Commenter etiquette.

It's been fun to watch an increasing number of publications, MSM and blogs alike, ever more firmly insist that commenters' remarks be civil. By contrast, Barry Ritholtz's must-read economics blog, The Big Picture, is having none of that. It's not his job to insist on grown-up behaviour:

Comments

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

Fortunately this hasn't been an issue at EB, since only grown-ups read this blog. Just thought I'd pass on Mr. Ritzholtz's delightful contrarian approach.

 

 

Comments

[Wascally Wabbit]

I'll try to stay focused and not digress into irrelevancies from this point forward David - as long as others like Rob do the same!

[Darwin O'Connor]

What's wrong digressions? That's often happens with face-to-face conversations. That's what is threading for.

"since only grown-ups read this blog"

Grown-ups and health insurance salesbots: http://thestar.blogs.com/davidolive/2011/04/turns-out-this-race-is-about-likeability-thats-why-laytons-winning-it.html?cid=6a00d8341bf8f353ef01538e12fe70970b#comment-6a00d8341bf8f353ef01538e12fe70970b

[dolive]

Hi guys: I was NOT asking ER commenters to change their ways, not in the least. I just found Ritholtz doing the opposite of the MSM sites are quite rightly doing in trying to maintain civil discourse amusing.
Digressions, to Darwin's point, are inevitable in a worthwile, enriching conversation. As to the annoying salesbot, thanks for pointing that out. I will escort it to the Delete cannister as soon as possible. I'm told we have screens for these things, and probably they do work or there'd be far more of these irritating intrusions. But I enjoy writing so much I don't pick up on commentary fast enough to dispose of the trolls and so on as rapidly as I should.

[Terry]

How could you have missed the sarcasm in Ritholtz' post?

[dolive]

Hi Terry: More than sarcasm (or less), I thought Ritholtz was having great fun, to my benefit and other commenters and would-be commenters. He has since, however, written a post very similar to Kedrosky's at Irrational Greed in which he's just plain pissed off with some of the comments. I'm beginning to sense this with other blogs, too, a blogger annoyance with many comments. One commenter at this site said long ago he expected me to monitor comments to purge not only the trolls but folks who were off-topic and generally didn't contribute to an intelligent conversation. This is a one-person shop, so that's some extra work, but the commenting arena should be an agreeable place.
This might fit my theory that at least some of the best-read blogs - and Ritholtz I think ranks 17 among most-popular economics blogs - are becoming more mainstream even faster than I guessed a few years ago would become the case. As your audience grows, you have to start catering to folks conditioned to less informal content that more conforms with MSM style of presentation, topic selection and so on. That's not the death of blogging, just means some blogs will go that way - bloggers now are showing up as talking heads on the MSM (Ritholtz and Felix Salmon come to mind, also Warren Kinsella), and others will try to remain as idiosycratic as this medium was initally intended to be, forsaking mega-audiences.