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February 4th, 2007

Giles Fraser on bloggers

From this week’s Church Times:

Yet, despite the social unacceptability of sending hate mail, those who post comments on websites — also known as bloggers — are able to get away with the most disgusting bile, wrapped in the clothing of anonymity. “Comment is free” is what The Guardian calls its blog site. Comment is cheap, more like. Sadly, nasty and insulting comment drives away all the interesting stuff. Who wants to get involved in a serious discussion only to end up trading abuse?

…

In reality, intemperate bloggers are poisoning the wells of open debate, not enhancing it. Many of those outside the blogsphere are put off by the sheer unpleasantness of internet debate. So it is abandoned to people with thick skins and short tempers. And that is hardly the open forum that many bloggers claim they are protecting.

[Click the link above to get these paragraphs in context]

My first reaction to this was one of defensiveness. First of all, there is a difference between ‘bloggers’ and ‘blog commenters’. The people Giles is referring to on Comment is Free are the commenters, not the bloggers. It is an important difference I think – bloggers tend to have more of an interest in the ongoing wellbeing of their website, whereas for commenters there can often be a ‘hit and run’ sort of an approach. Secondly, not all sites are like ‘Comment is Free’, which has a bad reputation (deservedly) for the quality of its commenters.

But on the other hand he does have a point. There are a lot of bloggers spouting a lot of nonsense out there, and I regularly get very annoyed by what I read as I said last week.

My advice to readers would be to choose the sites you read and comment on. There are plenty of places on the internet offering constructive debate. If a site annoys you because debate is conducted in an abusive manner go somewhere else. Life is too short to be wound up every time you look at the internet.

As for blog owners: I think we have a responsibility to keep an eye on the way debate is conducted. I moderate all new commenters and I think, on the whole, the comments boxes here are generally quite friendly and constructive places. I think Giles is right that the Guardian need to do some work on the registration procedure for Comment is Free.

[As an aside, there's another not unrelated conversation going on here, where Iain Dale is responding to Polly Toybee's comments on bloggers - again meaning blog commenters I think.]

Update: Further comment from Mark Harris and Stand Firm.

10 Comments »



This is a single Cartoon Blog entry, posted by Dave on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 5:00 pm.

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10 Responses to “Giles Fraser on bloggers”


  1. Tired&Emotional says:

    Our local paper’s comment section is a hive of “Daily Mail” style comments that seem to consist of insulting everyone/thing that they consider to be “unBritish/Welsh”. Some of the comments relating to gypsies had me fuming – and me a Conservative as well! I think that they should moderate their comments areas and not just let people write insulting and racist comments.

    February 4th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
  2. Richard says:

    Unfortunately this seems to be another of the periodic examples of someone in the regular media having a go at bloggers with unfortunately not much knowledge.

    Most importantly, as you point out, he’s confusing people who comment with people who have their own blogs, and although bloggers will often comment on other blogs, there are also a lot of people who don’t blog themselves, but merely comment.

    To my mind, a blog can be like a variety of different media, depending on how the site is run. You can run it as a free-for-all, and let people post any comments they like. Robert Scoble is probably the most high profile blogger like that, and a number of other bloggers can’t understand why he allows it.

    Alternatively you can run it in a more restricted way. For example I have my comment policy posted on the page – essentially that we reserve the right to remove any comments that are offensive, illegal rude, or otherwise out of keeping with the site. Since Wordpress logs all the IP addresses for anyone who comments, I can also check out dodgy postings, and also anyone who is putting in a phoney e-mail address or website.

    Perhaps the best example of this was when a couple of Beth’s students discovered the site (any IP addresses in the school are now blocked by the way) and posted a fake comment under a classmates name. Unfortunately, as the site logs the IP address and the time, and the school logs everything the students do on the web, it was pretty easy to track down who it was who was really posting.

    February 5th, 2007 at 12:17 am
  3. David Keen says:

    For intemperate bloggers substitute intemperate politicians, neighbours, tabloid columnists, Big Brother contestants, Church Times writers, etc.

    Culturally we have long lost the ability to have a sensible debate in public without name calling and aggression, what appears on blogs is just a symptom of this.

    The main problem is that the internet doesn’t introduce space to think. Comments can be fired off without the tiresome business of writing a letter, finding an envelope, buying a stamp and then missing the post, all of which gives the chance to decide you didn’t really want to send the letter anyway. I regularly hit the ’submit comment’ button by accident before I’ve composed a comment that’s fit for public debate.

    February 5th, 2007 at 9:43 am
  4. ash says:

    It is so often conventional media people who attack blogs, though. As if Mass Media and their journalists aren’t the bigger problem.

    February 5th, 2007 at 11:31 am
  5. MadPriest says:

    Giles Fraser makes money from most of what he says and writes. He also, at least in his parish, likes to be in control. He puts his photograph on much of what he publishes.

    In the blogging world words, ideas and images are given away (those who allow advertising on their blogs are viewed as lower life forms). The net is anarchic and anonymity is easily obtained.

    It is no surprise to me, that Giles, who refuses to engage with the blogging community although they often cite him, should be scared of this new world. His power and authority come from the established church and academia. The Christian blogging community is part of the emerging church (even the conservatives are part of this trend). Christian blogs are more akin to a service in the back room of a pub than a service in an impressive church in a posh part of London.

    In other words Giles is not part of our world and we are not part of his. Thank goodness.

    February 5th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
  6. Karin says:

    I usually think Giles speaks a lot of sense. Perhaps he’s had some bad experiences of bloggers. Like anything blogs can be used for good or ill and bloggers represent a cross-section of society.

    February 5th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
  7. Dave says:

    I too usually think Giles speaks a lot of sense.

    Mad Priest: I’d often wondered why people look at me as if I’m a lower life form. I’d thought it was the gills.

    February 5th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
  8. MadPriest says:

    Dave
    As far as I can see the only advertising you do is self-advertising – and you’ve got a living to make.
    Anyway, yours is a mutant blog – I file you under “resource.” Not that I don’t enjoy your chat as well (well, as long as you’re not getting at angry humourists, that is).

    February 6th, 2007 at 9:39 am
  9. Andrew Brown says:

    Giles wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last, to be horrified at the standard of Comment is Free. I think anyone who writes for the paper “Guardian” wants to believe that our readers are not the poisonous, stupid, hateful scum who seemed to run wild over the site last summmer. Some of the things written about Madeleine Bunting, eg, were really upsetting. Things are better now, but anyone who writes anything has a sense of someone listening to their voice, and that ideal someone is not often a CiF commenter – nor one on a lot of other blogs.

    Part of the problem is, I think, that a lot of the commentators want to be journalists, and can’t see what is hard or worthwhile about it.

    February 6th, 2007 at 10:15 am
  10. MadPriest says:

    And a lot of journalists want to be theologians.

    February 7th, 2007 at 12:28 am