Comments, please!

This week we notched up our first 10,000 comments.

Sometime on Tuesday, MercatorNet passed a milestone. A reader typed in the 10,000th comment on our site and one of our editors approved it. I felt like popping a bottle of champagne. We have arrived!

Where we have arrived, I’m not sure. The comments feature -- which we introduced only a couple of years after the site had been launched -- sometimes baffles me. Why do so many people want to stick their oar in?

Before it started, I envisaged the comments feature as a community forum with contributors supplementing the argument or facts in the article. I was seduced by the power of the wiki, the notion of the "wisdom of crowds". The cumulative effect of the comments would be to further MercatorNet’s goal of promoting human dignity.

To some extent, this happens. A particularly interesting article prompts thoughtful voices of agreement or disagreement. New angles open up. Comments which are inconsistent with the ideals of the site are corrected by other readers. In the cut and thrust of the conversation, the issues are seen more clearly. Ideally, it’s like a public lecture, followed by a discussion. A moderator ensures that the comments are pointed, calm and diverse and that no one monopolises the microphone. Everyone learns.

On the whole comments are a great idea. They attract readers and they make the site far livelier. I have regretted not installing the comments feature right from the beginning of MercatorNet.

However, there are some flies in the ointment.

First, moderating the comments is a lot of work. Moderation is always needed. We have to protect the site from cyberspace spruikers promoting their blogs or their products with comments like “Very toughtfull argument prsented in this blog. Most delighted to discover it. Check out Safe as Houses Home Loans. Low interests, no deposite.” Normally such information is of little interest to our readers and we delete them. We don’t want MercatorNet articles to be festooned with junk mail advertising Viagra and fake Rolexes.

A second problem is anger. What I failed to anticipate is that there is a little bit of Osama bin Laden in all of us. “Death to the infidels!” is Mr bin Laden’s creed. He has a right to his convictions, surely but he would moderate their intensity if he actually eyeballed one of the despised crusaders and shook hands with him. But he never has and so, without a qualm, he dispatches suicide bombers and beheads captives. 

The internet is a bit like that. You never see your antagonist. You can’t read his body language or hear the timbre of his voice. All you know about him is the message that lordfarquhar (a pseudonym, no doubt) has left at the foot of a MercatorNet article. Sometimes it’s sensible and you tap in words of jolly bonhomie.

But sometimes lordfarquhar makes a comment  which oozes such slack-jawed stupidity, such moronic ignorance, such slobbering imbecility, that you feel compelled to warn him of his mental state and suggest that a frontal lobotomy is in order.

Not surprisingly, lordfarquhar is sceptical of your diagnostic skills and inquires whether your gerontologist has given you a dementia check lately. To which you reply... and so on.

Amazingly, on the internet, intelligent and well-intentioned people can spiral downwards into a vortex of vituperation. This affects all sites, even eminent ones like the New York Times or the London Telegraph. I don’t wish to offend anyone, so let me quote a few examples beneath an article in The New Republic by Michael Walzer about Israel and Palestine. (Professor Walzer, by the way, is a 24-carat gentleman, a man of dignity and distinction.) Here are some responses:

"You are a moral cretin. Seriously. Recognize it and try and change."

"The lying eyes of [Mr X] have never seen a dead Jew. And when they have, it has filled his black soul with joy."

"Your flippant dismissal of Michael Walzer is just your latest display of arrogant, self-satisfied ignorance."

"Hamas are demented terrorist pigs seeking to emulate their hero Adolf Hitler and perpetrate a second Holocaust. The sooner Israel kills every one of those bastards the better."

On MercatorNet these comments would been deleted, but America's most influential political magazine appears to tolerate them. Actually, I have been congratulated a few times on the civility of debates in MercatorNet compared to other sites. It has sometimes been quite edifying to see the generosity of spirit with which some readers  have acknowledged that they had been wrong or ill-informed. 

A third problem is the standard of argument. Some comments are quite valuable and we incorporate them into future articles. But others are textbook examples of logical fallacies. They are all there: red herrings, non sequiturs, argumentum ad hominem, petitio principii, begging the question, argumentum ad ignorantiam – and more. We have rules about abusive language and objectionable content and by and large people observe them. But what about abusive reasoning? Should commenters be allowed to tar and feather the facts and to torture logic?

A fourth problem is when to end the debate. The last man standing in the ring wins the prize fight and some commenters appear to think that making the last comment will deliver a KO blow to lordfarquhar’s glass jaw. If comments remain open indefinitely, the slugfest can continue for weeks. That must be why the New York Times closes its comments within a few days.

Finally, there are attacks by cyber-terrorists who set Improvised Explosive Devices beneath articles on inflammatory topics like abortion and homosexuality. MercatorNet accommodates a wide range of opinions, but at its core is a view of human dignity with a transcendent dimension. Most readers like this approach. But some don’t; they loathe it. And their mission in life, for a while at least, is to leave as many provocative comments as possible on the site.

This is a bit unsettling for the editors, because we are serious about promoting human dignity. Are we subverting it by giving its foes a platform to promote their ideas?

We have concluded that there is little danger of this. Contradictory views ensure that the site doesn't become a hothouse of smug self-congratulation and mutual admiration. And normally they are very competently refuted by readers who are more sympathetic to our philosophy.

But we do think that it departs from the ideal of a forum. In a real-life forum no one is allowed to ask six questions or to hog the microphone to abuse another person in the audience. The purpose of a forum is to clarify and amplify points made in the lecture, not to vent one's spleen.

With that in mind, we plan to change the guidelines for commenting in MercatorNet slightly. Articles will be open for comments for one week only and each contributor will be allowed a maximum of three or four comments. We are going to rename it "Readers' forum".

But, all in all, our first 10,000 comments have been a great success. I look forward to the next 10,000. Keep them coming!

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

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