Things I've noticed about RW blogs and message boards

very few of the message boards will let you see the message board without first registering.

very few of the blogs will let you post messages.

very few of both the boards and the blogs have a "contact me" link.

Or is this just me being biased?

and besides, most of these things would probably trace right back to the White House, another form of Astroturf being put out to counter the genuine feelings of real human beings.

without having to register first - only one conservative blog allowed me to post without registering. Only anecdotal evidence but I agree with you.

ALso I was reading Slate's "Today's Blogs" feature and clicked on one of the links to a conservative blog and was surprised to find a miniscule post by a pretty inarticulate person. I would think that Slate would hold bloggers to a higher standard of English.

but I know the comment, trackback, and referral spam is so bad that some non-techie blog users very well may disable those features.

"Contact me" is similar, potentially exposing one's email inbox to a huge spam problem.

There are solutions to the above issues, but one has to spend time to find them and implement them.

...which are socially unnacceptable, and rarely defensible when challenged.

A lot of things that DU'ers talk about are socially unnacceptable, but at least we're collectively out there and honest about it, and we take challenges full-on.

Given a normal traffic day, anybody on Earth can come in here and see the wackiest things we say, and register to challenge it if they want.

Granted, many get tombstoned, but as long as one falls on the left side of the political spectrum, they are likely to be tolerated and get their say.

I like it like that.

I think a lot of the people on the right would do well to adopt a similar model. They might adjust their attitude a bit.

As it is, they are terribly sensitive and susceptible to groupthink.

You don't want anybody asking hard questions or sowing doubt in the faithful--or asking when he will get around to actually doing something for the christian crowd.

RW articles.

The average news/commentary has a link for you to directly email the author.

Not so with the RW jerks.

I've contacted at least three (admittedly small-time) RW columnists who had their email addresses in plain sight. One only responded after I sent him and his assistant multiple emails. Another one shot back with a nasty allegation against Clinton, which had nothing to do with anything, and I gave up on the third after I had sent the third email.

For the most part, they're decent writers, but they don't really know much.

that grumpyoldfart tried to register on..he thinks they kicked him cause he used the same name..but i registered and i had to be accepted after i registered,so about 30 minutes later i was approved----what the fuck is that about? approved?

don't allow for comments. And even the bigger ones that only allow trackbacks (Powerline, etc.) clearly edit and ban entries.

I can't help but think that they're trying to avoid a liberal intrusion on their little part of the blogosphere. The other possibility is that they don't want to be even closely associated with their anti-Muslim audience. (Just go take a look at littlegreenfootballs on any day of the week, and you'll see what I mean.)

If it's the former, then it's a tacit admission that the liberals are dominating the web. Don't trust the Alexa ratings, they're crap. Many people have covered this topic very eloquently elsewhere, but it's insane that the pundits on the right live and die by Alexa's numbers.

The more important implication of no comments and edited trackbacks is that there is an explicit desire to avoid the facts. If no one can possibly call you on your shit, then you'll always be "right", no matter how many emails you send them. Powerline and Instapundit are the worst about this. On the rare occasions that they have original content, the writing is good, but the analysis myopic. Most of the time they reprint right wing myths and lies. Don't get me started on hewitt's unreadable blog, either.

Okay, time to get off the soapbox....

edit: typed 'left' meant 'right' in the 3rd paragraph.
edit: had to edit the edit statement :)

http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments$trackback?u=140194&p=1794



Why do conservative bloggers lie?

(Correction)-Michael will tell you here : excerpt: Some of you might have seen over at my place that I took Powerline to task for reprinting Ann Coulter's patently false allegation that the NYTimes op-ed page was outing the gay children of prominent conservatives. I wrote to Powerline twice and presented them with evidence; I asked them to retract their statement; they didn't, nor did they write back....read on

It really spoke to the way I've been feeling for awhile about the right side of the blogosphere. The only way we can combat their way of playing loose with ethics is to appeal to the centrist blogs and the mainstream press to play the referee. They've shown us that they won't police themselves the way the left does. It's sickening, and on top of their blatant xenophobia, it's kind of scary.

The Moderators must do a good job...a little too good? Are any unpopular beliefs here squelched? Or are soopid ass morans so easy to peg soon as they set foot here?

having said that, my experience is that disruptors/freepers/etc. are given more than the benefit of the doubt. I'm not talking about the obvious flame throwers.

I think most disruptors who haven't been schooled in the Art of Effective Trolling don't make it to 10 posts.

There are some who are reading this right now who have 500+ posts. It just depends. There are standard tactics that can be used to keep people on a message board busy, so they won't discuss the more important issues. I won't elaborate here so as not to hurt anyone's feelings.

The mods do a tremendous job of keeping this place troll-free, but it's also up to DUers to alert them to any problems. "Unpopular beliefs" is probably the wrong way to put it, because there are minority positions within the Democratic Party. What the trolls get banned for is disrupting the forum, which is against the rules of any message board. Since the definition of "disruption" is clearly stated in the DU rules, I don't see anything wrong with it.

What's up with that?