I knew the day would finally come when I would feel the need to develop a comment policy. Perhaps rather than being frustrated that common sense cannot be expected to prevail among intelligent adults, I should look at it as a blogging milestone. Since I strive to maintain my blog as a place where all people feel comfortable participating in the conversation, however, at some point I need to take the responsibility to ban those who refuse to remain civil.
If your comment would run the risk of having me ask you to leave my property, do not be surprised if I put you on moderation. This domain, after all, is my domain. My property. My living room, so to speak.
JJRoss left a nice link for bloggers to consider. It provides a nice policy for anyone who engages in discussions on the internet and sets good boundaries. Paul Graham also has an excellent article on how to disagree. For anyone who actually wants to promote an idea, the points he outlines are central to presenting a positive argument that may actually be taken seriously.
For the more visual among us, the create debate blog summarized his points into a nice graphic. Mild profanity, but I think it is forgivable in this instance.
In order to promote discussion rather than allow the abuse of others on this blog, I will ask that all who comment try to construct their disagreements according to the top levels of this chart. Then we can all enjoy the discussion.
Update: the create debate blog stopped by to leave a link to another depiction of the same information. I am rather partial to the pyramid, but you might like the ladder, too.
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
I will not try to refute common sense. I haven’t banned anyone yet. I do have two commenters whose comments stay in moderation until I have time to read and respond to them. One is active in lobbying congress to ban adoption and replace it with guardianship. The other just a nuisance.
Of course, there is also the bean dip approach, where you decide that a reply isn’t worth the time, effort or emotional investment. Why bother to craft a resonable response to critcism if it is going to be met with a rant?
You know you’re cool when you have to have a comment policy.
Dana’s in the bigs.
LOL YayyyyyyYYYYY Dana!
In the “bigs,” how funny.
You guys are funny. I haven’t banned anyone. But I do have one sitting in moderation that will likely stay there. It actually isn’t as bad as the ones which led to me finally setting someone to moderation, but I decided that once I give a specific warning, my tolerance drops to zero.
I don’t mind the “homeschoolers hide abusers” line of thought. It is the “you are only here because your husband subsidizes your maternity” line of “reasoning.” It is no longer an exchange of ideas, but an exchange of insults and I don’t come here for that and I doubt many of you do, either.
I think it’s fun and enlightening to discuss opposing viewpoints, but some folks don’t know what ‘discussion’ means-
2 a: to investigate by reasoning or argument b: to present in detail for examination or consideration c: to talk about
If your reason for opposing home education is the war in Iraq and Abu Ghraib and microbes on Mars and only God knows what else, then there is just no viable discussion gonna’ be happenin’.
I thought the “your husband subsidizes your maternity” comment was funny. Yer darn tootin’ he subsidizes my maternity- hey- he done be the one who caused it! :p
When your blog is getting 80+ comments on a post, I do believe you need a comment policy. I loved the link JJ left- those are some really nice guidelines. Most of those rules of verbal engagement were part of my high school journalism and speech/debate courses. One might assume that they must not be teaching those anymore if one were to judge by the level of discourse in many blogs and newspaper articles.
Really! Civilized civic engagement based on disciplined habits of mind seems to be the true “socialization” missing from public education these days, the “culture change” to worry most about, not whether kids learn to wear uniforms and walk in a line and eat in a lunchroom and raise their hands for permission before speaking.
Such pernicious degradation of our public conversations seems connected in a thousand ways to the Unthinking and Incivility of Socialized School . . . to the tipping point past which the population loses the ability to save itself?
Although I should add that I’ve certainly been insulted and annoyed to the point of needing to leave and never return in some squirrely, stupid conversations among home-educating parents, too, sigh.
There are no group labels or memberships that make or break the ability to think. Didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.
Here is another way of visualizing the same information:
http://blog.createdebate.com/2008/04/25/paul-grahams-ladder-of-disagreement/
Some people process this graphic better. Hope it helps!
“your husband subsidizes your maternity”
Well, really! Whether you homeschool, are a SAHM or have a job for pay outside of the home he darn well better! If he didn’t, wouldn’t that be called child neglect? Or was he supposed to abandon his responsibilities to the ‘government’ (i.e. let the rest of us subsidize your maternity)?
I wonder if your commenter would criticize my cousin who is a SAHD for his wife “subsidizing his paternity”? Somehow, I doubt it…
Thanks, Loudacris! I like that one and it is probably more visually accurate. But I really like your “Maslowian” one. I’ll add that link, too, though.
Maybe I need to get out more, but I still avoid such confrontations. I’m glad that you are taking them on though. I learn from your criticisms.
“Subsidizing your maternity” is better than saying a SAHM is a kept woman. It’s a little more ‘polite’ anyway.
I like that graphic as well. It drives me nuts when someone refuses to argue the point. I have no problem with disagreement. It is one of the reasons I blog. But, when they stop making sense and just throw out insults, it has to be moderated.
Oh, none of it bothers me all that much. But when every sentence is filled with that kind of nonsense, it is impossible to have a discussion. There isn’t a point because the other person is only trying to get a rise out of you, not discuss anything with you.
Oooo! A kept woman!
Question - Would I get a maid?
Second Question - Could he keep me in Paris every now and then? Rome? London? In a large country house with a chef and a personal trainer?
Just asking.
But at some level this is dead serious and about our kids, not who’s “keeping” us but who’s keeping them and their youthful freedom and optimism and civic space — safe.
My own amusement or outrage or indifference isn’t what I think of when the trolls slither by. I think about my beautiful always-unschooled daughter, now 18, who has her own blog and has attracted a truly creepy troll or two, not just a clueless public school mom shooting her mouth off in a snit but dark, purposely menacing, persistent whack-jobs. Tormented souls and criminally ill minds are just as likely to be online as anywhere else, maybe more likely.
I just read Dana’s new post about the exploitative magazine photos, wondering if the same reasoning should apply to the issue of “published” hostility and verbal abuse aimed at girls and young women:
I do not understand why people mess with kids on the internet. I’ve had to delete a few comments on my daughter’s blog. And stop publicly associating myself with it because I get just a little too much traffic.
Of course, some of it was my fault. Her first moniker happened to be the name for an international porn star. Like I would have known that. But when her neglected blog started getting more traffic than mine (this was a long time ago), I had to figure out where they were coming from.
Yuck!