Posted by: biochem belle
Posted on: Wed, Nov 03, 2010, 5:20 am CDT
"@Belle - Yup, that's exactly right. So, why is that what's going on here w this citizen dude? I don't know him, he could be douche, or he could be awesome. But why get all mean from one line."
Yes, one line was misinterpreted. That's the thing about humans--we interpret things on the basis of previous experience. This is often amplified in comments and forums, because tone and inflection is lost. If there has been no previous interaction with someone, then it is easy for verbal irony to lose its intended effect (as King learned--sorry, King). The start of this thread and the responses in the other thread were, IMO, pretty reasonable and restrained. GR's response was more colorful, but honestly, don't we expect colorful hyperbole from him? But as far as Rift's responses--and even Jason's responses--go, I wouldn't classify them as an 'attack'. They waited for King to clarify his stance, which seems to have happened now.
"About me comparing it to the scienceblogs site, it really was just an easy comparison to draw. I'm not trying to call out anyone in particular, I'm trying to have a nicer tone here, in comparison to the one that often develops over there."
You keep using Scienceblogs as a 'comparison' in a very negative context. I don't always agree with the content, context, or tone of bloggers as Scienceblogs, but the same is true here and everywhere else in the blogosphere. But as I said, we shouldn't cast broad aspersions on an entire niche of the community based on the behavior of a few. Tone is set more by the blogger than by the site. The more vigorous debates, the more critical blogs, often get the lion's share of attention in the blogosphere, because we comment on the things that get us riled up. Not all the blogs on Scienceblogs develop the negative tone that you dislike. In fact, I suspect there's a fairly small fraction of the blogs there that do. I say 'suspect' because there are so many blogs there that there's no way for me to keep up with all of them, and I imagine the same is true for you and everyone else out there--except maybe Bora who seems to filter the entire science blogosphere through his brain. My point is, there are (past and present) Sciblings who keep an even keel. And for those that do take a more adversarial tone, it's often not the tone they adopt for all (or even most) of their posts and comments. So why continue smearing the entire site as 'an easy comparison'?