Sunday, June 22, 2014

Blog Comment Etiquette

In my 7+ years of participating in the comments on Liberally Lean, I've been accused of many things, from being a racist to living in my mom's basement to (ahem) not blogging often enough. Given all that, I found this article on comment etiquette interesting. From "Comment Etiquette" by Maeve Maddox (some pointers are from other sources):

1. Be specific.
2. Don’t leave a link.
3. Stay on topic.
4. Be nice.
5. Keep it brief.

Practice respectful disagreement, not personal attacks.
Be brief and don’t turn every comment into your own personal blog post.

And, on being a "blog hog":

You might be a blog hog if you hijack someone else’s blog and use your comment to toot your own horn, discuss your accomplishments ad infinitum without being asked, hog the thread, dominate the conversation vs. join it, or take it upon yourself to jump in and reply to every question or comment other visitors make.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it very much depends on the blog, though.

Whereas a comment extolling one's life story and virtues might be bad form (or even get you banned) on a personal "diary" type blog, on others, it is just part of the show.

Liberally Lean seems to me to be one of those latter-type blogs. The posts themselves are generally just jumping-off points, Barry throws out some crumbs and people grab onto one or another of them and off we go.

Granted, cutting and pasting didactic crap from outside sources to prove a tangential point is bad form even there - so the brevity rule might be good anywhere.

Which I will try to remember right now as it cut this off here-

Jeffrey said...

Civility is a tactic of the past. The commonality of the crowd is what comes across loudest, and that, unfortunately, is rife with profanity and vile language. With that said, it still behooves an individual to mind his (or her) manners so that a safe exit from an online brawl can be had without total surrender.

Katy, it does depend on the blog to a certain degree but when someone invites the neighborhood into their living room and then complains about his guests' opinions, well, you get the point -- it's really just an ego game. There are no great issues being worked out; rather we most often see the fires of hatred being stoked which leads me to my point -- there is no longer civility in public discourse. Perhaps we've become too polarized.

I'm dangerously close to breaking the brevity rule, so I'm outa here.