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!

3 comments:

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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