; Do I :
+ write summaries/reviews/ snark about those OT threads (whichever is warranted)?
+ pick up where someone left off and do an "And another thing ..."?
+ purposely cross-pollinate (to use Pedinska's metaphor) OT threads from the other blogs to produce those interesting new cultivars?
+Something else that's blazingly obvious but hasn't occured to me ... ?
I can't say I really have a plan here ... but I'd prefer to do something that has the promise of replicating that balance of relevance and amusement that we all seem to appreciate ...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/25/155447/721/123/522625
Godammit! More FISA and Executive+Kingly power stuff from KagroX
You know, reading stuff like that sort of gives me hope because it's SO over the top, SO obviously open to challenge ... but when I see the reaction, I realize we haven't reached the point of fatal overreach (on the part of the Rethugs) yet ...
Shortening Bamage's link just a bit:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/437x64
Is there a way to lure "damn that Xanadu" and his opponents over here? Not that I want to plague y'all with the rantings, but for Pete's sake.... Ut is driving me nuts today. And of course, to the bottle, as per usual.
Au contraire, O Madame de Cointreau ... I think this is exactly the premises where the plague should land, not only because of its intense preparations (spraying, heavy antiseptics, the superior charm of its denizens) but because that's what it's heah fo.
Either way, it's good ... HOTT can be our little clubhouse away from the madding ... and maddening ... crowd, or else this place can house all what don't belong there, leaving the thread on UT safe for normal human habitation.
And yeah, today is one of those days on UT, isn't it? Maybe we can concoct some method of luring others here to do their dirty business .... maybe advertise that we're making fun of them in here? (I believe in truth in advertising, mind) :]
QS... At the risk of being, once again, a DFH liberal, I say all of the above. First, commentaries on bonkers rants are always good, if only for their therapeutic value, and how can an "and another thing" ever go wrong? Also, a smaller forum might enable those of us who like to keep our identities secret at UT, either for comic (that's me!) or other reasons, might be allowed a forum to insert arguments that are more reflective of our own experiences, and riff off them with a smaller, less troll-ridden audience.
Damn, when I think of the times Shooter has hammered me, absurdly, with some misogynistic hogwash, that I wanted to say, "Listen, Dipshit, I could kick your ass..." but couldn't because I was hiding behind my supposed curlers and a cloud of More 120 smoke, I could spit nails.
I do think that the cross-pollinization theory could be good, too. RMP, LWM, Anonymust, Paul Dirks, the Jims, and many others all stay totally on top of the rest of the blogosphere, and could help with that. Email me or others of us to get in contact with us behind the UT front.
Alas, I think luring the crazies over here may be the least successful of your hopes here. They do what they do, because others are there to see. Kind of like flashers.
PS... You're a great addition to UT, and thanks for what you do.
Hag, your contributions at UT do not go unnoticed either...especially when your curlers attract lightning bolts from the dark side.
You raise a fistful of good points, Cocktailhag.
I suspect you're dead-on about the likelihood of migrating the Flashers. Plan A sounds pretty good, though; if we can set up an alternative venue with the bennies you describe, it's worthwhile. And given who's stopped by already, the prospect of having the right crowd around seems promising.
Thanks much for the suggestions! I'd love to discuss it further ... I don't know how to email you or the others, though. Could you ping me at yahoo, my screenname with an address or two (and something in the subject line that doesn't tound like you want to sell me Cialis, so the spam filter will let you by)?
And thanks especially for the kind words!
qs
Post a Comment