Sunday, September 20, 2009
A conversation more raucous than harmonious
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
- Kaine saw much progress in his four years
- Virginia voted for gridlock on Tuesday
- Project Vote Smart tries to educate Virginia voters
- America should listen to this Cassandra
From the RoundTable blog
We are coming up on the third anniversary of the launch of The RT, the Roanoke Times editorial page blog.
When we first went live with the blog, we had some lofty expectations for it. Here's how we put it in the welcome message: "What The RT becomes will be largely up to readers. But we envision a place for a healthy and civil dialogue among The Roanoke Times editorial page staff and the community."
The dialogue has been healthy, anyway, if not always so civil. The RT is consistently among the most popular blogs at roanoke.com, and we regularly receive more than 200 comments a day.
When he was first hired by The Roanoke Times, retired Editorial Page Editor Tommy Denton said of the editorial and commentary pages, "Here is where the bully pulpit and the soapbox become one, extending one of the finest and most enduring of this nation's traditions: the raucous harmony of a free people holding forth."
We hoped the blog could be a fascinating extension of that "raucous harmony," where people could disagree without being disagreeable and discuss ideas without getting personal.
Alas, that has been difficult to achieve. Despite pretty strict policing, the comments lean far more towards raucous than anything resembling harmony.
This was brought home to me last weekend when this comment, from a regular and respected poster who goes by the moniker Other John, appeared:
Today I'm making a commitment to better use my time. It used to be fun and enjoyable to come on these boards and engage in debate and discussion over the issues, even when it got contentious, because at least the tone was moderately civil most of the time.
But, as I have read through the comments the past few days since returning from a road trip to New York and taking time away from here, most of what I see is sniping, snarky language and negativity from people on all sides of the spectrum, and it's just not worth wasting time here any more.
So to everyone whom I've had a chance to talk with, it was nice while it lasted. I'm signing off The RT blog for the last time. I'm getting back to my work on this beautiful Saturday, and then I'm working in the garden putting my energy and effort into creating something beautiful.
Other John was one of the good guys. A true moderate, I disagreed with him about as often as I agreed with him. But he always brought a decency and respect to his comments that I deeply appreciated, whether I agreed with him or not. It saddened me to see that he'd been driven off, though I could not argue with his assessment of the tone of the online commentary lately: sniping, snarky language filled with negativity from people on all sides of the spectrum.
This is not what we wanted. Unfortunately, the commentary on our blog reflects the state of the national discourse.
It seems to me that the voices of people like Other John -- who I imagine represent the real silent majority in America today -- are drowned out by the likes of Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, et al, and their supporters who rush online to carry out ideological holy wars on message boards, comment sections and blogs.
We can't do anything about that at the national level. But we can try to do something about it on The RT. And here's our plan: We are putting in place specific terms of service for those who participate on The RT. They can be found in a link on the blog's front page (blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/).
Those terms include the usual: no profanity or obscenity. Nothing libelous. No personal attacks on other commenters. It can all be summed up in this final paragraph: "Ask yourself if you would use the language and tone in the comment you're about to post if you were having a face-to-face discussion. We do not require that commenters identify themselves, but ask yourself if you would want your reputation to depend on your comments."
We will police these standards studiously, and we ask the community to help us by emailing us when they see violations. Comments that violate our terms will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned.
Through this effort, I hope that the signal-to-noise ratio will improve dramatically, and that The RT will once more become a place where civil discourse is the rule, not the exception, and where people like Other John feel like their time is not wasted.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
