I’ve been considering all the suggestions in the commenting changes thread. One thing that is obvious: We have a problem, Houston.

But it is also true that I feel a hesitation to post because I will be considered an outsider and not worthy of acknowledgement or response.

Broken Things

Hi – another extremely-long-time lurker, very infrequent commenter here. I don’t have any solutions, but reading this comment thread made one problem very obvious: when people ask for more charity, less hostility and knee-jerk dismissiveness, several regular commenters respond as if they’d been told to stop saying fuck.

amrie

I’m another very, very longtime lurker who has commented only a few times. I almost always agree with PZ and the majority of usual commenters, but I’m still really afraid to comment here and be ripped to shreds by the very people I admire so much. I commented the other day one minor criticism of something PZ said, and suddenly I’m “ranting” and “slamming” and being condescended to about whether I read the OP. I’m afraid to go back and see what other responses I got. I love reading this blog, but it’s true that it’s not welcoming to people who aren’t regular commenters.

Dingo Abbie

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The existing rules aren’t working, so they’re going to get revamped. In particular, everyone pretty much ignores section V, especially this bit:

2. Justice is more important than civility. But aspire to be charitable at first.

That’s been annoying me for some time now, and it’s time to refocus and re-emphasize, so that means the whole thing is going to re-written.

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The man I grew up knowing as Dracula, Christopher Lee, is dead. Probably. I know most of you young whippersnappers probably think of him as Saruman or worse, Count Dooku, but I will tell you definitively that you are wrong, and everyone should know he was Dracula, most definitely.

Mostly, of course, he was a guy who brought some class and dignity to even the goofiest role.

I’ve been targeted by KotakuInAction, that wretched hive of gamergate villainy. My crime? I reviewed Greta Christina’s book, Bending, without declaring that she was a writer on “MY” network. It’s a silly complaint, but the funniest thing is how much the gamergaters get wrong.

I lost track of how many outright fabrications and errors there were in these comments…without even counting the fact that they spelled my name three different ways.

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