The Internet can be a rough place, and that's especially true of the Comments boxes. It only takes one jerk to drag a thread into the mud -- or at least, off topic.
Rod Dreher has
seen his share, and he's tired of it.
Today I've heard personally from several of you regulars that the tone in the Crunchy Con comboxes has gotten uglier of late, and you hate it. A couple of you have even said to me that you're disinclined to come around because of it. This really bothers me, not least because you are among the more balanced and intelligent commentators, the kind of readers who make this blog an interesting and pleasant place to talk about ideas.
Not long after this blog started, I decided, after beseeching my Bnet bosses, to start being a hard-*** about comments here, precisely because I was hearing from so many of you who said you hated the spiteful, screechy atmosphere in the comboxes. After I started pruning trolls and being more intolerant of uncivil discourse, the blog numbers started taking off.
