Well, I think it’s time for me to say something.
Some of you know that I’ve been online longer than some of my readers have been alive. I first went online in 1982, and I’ve been on ever since. I have what I think is a strong understanding of the nature of online communities, and I’m proud of the one we have created here (particularly thanks to the comments system, which was developed by me and totally unique to the Slope of Hope).
For those of you who would like to know some important facts about the comments system, please click this link. I especially encourage lurkers (that is, non-participants) to do so.
Through the ten+ years that Slope has been around, the community has, on the whole, proved itself to be remarkably cordial, helpful, and resilient. I confess there are a few folks that hang out in comments that I’d be nervous meeting in a public place, but overall they’re a likeable bunch. (If you’d like to get a taste of the kind of hostile, packed-with-nutjobs place a financial blog comments section can be like, just read the first couple dozen of these comments on a recent ZeroHedge post).
The zeitgeist in the comments section is partly driven by the market. Since Slope is a bearish blog, a strong, uptrending market tends to create a lot of angst and mud-slinging, whereas a downtrending market (which happens a few days every seventeen years or so) creates a lot of hugging, back-slapping, and A-frame man-hugs. Indeed, I strongly agree with this comment posted this weekend:
In other words, the shittacular market since August 24th has promulgated a lot of ugly vapors in the otherwise pleasant living room which is Slope.
During a fencing tournament on Saturday, I checked my email remotely and received a message from a very prominent Sloper who shared with me an email from another prominent Sloper who said he was never coming back because he was sick and tired of what one particular individual was saying. This bothered me on at least three levels:
(1) If you have a big problem with what’s being said by someone, just drop me a line. I want to hear about it (with screenshots, if possible).
(2) I’m just one person, and for the love of all that is holy, you people have to understand that I can’t please everyone, and I certainly can’t create a community where everyone likes everybody else and everything they say.
(3) Most important – and please hear this – I have spent cash out of my own pocket to build what I consider a great comments system, and one of the nicest features in that system (which isn’t really found elsewhere) is a lovely little button called Ignore. I’ll say that again: there’s a button called Ignore. If you click it for a particular person, it will be as if he doesn’t even exist. Ignore. I-G-N-O-R-E. Six letters. Very important.
Golly, Tim, how do I use this button? I’m delighted you asked!
Let’s say there’s someone whose comments you’d rather not read. Not to pick on Squirrel, but I’ve got to use someone, so we’ll use him. If, for whatever reason, you’d really rather not see his comments, you’d simply click on his screen name, and that would bring up a dialog box that looked something like this:
Guess what button you’d click. That’s right! Ignore.
It baffles me that people will bitch and moan and scream about a given individual and not take the one second required to solve their life’s problems.
I’ll close by saying this: you might think the easy solution would be simply to Ban a person. I really, really avoid banning people. If you’ve been banned, trust me, you must really suck, because it happens to almost no one. The only person I have no trouble banning are the spammers that do the “My neighbor makes $83929 each month sending emails……..”
But for regular people – real people – even those people that a lot of folks piss and moan about – I’m really not inclined to foreclose them from the site simply because their ideas or contributions are unpopular. I want as many people to be in comments as possible, and I want them to feel as welcome as possible. If someone becomes poisonous, yes, I’m going to throw them out, but by and large the community tends to be self-healing and self-cleansing, and I’d rather keep it as organic as I can.
Thank you.
