The Flame War Stops Here

Just a quick note here. Yesterday, I got publicly flamed, at amazing length and involving many personal attacks and professional defamation, by a blogger whose writing apparently appeals largely to the Beavis-and-Butthead crowd. (I’m not knocking that, it’s a valid niche audience.)

I found his tirade amusing when I first saw it. 24 hours and one firestorm later, it’s grown tedious. It’s all about ego, posturing, and defensiveness. It’s even included some threats.

I’m only mentioning this to you because some of this blogger’s friends are spreading this ridiculous mess to their own blogs, and also trying to bring it here via comments to this blog. No dice, folks…

Just for clarity, flame wars and trolls have no place on this site. I won’t lend my infrastructure to support them in any way. I consider flaming, baiting, personal attacks, and trolling inherently off-topic here. I won’t approve such comments.

Of course, this flamefest attracted plenty of trolls on both sides, which only made it worse. I regret that I fed the fire even a tiny bit by adding a couple of minor comments noting how ridiculous the whole thing is. I repeat my earlier advice, which I should have heeded: The best way to handle trolls is to completely ignore them.

I don’t mind discussing controversies in a civil fashion, however. This is, after all, CONTENTIOUS. If people insist on bringing this mess (or any other mess) here, they must be civil. To be clear, I can handle lots of criticism and I oppose censorship. Anytime I must veto a submitted comment, I take that decision seriously.

I realize that some folks enjoy throwing public tantrums and making personal attacks on their own sites. So be it. Welcome to the net. However, that crap does not fly here. I respect my audience and will not subject them to that.

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This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on June 16, 2005 at 8:04 am and filed under Amy's Adventures, Conversations, Net Effects on Society. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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8 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Hurray for clear thinking and good manners. In the context of “all government is local,” “a little guy on the street saw what happened,” have you developed any guidelines for citizens to alert their communities without saying they have local government by stealth? Your discription of the Korean organization with a staff of 50 and thousands of citizen writers is wonderful but most towns are not big enough for this but too small for moderating out the obvious spam. The point is not to attack but to build community with a broad range of citizen involvment. Again, thank you for reminding us of the value of brains in a professional context.

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1. Frank Phillips on June 20th, 2005 at 10:18 am
Hi Amy,

I missed the flame war, but believe strongly in what you say, “…overreacted to minor criticism, exploded, and attacked me – simply because I disagreed with something he wrote.” David Weinberger’s, joho the blog, sums it up the best on every post/comment, “Rules: Criticize ideas? Yes. Criticize people for holding those ideas? No.” Some of us don’t get it. Anyway, I’m happy to see it over with and look forward to learning more from you.

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2. jim wilde on June 17th, 2005 at 7:34 am
It is rarely necessary to defend your actions or choices at length, Amy.
Been following your multi-part series on content. Hope to see the next one soon.

Sunil

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3. Sunil Bajpai on June 16th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
J wrote: “You might want to tell some of your supporters …to calm down a bit. They didn’t exactly put forth the best impression over at Tony’s.”

Reality check: Believe it or not, I am not certain of the identities of the people who mercilessly ridiculed Tony on his blog. I did briefly flag Tony’s tantrum in my link blog because at first I found it hilarious. (I then removed it because the flame war became disgraceful and offensive, not worth referring traffic to even for amusement.) I have thousands of avid readers, so I assume some of them saw my link while it was up decided to have fun by trolling Tony.

To be honest, I think Tony was asking for exactly what he got by behaving like major flamebait. Nevertheless, I did not wish that flame war upon him and I was not involved in making it happen beyond briefly posting a link to Tony’s rant.

Personally, I feel sorry for Tony because of how embarrassing the flame war was to him — including how profoundly he embarrassed himself in it. I’m sure that wasn’t fun for him.

So to be clear, I did not ask anyone to troll Tony or encourage them in any way. They were acting on their own and did not check in with me. I take no responsibility for them or their comments, and claim no influence over them.

You (and several others) have leapt to an unwarranted and inaccurate conclusion about my role in this mess. I would appreciate it if you would stop perpetuating falsehoods. At least have the decency to check them out first.

I do regret having participated in my small way in the flamefest. My buttons did get pushed a bit. I regret my participation only because Tony’s public slander of me was itself a major form of trolling — and my personal policy is to ignore all trolls wherever they rear their ugly little heads. Reacting to trolls in any way is always a mistake.

Further reality check: Remember what actually happened here. Tony went nuclear simply because I said in my link blog that I thought what he wrote about how to blog was extraordinarily bad advice. That’s it. I wrote 15 words, entirely nonpersonal, a simple critique. It was negative, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a personal attack.

Tony made the mistake of taking my minor critique personally. He responded with a 1300-word personal (and, incidentally, libelous) attack against me as a person and professional. That was deeply, deeply strange.

It surprises me that none of Tony’s supporters seemed to notice how out-of-proportion his tirade about me was. But that’s how it went. People see what they choose to see. No big deal ultimately.

Still, if this whole flap concerns you, consider this crucial bit of context: This whole mess started because Tony overreacted to minor criticism, exploded, and attacked me — simply because I disagreed with something he wrote.

I would hope someone who’s been blogging for years would know that online you always must expect and be able to handle criticism and disagreement. Unfortunately Tony hasn’t learned that yet. For his sake I hope he does, because he’s causing himself a lot of stress and annoying plenty of other people in the process.

Therefore I feel no need to apologize for the few things I said. Nor do I feel I should apologize for critiquing Tony’s advice piece in the first place. If others liked it and found it valuable, fine. I thought it was disastrous advice, and I am entitled to my opinion.

Also, I certainly feel no need to apologize for anyone else’s statements or actions.

So if anyone’s asking for or expecting me to apologize for any aspect of this, don’t hold your breath.

It would be nice if Tony would apologize for his slander, but I’m not holding my breath about that either.

…And that’s where this issue is at, for better or worse.

I do not intend to allow the flamefest that consumed Tony’s blog to happen here, so that’s all I really have to say on this matter. I don’t intend to repeat myself on this.

I appreciate the civil tone in which you offered your thoughts, J., even though we disagree. Other comments I received eariler today were riddled with obscenities, threats, and personal attacks. That may be appropriate on Tony’s blog, but not here.

- Amy Gahran

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4. Amy Gahran on June 16th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Amy, A few words.

First of all, I have no problem with you have to say on your site. For the people out there who are into making professional, journalistic, or otherwise non-creative blogs your advice is spot-on. However, you might want to tell some of your supporters (Tim, I’m talking to you) to calm down a bit. They didn’t exactly put forth the best impression over at Tony’s. If you go through and read some of the things that your collegues had to say over there, it’s some pretty repugnant stuff. I would urge you, for the sake of your reputation to distance yourself quite publicly from them, and to maybe take just a little of the blame for all this.

Just a thought.

Peace out.

J.

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5. GreenTrench on June 16th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult the readers of the blog where I was flamed. Actually, a lot of people love Beavis and Butthead, and would consider that remark high praise.

- Amy Gahran

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6. Amy Gahran on June 16th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
i don’t really think it’s fair that you’re flaming the readers. people should beable to read whatever they want, and not be criticized for their choices.

i don’t care if this never makes it to your blog. i still think it’s true.

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7. caro on June 16th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Hi, Amy.

I contributed to this. My apologies.

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8. tim on June 16th, 2005 at 11:39 am