DelawareWatch Goes Moderate
Dana Garrett has apparently been bothered by a number of comments on his blog lately. As a result, he has started moderating comments. I guess you’ll have to somewhere else if you want to challenge Dana’s views on the world.
We had an issue a few weeks ago where a single poster was doing bad things in our comments section. That poster was banned. I think Dana tries to keep a tighter rein on comments than we ever plan to here. Besides it sounds like way too much work…
Tags: Blogosphere, Delaware
Inherently, bloggers treasure free speech, it is the raison d’etre for the medium. That’s why it is such a struggle when trolls have to be banned. But, the old yelling fire in a crowded theatre argument also comes into play when free speech becomes a targeted effort to destroy all the had work that goes into building a blog community. That isn’t free speech, that’s an attack, and the community has the right to protect itself in that situation.
Posters at Taylor Marsh are begging for the same thing. They want all trolls blocked. So much for debate.
Reading a blog where everyone agrees is boring. I love the fact DL’s commentors are diverse. They keep everyone on their toes and hone all of our debate skills.
Humor, as well, goes a long way.
Garrett is an obsessesed blowhard. His entire blog only has two types of posts – Anti GOP and anti Burris. It has become an irrelevant joke—like him.
Now El Socialisto is “moderating” comments. It’s called censorship. The asshat can’t stand his obsessions being challenged. Silencing comments is easier for his tender ego and big mouth. Not that many people bother commenting any way. Of course he has the ready made excuse that he has “subscribers” to explain why no one bothers with him except a few of his many enemies. No doubt all the others “subscribed” long ago before he went totally insane and lost all credibility. Garrett makes a much better communist than blogger.
I can’t say as I agree with anon, and it seems like I’m the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Dana semmed pretty upset that his assumptions were challenged, which is ok, I guess. During our exchange, he asked me a question. I answered it. He didn’t like the answer, so he asked again. And again. And again. (This goes on like this for a while.)
In the end I made some statements that were substantively accurate in my opinion, but were unacceptable in tone. Since I don’t intend to do any posting on Dana’s site in the near future, I’ll let this be my apology for that action.
Please, Rick, don’t apologize for tone. If we all had to apologize everytime our tone was unacceptable our posts would be over-flowing with ‘I’m sorry’ comments.
That’s the nature of blogs. We bloggers shoot our mouths off daily. Which makes me wonder why Dana would willingly ‘moderate’ comments. Surely this could be a death knell to his blog? But, I’m new here, so maybe this prediction is way off base.
One thing about blogs that I have noticed is that the rhetoric sometimes gets out of hand. Because a blog is instantaneous, and needs to be, we don’t have the luxury of putting a post in the desk drawer and looking at it 24 hours later. That means we have to have thick skins and a high tolerance for each other’s outbursts when they occur. We know DonV is unfiltered and it is part of the charm of this blog. Jason is notorious for keeping it “real” and Cassandra, Pandora and Geek are all just brilliant thinkers and writers. The rest of us heed our inner voices most of the time and once in a while come off the rails.
That is very different from a concerted effort to destroy the blog and make the community feel bad about itself. Those people should not be tolerated when their intentions become clear. Racism, sexism, and any other intollerance is not our brand and will drive people away from the group. These things can be very fragile and need protection.
I can’t start my day without DelawareLiberal and Kos. The careful thought, the not so careful thought, and the humor kick off most mornings for me. It’s my virtual water cooler.
I believe in free speech but I also believe that this is a community and the moderators have to use some judgment from time to time in order to protect it.
The apology was for the fact that I took my thoughts and directed them as what could be construed as a personal insult. Despite the fact that I was on the receiving end of name-calling, that doesn’t mean I needed to dish it out.
Geez, Rick, you’re an ass! 🙂
Things became heated, and, remember, it takes two to tango.
Rebecca, thanks for the compliment. And, BTW, DL is all the better for its commentors. I am so feelin’ the love this morning!
Dude, Dave Burris or Mike Mathews or y’all would get ripped a new one if you moderated comments. It just goes to show what a bully Garrett is that people won’t even criticize him for the ultimate act of censorship. Normal people won’t even engage him anymore. He’s a cautionary tale. Hatred consumes the soul, y’all.
Frankly, I think the reason there isn’t any criticism is that no one cares.
There was a time when I respected Delaware Watch for the purity of its ideals. Dana gave credit for good initiatives regardless of their source. Now he attacks his enemies more often than anything else, and even when a Republican does something he should find commendable, he believes it must be some kind of trick.
RickJ – you bootlicker.
Me lickspittle.
We’re the reasons for the moderation era.
In the end I made some statements that were substantively accurate in my opinion, but were unacceptable in tone. Since I don’t intend to do any posting on Dana’s site in the near future, I’ll let this be my apology for that action.
*
I read that mess. Garrett is slowly going insane. He has become a parody of what he once was.
Dude, Dave Burris or Mike Mathews or y’all would get ripped a new one if you moderated comments. It just goes to show what a bully Garrett is that people won’t even criticize him for the ultimate act of censorship
*
I agree.
Perhaps because Garrett is the grandfather of DE’s independent blogs he garners the respect he gets here at DE Lib and from Matthews.
Sorry, I thought I was being critical. I disagree with Dana completely on this. I think that he should reconsider and I suspect that if he doesn’t change his mind on it, I will stop reading it.
I’m not sure how different DelawareWatch will be from Celia’s blog. Both seem to be in various states of decline.
I was thinking the same thing. It is a shame to see Delaware Watch become another Grapevine. Really it is worse than Grapevine. It would have people take time to write comments only to hope they eventually appear whenever the ‘moderator’ gets around to approving them. That is if they get approved at all. Grapevine at least doesn’t pretend to be a place for discourse like Delaware Watch now is doing.
The fast pace give and take of blogs in almost real time is what gives them life. Screw having some thought policeman deciding whether your comments are permissible. I can understand blocking really offensive trolls spewing hate. But this sounds like plain old censorship of opposing viewpoints not just hate speech. I am done reading Delaware Watch.
in the essence of this…..
Fuck you dana! Pussy
“Garrett is an obsessesed blowhard. His entire blog only has two types of posts – Anti GOP and anti Burris. It has become an irrelevant joke—like him.
Now El Socialisto is “moderating” comments.”
There is why I did it. I frankly think this is pure hateful schlock and unworthy of the bytes required to bother w/ it.
As for RickJ, his view of what I said to him is per usual pure spin. Any objective observer would look at what Burris did to M. Mathews and say he deceived him and tried to bully him. But look at most of the exchange. Most of it he OFFERED NO OPINION AT ALL. He kept evading the issues and did, what he & Smitty always do in defending Burris’ dirty tricks, attack me. It’s truly astonishing if you think about it. Burris suggests an act of arson for political purposes and it’s my fault for pointing it out. Burris bullies & deceives Matthews via e-mail and then on DE Lib gives him unqualified permission to print them. I print them & draw at the obvious ramifications of what Burris did and I should have never written on the subject.
It’s always the same w/ RickJ and Smitty: Dave Burris is never fairly the subject of criticism and he should never take responsibility for his actions. So, yes, I don’t care to waste my time or space w/ people who behave as if their really are Jr. Messiahs in the world. I prefer discussion w/ people who operate w/ premises that are a little less lunatic.
I actually thought my decision would cut down on the comments, but some people have written to me and have said that they will comment now because they feel they can have serious discussions w/o the litter provided by the nutcases and hateful.
I will leave you w/ this thought. Not one of you–not even the liberals–raised one word of protest when Dave Burris banned me from his blog.
I intend to moderate comments and it’s a crime. But Burris has banned me (and last I knew protack as well) and where is the hew & cry?
Now we can expect RickJ and Smitty to attack me for mentioning it.
Oh, Nancy, I’m lifting the ban on you now that I’m moderating comments.
Enjoy your hypocrisy.
Dana, I was not aware that Burris banned your from his site. This is wrong. I did know that he banned Protack some time ago as well.
However, you seem to have lost the high road here with regard to the banning. Your argument is further weakened by the fact that Nancy was banned from your site.
And let me leave you with this thought, it is not my duty to come to your defense, as a liberal or otherwise. You have insinuated that for some reason it is. Your logic is much the same as the Bush administration complaining that the countries in NATO didn’t rise to help invade Iraq. We help you when your argument deserves it and when we know of your plight. Often your arguments are so vicious, so quickly, that I cannot defend you.
And of all the places to ask for defense, you come to DL? I think your current war with Burris is the only thing that has kept you from having your semi-annual flame war with Jason. If I recall correctly, that spilled over onto a mailing list that almost got both of you banned from the list and involved you threatening to file suit.
All I can say is that it is disappointing to me that you have decided to moderate comments. It seems like just the kind of thing that we would hope Dana Garrett would rail against.
I threatened to moderate comments once, when I started to get a lot of traffic from another blog. The threat was “comments must be either nice or on-topic. If your comment fails to meet one of those virtues, then I will add a declaration of your carnal love for animals at the end of your comment.”
Luckily, everyone kept it nice, so my resolve was not tested. I think I would have done it, though, because that would have been hilarious!
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/delawarewatch/2675929902824419493/
This is exchange that Dana accuses me of being evasive. I welcome the critique of anyone on the blogosphere as to whether that’s the case.
Dana’s problem is that once he gets into his head that 2+2=5, anyone who tries to tell him differently is a liar. He’s angry at me for not staying on his ephemeral point, but rails against Dave’s dirty tricks and (give this a rest) charges of political arson whenever someone suggests he get his own house in order.
He’s a rumor-monger of the highest order anymore. The same post above has two new “Garrett-approved” replies. One defends the post office with information not reported anywhere in the Joanne Christian mailing scandal, and the other accuses Charlie Copeland of responsibility in that matter – with this codecil: “IF that is true (and I’m not saying definitively it is not)”.
Great journalism, fishwife. That kind of nonsense would be laughed off of a junior high newspaper. And it was off-topic. Why didn’t you answer the question! Answer the question! (CTRL-C, CTRL-V ad infinitum).
“Burris suggests an act of arson for political purposes and it’s my fault for pointing it out.”
That’s your reading. I took it for a snarky joke.
“He’s a rumor-monger of the highest order anymore. The same post above has two new “Garrett-approved” replies. One defends the post office with information not reported anywhere in the Joanne Christian mailing scandal, and the other accuses Charlie Copeland of responsibility in that matter – with this codecil: “IF that is true (and I’m not saying definitively it is not)”.”
That’s a perfect example of Garrett-ism. That Christian lady came on this very blog and stated the details about that missing mail situation. Garrett ignored that fact to rumor-monger.
You know, I heard second-hand, (and I’m not saying it’s true), that Dana Garrett likes to eat live bats while dressed up like Marilyn Monroe. It’s probably not true, but now that I’ve said it, people may actually think there might be some truth to it. This is how Dana Garrett likes to spread rumors. He has no business criticizing anyone else on anything.
The fact that he loses so many arguments now that he has to censor his comments is the ultimate victory for people like me, Burris, Fulcher, Nancy Willing, Jason, and anyone else he’s sunk his arrogant claws into over the years.
Face it, bitch. You’re finished.
OK, let’s be honest, Garrett isn’t finished. He has all his subscribers that get emails from him and send him emails. Millions, I think. They obviously approve of the possibility that one day they will find that every email they have sent him has been archived on an internet application and may be used (against them) on his blog or elsewhere.
Freaking scary.
FWIW, since it’s a Garrett bitch-point, there are two big reasons you (the commenting public) have not seen me criticize Dave or even congratulated him (really, I haven’t) here on the very public blogs:
-1) I have access to him via email and phone, so those things are (and have been) handled offline
-2) He’s a friend and you don’t flog friends in the very public eye
-3) Oops, there were three…I don’t trust Garrett and his penchant to archive anything and everything to later plunge deep into your back (which basically means that I don’t trust him – did I say that already?).
Fascinating. Dave Burris bans me & Protack outright and that’s OK. I ban no one but moderate comments and that’s horrible.
I mention something I heard about Christian’s mailings and take pains to say that I am not confident about its accuracy because I have a vague memory about it and that is terrible. Dave Burris leads Mike Matthews to believe there is ongoing FBI investigation when there is none in a brazen attempt to extort information from him and he gets a pass.
Celia Cohen gives no one the capacity to make comments on her site. I do. Yet somehow it’s perfectly OK for a couple people to suggest there is a valid analogy between us.
But that actually makes you correct in one respect. There really is no basis for me to interact w/ you.
I don’t know what I was thinking: bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem.
Dana, the fact that only comments approved by you can be read isn’t necessarily the issue. The impetus for this was that someone who didn’t agree with you didn’t back down from your bold, italicized repetitive badgering, which looks an awful lot like you decided to eliminate viewpoints that didn’t jibe with yours.
That’s the general opinion of just about everyone who has looked at your situation. Now, I’m sure you’ll turn my comments into some strained metaphor about a dictator (as an aside, no one talks about Pol Pot anymore – do you take requests?), but the sting from your taunts has faded with your relevance.
Delaware Watch is now the Faux News of the Delaware blogs. A perfect irony.
This makes life easier, because now you can read DW with javascript totally turned off, which means Dana’s unknown scripts from ten different sites will be blocked from running on your browser doing God-knows-what.
Of course that means you can’t see or make comments, but now they won’t worth looking at anyway.
Here’s the difference between Celia Cohen’s “blog” and the new incarnation of Delaware Watch. If I read Celia Cohen (I try not to, BTW) and she says something completely stupid, it is like watching a news report for something stupid. I can shout at the TV, but there are no other views readily handy to adjust the coverage.
However when I read Delaware Watch and you say something completely stupid, you will be like HANNITY and colmes. You will have a number of complimentary comments about how damn insightful your stupid post was with no readily available alternate views.
Also, I’m not sure what the hell your Latin was intended to convey. I read it as “It is not goodness to be better than the worst.” Which seems like self-indictment to me. It is certainly not goodness to be slightly better than Dave Burris with regard to censorship.
In the past I told Dave Burris that his blog took a sharp turn into wingnut irrelevance when he brought in his nut bag contributors and that he should stop inflicting the stupid on us innocent bystanders. It had no effect.
Lately, I make it a practice not to tell other people how they should be running their blogs.
I just made a realization. Dana cross-posts Delaware Blotch onto the News Journal’s blog. I believe (at a glance) that all of his scorn-fueld vilification of Burris is included over on the News Journal version of the Blotch. The recent few certainly are. I just find it interesting that he has bounds for other people, but is himself boundless.
For the PUBLIC record, when Dave did ban Dana a while back, I took this up with Dave who told me to do what I want with it. I told Dana I was taking care of it and he responded (not his words) with what amounted to me sticking it up my arse. Well, so be it, you crotchety beee-yotch. I owed nothing to you to begin with,other than courtesy, but you crushed that option. That was the start of our downfall as well, although hardly as epic as him and Dave.
Sorry, J. Obviously I have not been posting enough. I can criticize your deck building only so much. Your package-mailing ability, too.
In the past I told Dave Burris that his blog took a sharp turn into wingnut irrelevance when he brought in his nut bag contributors and that he should stop inflicting the stupid on us innocent bystanders.
Without casting aspersions on any specific contributors to any blogs, one could make similar arguments about some of your happy troupe.
To be a mirror image of FSP, DL would need contributors who advocate state ownership of industry and unilateral disarmament.
Dave just quit his own blog.
What does that tell you RickJ?
That he’s more like you than you care to admit?
Dave just quit his own blog.
What does that tell you RickJ?
That Nelson Muntz will start contributing shortly, followed by Dave330 within a couple of weeks.
OMG! I am dying here.
LMAO
LMFAO
No comments on Dana’s blog in days and days and days. More than a hundred here and on Dave’s old blog since May 31st.
But half of the ones here are from people whistling Dixie.
And half of his were him telling his posters that they were wrong