So, if you’ve read my post on “Jerry Coyne asked …”, you’ll know what’s just recently gone on between us. At this point, I’m pretty sure that I won’t comment on his blog anymore, at least in a comment — I’ll still make posts here about posts he makes that I have something interesting to say about — because of all the hassles. The hassles of being called a troll and a thread-jacker just for disagreeing with most of the people there. The hassles of having a longer comment called out as something that should be put on my blog — even though most of the people there (and Coyne himself) to the best of my knowledge don’t read or comment on my blog. The hassles of having a comment deleted because either it was too harshly critical or too aggressively defensive. Yeah, I contributed to all of it, but it isn’t worth it.
Now,why will I regret that this happened? Because, in general, Coyne’s blog is popular. A lot of people, thus, read and post in the comments. And so it gave a decent venue for me to discuss things with people who don’t agree with my views on things, but who might have some sort of common ground. That’s why I started posting there more frequently; for me, it was working — even with the annoying posts — to get my views out and getting people to criticize them. Maybe for me to even learn something. Yeah, not going to happen now. But it’s sad that it went this way.
Oh, well. Maybe I’ll just have to put more effort into my own blog, then …
The Verbose Stoic 
June 24, 2010 at 11:26 am |
“Maybe I’ll just have to put more effort into my own blog, then …”
That’s exactly the right thing to do. “Here’s me and I invite you to join in” is far better a way to share what you got with the world than breaking into somebody else’s blog just because it’s more popular than yours and start pushing your long opinions and thoughts throught everybody’s throats.
There’s a difference between a blogger and some guy who drop by every once in a while to post a comment. You were acting like a blogger in the comments section of someone else’s blog. That’s not how you do things.
June 24, 2010 at 12:30 pm |
Well, some of the things you say here are fair … and some aren’t.
It was fair of Coyne to say that my comment that was directly off of his post — and not a reply to another comment — would have been better on my blog. It would have been nice, though, if he’d also noted that one of the reasons that I made it a comment was because in other posts it related to comments made there, thus making it more accessible to the people who I was actually trying to clarify things to. But, again, fair enough.
But I don’t see where the “breaking into somebody else’s blog just because it’s more popular than yours and start pushing your long opinions and thoughts throught everybody’s throats.” I had, in fact, posted blog posts about his blog long before this. And had made direct comments on there before as well. And, in fact, other than this comment had had almost all of my comment replies be replies to comments that people had said, which it thus would not be appropriate to make a blog post out of. And I had been accused of being a troll and someone who was a thread-jacker from those shorter posts that were replies to what people were commenting on.
So, in some sense, it clearly isn’t fair to say that I was acting like a blogger in the comments section of someone else’s blog, since in general I wasn’t.
Now, did I in some of the threads make a lot of replies in a short period of time? Well, yes … but only in a couple of threads, and not necessarily any more than others did. Were my comments longer? Well, yes … but the posts of other people were about as long, too (see Hempenstein’s for another example that’s close to mine). Was it done “just because it’s more popular than mine”? Not at all … but it is one that talks about things and things that I disagree with, frequently, making it one that I’d rather comment on. I don’t generally post on blogs I agree with, oddly enough. Did I step over the line? Well, possibly … but surely not as badly as you are portraying it here. And it’s hard to see how you could justify my “pushing my long opinions” unless you think that that comes into play only when you post to disagree with what someone says.
So, then, I guess that’s the question: if I disagree with a post or the comments of other people on a blog, what limits do I have to set for myself on expressing that in the comments of that blog? Is it the same as anything else? Probably not; constant disagreement can indeed seem like trolling. So, what then is the etiquette for disagreeing, so that one doesn’t go over the line?
December 9, 2012 at 7:39 am |
[…] with a long, substantive comment on “Why Evolution is True”. This is in violation of my post from a year and a half ago about my self-imposed exile, that I only broke to correct Coyne about some quotes he had mixed up. But the scientism debate is […]