Blog Revival and A Few Ground Rules for Commenting: No Name-Calling

I'm going to attempt to breathe some life back into this blog.

Should comments appear, there need to be a few rules.

The first is basic courtesy.

No name-calling. Focus on the behavior, not the person.

I've been guilty of this infraction. Recently, in fact.

Not on this blog, which has lain dormant for a while.

Not even on a political blog.

It was a fandom blog. Trust me, Tumblr fandoms are rife with inane accusations.

If you don't ship what certain fans ship, or if you ship something they don't like, they will call you a pedophile.

This person had been on for a while about a certain ship that she didn't like. She went on to try and prove her point by comparing this ship, which involved adult biologically related characters, to a hypothetical "what if someone was shipping a forty-year-old character with a nine-year-old character?"

By that point I'd had enough of her sea-lioning and general bullshit and responded with a terse "It's apples and oranges, you twat."

My comment would not be acceptable here.

What would be acceptable?

I could have said: "your given scenarios are not comparable. They are apples and oranges."

I could even have further said: "I feel that you are being deliberately obtuse, as your comments pushing people to agree that Ship X is a bad ship are becoming more and more unreasonable. Since it is clear that no-one here is going to agree with you, it would probably be more productive for you to write on your own blog about why you feel that Ship X is such a bad ship, and, this time, tag your post properly so as not to start another flame war."

Note: tagging isn't as much of an issue on platforms like Blogger as it is on Tumblr. Tags tend to be a bit more internal for the blog itself, and it's accepted by most people that a post tagged "Donald Trump" could either be positive or negative. I still try at this point to prefix tags for derogatory posts with "anti" on Blogger as well.

It should go without saying, but along with no name-calling, hate speech is unacceptable. This includes terms like "TERF."

The reason why TERF is a problem is because it targets women whom the person using the slur believe to be transphobic. There is no comparable term for men whom people deem transphobic. TERF is a term which incites violence against women, i.e. "punch a TERF." It is a problematic term at best, and is not acceptable here. If you feel someone is being transphobic, say that. Don't gender your derision.

There will be no inciting of violence against any group, including those most of us identifying as progressive deem odious. In other words, no "punch a Nazi" rhetoric will be allowed in the comments. This is not because I like Nazis. I find them disgusting, and, if every last one of them were fired off in a rocket bound for the center of the sun, I would not shed even a single tear. Yes, they are bad people who would like to see awful things done to those they deem inferior. We need to not stoop to their level. Violence should always be the last resort, never the go-to.

Further, Richard Spencer would still be a nobody if he hadn't been made a martyr when he was punched. Now he's the poster boy for the "Alt Right." I would rather he were still a nobody.

The policy on commenting is, generally, a "three strikes" policy. If a comment is bad enough from the start, it will never be published in the first place. (This applies to Blogger. On Tumblr, the commenter will be blocked.) If the comment breaks a cardinal rule but has redeeming value otherwise, the commenter will be advised of the infraction and asked to be more careful in the future. If the commenter continues to break the rules, their comments will cease to be published.

I do not wish to prevent debate in good faith, nor to demand that all comments be passionless and completely politically correct, i.e. quibbling over whether "disabled" or "handicapped" is the more correct term. Such micromanagement shuts down conversation. I do wish to prevent the poisonous atmosphere that pervades so many spaces currently.

To simplify, let basic common courtesy be your guide. Debate the idea. Don't make personal attacks.

~Sly Has Spoken~

 Purchased image created by juliahenze on 123rf.com