Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The Ultimate Meta Diary.

Okay - you know things are bad when you stop yourself in the midst of writing 2 diaries, one on Darfur and Electric Cars to write about trolls, MyDD and the latest round of GBCW diaries.

Seriously guys the only reason trolling and flaming is happening is because - you are participating! Many incredible diaries go unnoticed because they - shall we say - have no flavour....

Not only are there McBloggers taking over, but also the Purity Trolls are out in full force - policing everyone's motives. Stop the insanity!

The site owners and administrators have promised site updates and clearly this is an acknowledgment that there is some work necessary here. That said - I want to nip this in the bud by proposing a few things...

1. No more flame wars.
If a diary is particularly enticing make a personal commitment to only respond to another user who commented to whom's opinion your respect. That way - even though the diary may be a 'turd sandwich' (thanks thepurplestuff) you may participate in elevating the discussion.

2. Stop complaining about MyDD in your comments.
If you are aggravated with the situation - email the admins. And I mean - every time you see something 'trollish'

3. Be intellectually honest.
There tends to be a double-standard applied here by many whereby opinions they share deserve respect and general politeness - whereas opinion's they don't share - deserve snarky and rude receptions.

4. Kindness is a very underrated value in the Blogosphere.
Some people's hate-spewed speech is shocking. I cannot imagine many speaking to others this way in real life. But guess what folks - this is real life. A good general rule of thumb is speak as you would hope to be spoken to.

5. Contribute.
Hunting trolls or adding smart-ass commentary is not contributing - sorry. Write diaries, think about your 'progressive' ideals - and suggest ways to applying it to better the world.

I think that's a good starting off point for ways in which to make our little community better and hope that you guys can share with me your suggestions and enthusiasm for making MyDD a better place.

Please excuse any grammar and typos - this one was done on the fly!

4 comments:

hootie4170 said...

Great diary CG and your suggestions are fantastic! I have tried to use different tactics in order to "clean up" Mydd, however more is needed from the admins. It is a shame that bloggers such as gro get banned and many obvious "trolls" are allowed to maintain their user status.

My take is that Jerome is more concerned with page hits than enforcing his core message. He's acting like a typical politician with the ad revenues being akin to lobbyists....He is caving in because of the $$.

If all our defections do not indicate a severe problem, then Mydd wasn't the site we thought it was. It's just a source of revenue which goes against everything Jerome has stood for through his writings and speeches. The ball is in his court...

alyssa [chaos] said...

maybe mydd will get better after the convention? otherwise I dont know if anything will save it.

Number 5 is the biggie, but I think alot of people are too busy getting their troll hunting fix to write diaries or they're too lazy.

[i'm gonna try and write a diary before the weekend- lets see if i can deliver.]

Anonymous said...

I'm just sick of MyDD. I've given up on the place.

Koan said...

Hey CG, I'm commenting here rather than at MyDD because I think it's sort of in a stalled-out spiral where lots of meta comments in the meta diaries only contribute. But I think your proposed solutions are pretty much on point--I'm just not sure how likely people are to follow them. I mean, your suggestions boil down to *be a better blogger,* which is apparently hard for many. I try to stay out of troll-flame threads and meta diaries/comments but nowadays there just ain't much else going on.

Maybe it's time to find a new place. I was never a Clintonista but I'll be checking this site more frequently.

Anyway, good stuff, hope you and Drew don't GBCW the way of Reaper et al.

--Koan

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