Well, and having written the easy note about the topic of discussion, YHB feels it necessary to write the hard one about the discussion itself.
Look, nothing particularly terrible happened. On the other hand, reading the comments section of any major blog (with the exception, perhaps, of Making Light) makes me cringe. For two and a half years, I have eagerly awaited each new comment, and I could not bear to respond to the new-comment news with dread. It would be a disaster, and would be the end of the blog. For a day or so, I dreaded the comment, not only for fear that david would be offended, or that I would have offended Michael, but for fear that some other Reader, ordinarily Gentle, would chime in with the best intentions and make everything worse. Now, nothing particularly terrible happened in fact, but even the whiff of the beginning of a descent into the common fate of comments makes me unhappy. So, with all possible pompousness, a few guidelines for Gentle Readers, on how to make me happy with your comments.
This is all predicated on what might be the Zeroth guideline, which is that you should want to make me happy with your comments. If you don’t want to make me happy, please don’t comment. If you want to make me happy (which would be ever so nice for me), please keep in mind the following guidelines.
Guideline the first: Do not attempt to offend or insult other readers. This is particularly to be kept in mind if you yourself, Gentle Reader, feel offended or insulted. Such original insult does not constitute a free pass to violate this guideline, in fact, if you feel that this guideline has been violated it becomes more important than ever before to adhere to it. Swallow the insult. No, it isn’t fair.
Guideline the second: Assume, if at all possible, that anything that offends or insults you is accidental, and due in large part to ignorance rather than ill-will. This is usually true, and so much the better, but even when false, it will make me happy if Gentle Readers all adopt the attitude. Thus, please inform the person giving insult—particularly if that person is Your Humble Blogger—what the nature of the insult is. Allow that person, then, to retract it, and if the person doesn’t, still assume that the lack of retraction is due to embarrassment, or business elsewhere, or continued ignorance. This may not be true; I don’t care. In comments, pretend it is.
Guideline the third: When commenting, differentiate between people and statements. You may not see much of a rhetorical difference between saying that somebody seems stupid and that somebody’s statement seems stupid, but I do, and it’s my damn blog. The first of those makes me cringe, and the second makes me take notice. This goes in both directions, by the way; if somebody says that your previous comment seems stupid or ignorant or crazy or racist or vile, do not read that as indicating that your own good self is stupid or ignorant or crazy or racist or vile. Perfectly nice people are capable of tremendously vile statements, particularly in blogs. It’ll drive you crazy if you try to defend everything you say. However, to the point of these guidelines, I’ll emphasize, rhetorically eliding people and their statements makes me unhappy, and I don’t want it here.
That’s pretty much it. Oh, you know, I’d advise in general remembering that there may be a few people who read this blog who don’t comment, and thus try not to gratuitously insult people. On the other hand, Gentle Readers may express disapproval or disdain, when such is appropriate, even at the risk of offending. I mean, there are Dodger fans who read this, and I’m not going to refrain from pointing out the moral, physical, genetic, sexual and olfactory inferiority of Dodger fans, should the topic come up in conversation (as it often does). It’s possible, after all, that one of Our Only President’s cabal of incompetents and crooks reads this Tohu Bohu (or has it read for them by some law enforcement or intelligence-gathering factotum), and I shan’t refrain from expressing my opinion about their honesty and competence. You will have to use your own judgment, Gentle Reader, as you must anyway, will you nil you. However, just as in conversation the useful question to ask yourself before speaking is not “is what I am about to say true?” but “is it helpful?”, before hitting the button to submit your comment, think to yourself not “am I right?” but “Am I making Vardibidian happy?”
And it would be remiss of me not to finish by saying that you are, Gentle Readers, making me happy, and you will continue to do so by commenting, particularly of course by disagreeing with me, correcting me, and educating me where I am wrong, as I so often am. I keep blogging because I enjoy all that, and this group of Gentle Readers is so good at it.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I think it’s worth pointing out that Guidline the Third is often harder to identify than you might think. We had an example within the comments on the textbook thing, which I think it might be worth repeating to get at the trickiness of this guideline. I hope none of the participants that I quote will feel picked on or criticized; that’s not my intention.
Anyway, Michael responded to one of David’s broad comments by saying
david, you’ve really gone off the deep end with that comment.
to which Our Gracious Host responded
I’m all in favor of disagreement and clash, but off the deep end goes off my own personal deep end for comment threads.
Michael followed up with
I’ll point out that you could not possibly be more offended by my comment than I was by his, and yet you choose to express your feeling in terms which you say you do not want used. I don’t mind, I’d simply recommend more consistency.
So, anyway, the point I want to make is that, presumably, saying “You’ve gone off the deep end” is an example of remarking on the person rather than on the comment, while “off the deep end goes off my personal deep end” is an example of remarking on the comment rather than the person. And yet the statements seem quite similar and the person addressed by the latter one clearly felt that they were at a similar level of discourse.
I don’t have a recommendation to ameliorate this except to point it out as another reason to assume the best; if I feel attacked I may in fact be mis-parsing a commenter who is discussing my statement rather than my self. So I should chill.
I should add, bye-the-bye, that I don’t think Michael intended to seriously imply that david had gone mad (david’s deep end is, after all, quite deep indeed) but that the idea was crazy. The rhetoric conflated the two, which (as I said), is something I personally dislike. Michael didn’t really have a reason to know that the specific phrasing would upset me, nor had any of you, thus the guidelines.
Oh, and I’m not sure that the third guideline is actually more difficult than the first two. I think they are all three difficult, which is why I don’t read comments on very many blogs. Gentle Readers, be aware that Your Humble Blogger is a forgiving type, and won’t start deleting stuff and disemvowelling without sustained provocation. Good will counts for a lot, here.
Thanks,
-V.