I don’t moderate any political communities but I do have a few very active sex, relationship and health themed ones. Sometimes people do come in with the express purpose of saying things that they know the entire community are going to want to bite their nose off for[1] and I ban them whether they resort to outright namecalling or not. They’re not there to help, be helped, or contribute anything of value. They’re there to entertain themselves, and I’ve no wish to give them a platform for that when it’s to the detriment of my community and the atmosphere I like to foster.

Lurking: I don’t understand your reasoning.

For a start, what makes you say that she’s blogging in order to evolve her writing and her perspective? She’s not doing a writing course here. There are plenty of other reasons for blogging. Fun, for example.

In any case, she hasn’t gone out of contact. Her email is right there if you have any burning criticisms you think she really needs to hear. Why does disabling one form of communication (blog comments) suddenly make you unable to take what she has to say seriously? Do you think people who write in the print media, or people who write newspaper and magazine articles, are going ‘lalala’, because they don’t have an online system for you to easily register your response? I’m genuinely curious.

I think at root I’m just confused and a bit insulted by your attitude that blogs are there in order that you can critique them, rather than for the author/s to do what they want with their little corner of the internets. Her blog is her blog, to write what she wants to on it. If she feels that worrying about what people will say in the comments is inhibiting that, making it less honest and interesting and fun, isn’t disabling them the obvious choice?

I think you may be unaware of just how much of a time drain just doing the routine housekeeping for comments of a high traffic blog can be. It wears you down and can sap time and enthusiasm that would be spent on actually blogging.

Disabling comments certainly changes the ‘flavour’ of a blog, and I can see why you might be upset if you were a regular contributor. But it’s such a complex matter and a personal choise, I don’t really get why it would cause you to lose respect for her as a writer.

[1] ‘Reusable menstrual products are icky’, ‘I think you should lie to your boyfriend about this’, ‘But all men like receiving blowjobs, are you sure your boyfriend isn’t gay?’, ‘Well, with my ex we used the withdrawal method and I’m not pregnant’ …the list goes on rather.

Expressing a dissenting opinion in a blog comment is not trolling.

Going into blogs that you know you disagree with and expressing an opinion that you know will be inflammatory in that context, for the sole purpose of provoking a fight… that is trolling. That is a textbook, dictionary definition of trolling. Especially when you’re doing it with the primary purpose of seeking entertainment. And double-especially when “part of the fun” is creating put-downs.

And it’s extremely irritating to people who are trying to have sincere discussions and debates. In fact, it actively derails sincere discussion and debate.

I guess it depends somewhat on your audience. If your audience is highly technical, then most of them likely have blogs as well, and the trackback mechanism can create a web of replies through well-thought-out blog posts.

There have been times I have put a lot of energy into a blog comment, and it is a sad thing at the end to realize that I was basically sculpting my masterpiece in someone else’s back yard. Not that my writing is that great, but when you put time and effort into a reply, it would be nice if you had control over where it ended up.

So I think encouraging the reply-in-your-own-blog model is really an act of progress, although it will take time before most people move in that direction. Including me, apparently. :-)

I once had a friend antagognize me through a tag board on my own blog, after we’d had a seismic fight. I’ve had friends nitpick about my grammar, and I’ve had strangers judge me. I once I had a regular blog and a sex blog, that was anonymous. Someone figured it out and hinted at it in my comments– it more than freaked me out– enough to delete my sex blog entirely.

I respect Matisse’s decision. While I always am eager to rad about the discussion of your posts in the comments, Bacchus, I’m sure they must be daunting for you to manage sometimes.

Cheers to you, for this labor of love.

In a political blog, the community standards are a good deal more argumentative. In a sex-positive blog like this one, community standards are much more focused on supporting people in positive explorations of sexual behaviors, some of which may be frowned upon by the society at large. When “bar fighting” for a liberal position in a conservative blog, one can reasonably see one self as David versus Goliath. Fomenting an argument here would require taking the Goliath role, which is far less satisfying.

So, I don’t consider taking contrarian positions as necessarily troll behavior. But it does require some sensitivity to community standards, and perhaps the occasional apology for misreading things.