About
This blog was started some years ago after several great purges and acts of cowardice from what was one of the preeminent blogs of the early to mid 2000’s. In its heyday, Little Green Footballs was the prototype of many of the blogs out there today on the right. Then it FAILED, mightily.
For some time, this place used to define itself by being a thorn in LGF’s side. Eventually though, it grew up. Now it stands on its own as a place where all sides are to be heard: A group effort blog, a Blogmocracy.
This place operated on a pretty much free-speech anything goes mode for a few years, eventually that mode got a little too nasty and we started losing commenters and not attracting anyone new.
See, what was happening here under total free speech was that people were throwing personal insults at each other instead of having a civilized disagreement and discussing the issue; it was likened to chimpanzees throwing feces at each other. The following is just an excerpt of one day (yes it was a bad day) before 1300EST on a weekday across multiple threads:
You cut and pasted that, asshole.
You’re a libturd loser.
Fuck you you commie loving bastard.
We have a blithering idiot on aisle 16.
You are a jackoff and go fuck your self.
This was frankly disrespectful not only to those reading but to those who worked hard to bring us quality posts.
These are clearly personal attacks. We can’t tolerate that anymore. Frankly, if you were reading a blog somewhere and you saw that…what would you think?
Now, as for vulgarities.
We aren’t banning swearing, we are asking for some restraint. We reserve the right to delete comments if they are inappropriate. What is inappropriate? See the Supreme Court decision on pornography. ‘We know it when we see it’. Please, we are all adults here. Have some respect. Will we be a nanny blog, no.We will let most things slide but we still have to reserve the right to delete.
The other problem we were having was people continuing arguments across threads and across days.We aren’t going to put up with that. Keep it on the thread where the fight started and we will let all yinz (y’all, youze guys) fight it out. We will even put up a fight thread so that the issue can be argued and settled there. Do not chase people across threads.
In order to have all sides heard we, the owners have a few rules. They are simple, and they should be fairly obvious to anyone who comments on blogs. Care to guess what they are? No? OK, Check these out:
The owners reserve the right to delete a comment if they think that the comment is foul, a personal attack, or is generally over the line of civil discourse. Will the owners use this hammer? Hopefully never. We really we don’t want to have to do that here. Ask yourself this:
Would you say that in the meat world to a real human who is standing right in front of you?
Just because we don’t delete or act on a comment does not mean the we agree or condone with the comment.
ANYTHING written on this blog is the responsibility of the person who wrote it period.
Any failure of comprehension is on the writer when emoticons or sarc tags could have been used to clarify meaning and nuance.
Any Blog owner who posts here might be held to their rules on their blogs. After all what’s good for the goose…
Some Background of the problems we had…
From the FAQ Page:
In addition, insofar that we consider you citizens of The Blogmocracy and not simply subjects, we encourage free speech, differing opinions, differing backgrounds, differing values, and religious freedom. Our commitment to your freedom and liberty extends to opinions, and statements which are not held by the Admins, and even those that might actually be greatly offensive to the Admins personally. Accordingly, the Admins will not threaten citizens with banning for comments that go against the grain, criticize the Blog, criticize the Admins, or otherwise would get you banned at other blogs as long as the citizen is polite and respectful to everyone while doing so. However, as with all other liberties, ours comes with responsibility, and has its limits.