I didn't write this:
A number of people have complained that the troll or trolls (they may be the same person, and in any case are presumably paid operatives) are degrading the tone of the comments. I agree – I suspect that they're responding to the growing readership of this blog despite their best efforts to drag it down by getting ever uglier. To be fair, some of the supportive comments have also gotten too ugly for the Times. So while there won't be any banning of commenters, I'm going to try to delete comments whose tone goes over the line.
But I agree with it, entirely.
So far today I've had several comments needing deletion.
Some openly despised the poor.
Others suggested I needed medical help for thinking that the Tories might agree with Policy Exchange on the issue of benefits .
You bet I delete them.
It's necessary in support of the freedom of others to comment without fear.
Isn't it odd how so called libertarians from the right are so keen on using fear?
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A forceful and intimidating style of comment is no different to leveraging huge wealth in order to crush economic adversaries.
So the troll uses their conversational dominance to marginalise the weak through intimidation, and then blames the weak for allowing themselves to be marginalised. Sounds familiar? Same tactic, different medium..
For some, freedom of speech includes the freedom to shout loud enough to drown out everyone else, in a sort of “free market of ideas” that actually stifles competition by design..
Richard.
I am an ardent follower of your tweets and blog – few commentors strip out the fluff and get to the core of the discussion like you do. Excellent work.
However (this was always going to come), there are trolls and trolls. Some people use very forceful and confrontational language to attack an ideas. Simply because they feel very passionately about the subject. So they should – we are talking about some very important issues with huge ramifications to people’s lives and the world we leave for the next generation.
One of the most forceful is yourself. For example, a recent tweet ” The Nasty Party is alive and well – and being actively promoted by Policy Exchange”. If I belonged to the “Nasty Party”, I could take pretty strong offence.
But you are clever enough to attack thoughts and ideas and philosophies when you are quite viscous… Others are not so eloquent.
Few who are engaged in this sort of debate enter with a thin skin. I don’t know what you have been deleting but given what I have seen spending time on other comment sections such as the Guardian or DT, I don’t think too many people have genuine malice. Not everyone’s passion comes through quite as they or others would wish.
Much of your work is about stripping people of what they deem to be their right to posses, and giving it to others (rightly so) – but you must expect and ALLOW as much passion and comment as possible – think twice before you delete. Censorship raises anger more. Everybody wants to feel they had their say.
And always open comments – you don’t have to respond, but nothing angers people more than not being able to say “something” when they strongly agree or otherwise. (sorry not succint)
All blogs need a comments policy to maintain standards, protect the readership from abuse and the blogger from losing his/her marbles. Rule 1 of mine is This is not a democracy, the only right to free speech is mine.
Keyword filters take out the serious psychos and trolls, the rest are manually sorted. Be polite and reasonable and – preferably – be coherent and literate, you’ll be fine. Fail, and odds are your comment will be consigned to oblivion.
The downside is that the seriously evil psychos and trolls are learning to be polite. And yes, I do mean evil, quite literally. (And I mean literally quite literally, too!)
Richard very rarely allows any comments which disagree with him.
Which is why I posted yours, of course.
Because it’s wrong.
So by definition I disagree with it.
But I still let it on.
I understand that, theoretically, one of the core Libertarian principles is “Do not initiate aggression”. However, my experience is that, in practice, many “Libertarians” are quite happy to drop this principle especially when it comes to initiating verbal aggression. Which is hypocritical to say the least.
Now, I see nothing wrong in refusing to publish comments whose main purpose is to insult or attack people and neither should any real Libertarian. Doing so raises the quality of debate. So please carry on.