YOU'RE ON NOTICE!

"You're on notice, you Hosers!"

Today I deleted a number of comments from both sides of the Middle Eastern debate.

I have lost all patience for people who are here just spoiling for a fight. Going off-topic is one thing, and it's welcome if it advances the exchange or adds some intelligence, new information or levity, but flame wars and the hijacking of threads are not.

If you're a repeat offender, and some of you already are, your comments will be deleted and your IP will be banned.

Keep this up, and I'll just close all comments.

NB: I have time-stamped this notice well into the future so it remains at the top of the blog for a while.

H/t to Big G. (and Ivor) for the Stephen Colbert pic! To generate one, here's the link.

UPDATE (AUG. 17 @12:17 a.m.): How ironic. On a thread about deleting comments, I have started deleting comments. And now I am closing them.

Comments

[Scotian]

Antonia:

I hope you do not end up closing your comments because I think that is for some of these people one of their goals. That you are silencing what they see as "the truth" and therefore are a supporter of the "enemy". That you cannot handle taking what they see you as dishing out. Now, I don't think so and I like your comments as well as your body of work. I think for the most part the comments enhance your work between the differences between some on what you have said and the resources they link to to back their POVs up. Many times I have learned something I did not know about from such as well as from your own work.

All that being said and my support for your keeping comments open being what it is as I have said to you before if you must because of such problems I understand. I would regret it and hope that it was not forever but given some of what I have seen you have to put up with from some of these commentators I can appreciate why you might well feel no other choice. You are not here primarily to blog and to suit the comfort of bloggers you are a media critic journalist who has a real paid job doing so. This blog of yours is a nice supplement to that but it is not the basis of your work nor should it be seen that way. I will add this, if you nuke the comments I will still come here to read your work, after all that is my reason for coming here far more than leaving comments on it.

[anonymous coward]

Ha! Awesome.

I'd say Mazel Tov. But it would probably be misconstrued. So I won't.

Anyway, it's good to know that -- having exhausted all the other possibilities -- you've done the right thing. Better late than never.

Please devote some thought to how you can enclourage a wider range of comments from a wider range of people.

At time your comments section has seemed like an insider's club. It's dominated by a few regulars, who make other feel unwelcome. This feeds on itself, exacerbating the problem.

You might want to devote some thought to moving to the (GASP!) Andrewsullivan.com model. He includes selected excerpts from comments on the main page -- but not verbatim comments elsewhere. You'd lose some of the snark and one-liners, but might gain overall. Think about it. Maybe even try it for a couple of weeks.

And remember some of the wisest words ever written about the Web. They come from the FAQ on the uber-techie site slashdot: "We can either run the site, or we can talk about how to run the site. We don't have time to do do both."

So: try less democracy, and more dragon lady stuff. Will this be a stretch for you?

[Antonia Z.]

Thanks folks.

I am not yet ready to eliminate comments, and I won't capitulate to those who may want me to.

It will be much more fun to delete them and ban them.

Dragon lady?

Oh baby. Just watch me.

[Maz]

On reading this notice, I burst into a ragged shower stall rendition of 'Gee, Officer Krupke!' from West Side Story:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta
understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses (?...), natcherly
we're punks!

That said, I'll be mindin' my P's 'n' Q's from now on.

[Jay Currie]

While I don't know if this is technically feasible, you might want to delete comments but put them somewhere out of the thread where people can go to see what you are deleting. It would reduce the disruption while maintaining the transparency.

[Reality Check]

Dear Antonia, since this is a media blog, it would be interesting for you to focus on describing how you think the media SHOULD report a given thing and how you feel that they actually do things in certain instances. I'd be interested in things like reporting news, on the one hand, versus editorials and other comments, on the other hand. I'd also enjoy your thoughts on whether there is a place to declare a reporter's or news organization's general "view" or "bias."

Much of what has been contained in the back and forth here really centres around those issues. You say in your rules: "And last but not least, we will not solve the problems of the Middle East here." Let's face it, it is an intractable insoluble situation which has created much suffering and with no way out any time soon. So if that's true, how should it be reported on? As they say in journalism school, "what's the angle?" Obviously that's a judgment call. Is the angle "illegal militia crosses international boundary and abducts soldiers?" Is it: "Lebanese government allows militia to fire Iranian rockets at Israeli civilains"? Or is it "Israel planes bomb innocent Lebanese civilians using US bombs?" Now none of those would be technically wrong, so what does a reporter go with? What should an editor choose?

Are there any rules for journalists to go on to make these judgments? If so, what are they?

[johnnykap]

Wow, and it had nothing to do with me. Interesting...

[Tim]

Ending comments is for wingnuts who can't stand to have their views challenged. That's not you, Ms. Zed.

[Krister]

"At time your comments section has seemed like an insider's club. It's dominated by a few regulars, who make other feel unwelcome. This feeds on itself, exacerbating the problem."

I can relate to this. I am not as astute a debater and especially not in written form in English so even if I have comments I am most likely to refrain from commenting.

[wsam]

I for one refuse to believe these lies. If you are afraid to acknowledge that the dark cabal who runs the CBC have forced you to back down over your criticism of 'The One' holding you directly responsible for its failure so be it. But I am not afraid.

Blame the latest Israelbullah brouhaha if you want, but this is one anonymous comment thread commentator who ain’t buying it.

Did Peter Mansbridge really crank call you while completely hammered?

Fight the Power!!!

[Ex-Moderator (of another site...)]

I tend to agree with the slashdot motto. Moderating sites is hard work! And never mind the back end stuff that I wasn't ever involved in. "Luckily" I didn't have the skills.

Our M.O. was to "shoot first, ask questions later" if something inappropriate was going on. It was even stated as pretty much the case in the "User Agreement" too, so hey, at least we were honest.

But you're bang on in your tactics of ban and delete at will.

This IS your forum.

[NPS]

Really hope you don’t eliminate our comments, however certainly understand your annoyance with those who treat your site as an ICQ/MSN chat line regurgitating the usual standard responses. Give them the heave-ho, they won’t be missed.

Best
NPS
Riverview, NB

[Dana]

Wouldn't it be great if just this once out here on the internets a decision like this by a homeowner-operator didn't result in a huge pointless meta-discussion about spee freech?

Wouldn't that be novel?

[bealefan]

This hissy fit is not worthy of a journalist of your stature. Methinks you need to be rogered roundly or perhaps new set of batteries are in order. It's a web blog for Pete's sake.

[Antonia Z.]

Yeah, well, I am mad as hell and won't take it anymore. Babysitting some of the comment posters now takes up half my day. Life is too short.

[John W]

There are times when both sides get so ridiculous that it's not even funny or entertaining let alone informative anymore, just plain boring and irrelevant.

I for one am not going to believe that every network and news service in the western world has suddenly become corrupted on one side or the other even if mistakes are made from time to time..

I support your decision.

[Ian King]

Can't really blame you, Antonia. I often skip right over posts that degenerate into another tedious Mideast debate--I have better thngs to do than read the same stuff rehashed over and over again. It's not about cutting and running or hiding from citics; it's about having a website that doesn't burning out everyone other than the keyboard warriors. If some commenters don't want to respect that, send them off. Your commetns seciton may be less active, but that's not necessarily a loss.

I do love the idea that embracing an open forum for anonymous and pseudonymous cowards, sock puppets and trolls is somehow an exercise in 'transparency.' It's rather the opposite -- gutless people with questionable motives hijacking debates and abusing you and your readers' valuable time in the process.

One thing that the cultists repeating the mantra of 'interactivity' seem to forget is that all this interaction, if it's to be reesponsibly overseen, is a giant time sink. Nobody's really solved that one; they've only managed to shift around the burden.

In the meantime, you might want to force everyone to use TypeKey (which will drive away some of the riff-raff) or whitelist commenters who you trust enough to stay on-topic and well-behaved (which will save you time with the moderation queue), or both.

Best of luck, Antonia.

[Carl]

Looking at some of the comments reminded me of the "your mother"...."no,YOUR mother!"...."no,YOUR MOTHER!!!" retorts. It's juvenile and lame beyond belief.

And I have to wonder-which you've already noted at the top-if there are some who just decide to inject some vitriol,then bail and watch a thread go into the toilet. Debate is healthy and necessary,but when it becomes like kindergarden,it gets old fast. I see it all too often in the comments area of other blogs I frequent.

Like John,I'm backing your call,AZ.

[Jiminy C at the other daughters]

Right tone - right measured response.
Can we enrol Steve "Harper" in your Measured Response 101 course pretty please?
Ooops - was that a digression?

[Dwight Williams]

Amen to that. It's too easy to disprove a lie often enough these days, and so most people will, to quote a Sorkin script, "because it's the easiest thing to remember, tell the truth".

[Just Asking]

So is censorship? Or is it not letting a couple of whackjobs ruin a good arena for debate?

I think it is a little of both.

Sad in Mississauga

[Allen]

Paul Wells doesn't take any comments. What ever you do Antonia I trust you to do the right thing?

[Bill-Muskoka]

And that's the way it is, Thursday, August 10th, 2006!

[johnnykap]

AZ, I can see why it takes you half a day. Frankly, that is a waste. Why not hire some student to make sure the language is clean and just check in every now and then? I can't see what the benefits of this blog are for the Star. And you hardly ever write columns anymore. And that book will never be written. And your social life is probably suffering, too.