Food Politics

Marion – No need to apologize – you are doing us all a favor and using your time to do it. I was just on another blog where posters are allowed to insult others, get personal, call me an as—le and other such bully thug tactics. It is degrading, abusive and most of all unproductive. There is no learning only venting. It would not be tolerated in civil society. People who carry hatred and anger toward others should be in therapy not on a blog or at a party. Their desire is to silence others not exchange information and feelings. So thank you. Thank you.

Sensible policy; makes everything easier to read. Question: do you delete the entirety of inappropriate comments or just the inappropriate parts? I’m not advocating that you do the extra work… just occurs to me to wonder.

It could be a learning experience if people were allowed to rephrase and re-submit the comment in a new form. Some people raised in verbally abusive homes can’t really tell when their comments are personal rather than issue oriented. So they would learn here. When the comment was accectable it would be published. But for that to work the comment would have to be published, deleted and a message left “deleted by the moderator”.

I’m in awe that you allow comments, at all.

I stopped allowing comments on my sites because of the hit-and-run anonymous commenters. I don’t mind disagreement, but material such as “U sux, yers all wrng on evrythang youse saying in a big lie” just don’t add to the discussion.

We’re your guests here, and should act accordingly.

It’s all part of opening the doors to the public. At least you do it, a lot of people won’t make the time. Hack away!

she only posts comments on her commenting policy that agree with her commenting policy

<you don't have to post this … it was to make you laugh … I love the policy, I wish I could use it. <

Marion, you shouldn’t let troll commenters hold you hostage. Installing a more advanced commenting system is the first step to freedom. Disqus or Intense Debate can be set to require registration/login from Twitter/Facebook. That weeds out 90% of trolls in my experience because it requires time and trolls love to just hit and run. What about the rest of the 10%? You can moderate comments by hand, which is what I do, and whitelist regular commenters. But you are a busy person. There are probably lots of students around who could use some extra cash and you could have them do it. You could recruit them from classes or on task rabbit.

Have no regret. Vigilance is the price of a quality commentariat. I think it’s generally agreed that Ta-Nehisi Coates has one of the best commenter bases on the internet, and he actually goes quite a lot further that the typical administrator, blocking not just offensive comments, but arguments that have been endlessly hashed out in previous threads. Race issues are obviously different from food issues, but I think this is an approach that works well for any politically oriented blog that wants its comments to be used to extend a discussion, rather than serve as a soap box for the first thing to spring into someone’s mind.

Also consider that the low quality comments you are deleting are made by individuals who are, for the most part, not invested in this blog, what you have to say, and possibly even the issues at hand. Deleting that stuff is fine.

If it becomes a bigger problem, a volunteer moderator isn’t a bad idea. You didn’t start this blog to pull weeds.

It’s not your fault that one or two bad-mannered individuals have decided to cause distraction from a discussion not to his liking. Hopefully, a few deletions will solve the problem. We are all sorry as well that you have to do this, but equally happy that you have.

I for one, always enjoy reading this blog even when I disagree with well-expressed points of view. Information presented here has helped me to clarify my own views on controversial subjects such as the wide-ranging discussion on using food stamps for soda. The discussions around the new “food plate” and Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” program have also provided lively discussion. We’ve had a bit of an “infection” lately, but hopefully we’ll recover and return to a state of health.

“Disqus or Intense Debate can be set to require registration/login from Twitter/Facebook.”

Please don’t do this! I know that if you require a Facebook or similar account in order to post you will definitely lose me and the others who posted in a similar fashion in the earlier thread on this subject. There is a political blog in my state which switched to the Facebook account comment system because of the trolls they were getting; now I can’t post there, but more importantly, the number of comments has gone down so far that the blog is really not worth reading, except for the initial posts. But the concept of dialog has been eviscerated.

I don’t have, and do not intend to create, a Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account.

I agree with Ben Boom

On Disqus you can register without have Fb or Twitter. But you have to register with a real email (which stays private).

Dr Nestle, I strongly recommend that you keep a recycle bin, do not simply send them down the memory hole. Seriously, it will prevent accusations of censorship and mistrust, also it is more respectful to people.

Secondly, I question whether it really makes sense to just do something like this because you readers ask you to. Why would you exactly?

I must confess that you example category seems to fall squarely within the opinion category, and free speech is not just a thing in the American constitution, it’s a prerequisite for frank and meaningful discussion (especially on the internet).

The comments may seem useless but censoring stuff exerts a chilling effect. I have never seen an interesting discussion happen under what feels like an overbearing moderator.