{"id":4094,"date":"2012-08-08T15:47:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T19:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=4094"},"modified":"2012-08-08T15:47:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T19:47:33","slug":"finding-the-right-amount-of-unpleasantness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/08\/finding-the-right-amount-of-unpleasantness.html","title":{"rendered":"Finding the right amount of unpleasantness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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It\u2019s ok, it\u2019s for the theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

There\u2019s some very helpful feedback on the recent commenting\/housekeeping\/debate tactics post<\/a>. \u00a0I\u2019m going to highlight and briefly respond to a few people, and then hopefully we can get back to content-y posts to practice constructively commenting on!<\/p>\n

Emily wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really wrestling with at what point I need to walk away from even reading comments here. The tone and mix of commenters has really changed a lot recently, and frankly, I think Adam\u2019s right. I\u2019m glad you\u2019re writing in a measured and thoughtful way toward your new audience but trying to take part is turning me into a jerk a little bit \u2013 instead of being able to engage in reasoned debate for very long, I find myself bubbling up with what feels like \u201crighteous\u201d rage all the time, trying not to express much of that counterproductive emotion in writing, and then just ranting to my husband about it. Basically, I\u2019m spending way too much time and energy in \u201csomeone\u2019s wrong on the internet!\u201d mode.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a \u201cyou should fix this\u201d complaint. It\u2019s your blog and this whole post was about why you\u2019re running it as you are! It\u2019s just ironic that as one of your somewhat long term Christian readers, I\u2019m finding your site far more morally challenging now that you\u2019re a convert than when it was an \u201catheist\u201d blog. I thought Catholics and Protestants had more in common than not but we seem to be able to set each other off pretty well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sympathise, and I appreciate Emily speaking up. I don\u2019t want the roughness of the blog to make every discussion feel like a war (even if we manage to make it a really polite war). \u00a0I don\u2019t want engaging with the people I\u00a0most<\/em> disagree with to drive off the people I sometimes<\/em>\u00a0disagree with.<\/p>\n

When people feel like Emily does, speak up, and let me know if there have been some comment threads that felt particularly useful and some that were particularly wretched. \u00a0Was there anything you noticed that helped save a discussion or derailed a debate? \u00a0I don\u2019t want a quiet majority to become quietly absent. \u00a0There\u2019s room for experimentation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d actually quite like to try out weirder comment rules for specific threads at some point on the future:<\/p>\n