A Ducktroll in action

Nastiness Threatens 

Online Reader Comments

by Rob Lever

November 7, 2015 12:39 AM

Washington (AFP) - The Internet was supposed to facilitate better exchange between the public and news media. But vile and hateful comments changed all that.

In the face of rising vitriol -- attacks, bigotry and general nastiness -- news organizations are increasingly throwing in the towel on online comments.

Last month, Vice Media's Motherboard news site turned off reader comments, saying "the scorched earth nature of comments sections just stifles real conversation."

It instead began taking "letters to the editor" to be screened by staff.

Vox Media's online news site The Verge said in July it was "turning off comments for a bit," noting that the tone was "getting a little too aggressive and negative."

Blogging platform Medium this past week allowed its users to hide reader comments, acknowledging that "sometimes you may not want to get in a discussion."

The Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, news website Re/code, the millennial-focused news site Mic and Popular Science also have shut off comments.

And Vox.com launched last year without them, saying that "flame wars" turned readers off.

"Newsrooms are really struggling with this," said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University.

"They like the idea of the comments because it brings readers back, it creates a community of people who are dedicated and that's good for advertising," she told AFP.

"But the downside is that when people see lots of vitriol and attack, even if they are not using bad language, it turns people off. The worry is that instead of fostering communication, you lose readers."

The Outtacontroll a prime polluter of blogs

Research this year by University of Houston professor Arthur Santana found anonymous comments on online news sites can often bring out the vilest of views, particularly on hot topics such as immigration.

- 'Locusts, vermin' -

"Often the targets of the incivility are marginalized groups, including racial minorities," Santana said in the Newspaper Research Journal.

Santana found readers referred to immigrants as "cockroaches, locusts, scumbags, rats, bums, buzzards, blood-sucking leeches, vermin, slime, dogs, brown invaders, wetbacks," among others.

Santana said that newspapers "have expressed frustration with rampant incivility and ad hominem attacks in their commenting forums," but may also be hurting their own reputations by becoming a place for mud-slinging.

The problem is not limited to US news sites: "flame wars" have forced the shutdown of comments on South Africa's largest online news publisher 24.com and Independent Online has done the same.

Controlling online forums can be especially tricky in countries where news organizations may be held liable for defaming content from readers.

Some news organizations have sought to clamp down on incivility by requiring registration and banning anonymity.

An Emanymtroll

- Facebook as a tool? -

One tool is from Facebook, whose plug-in verifies the identity of those who post comments, requiring people to use their real names.

Some evidence indicates the Facebook platform and other tools have helped the tone.

A 2013 University of Kent study found that by making users "accountable," the Facebook system makes them "less likely to engage in uncivil discussion."

But when The Huffington Post ended anonymous comments and began using the Facebook plug-in, it sparked anger.

By creating obstacles to posting, "you lose a lot of commenters," said David Wolfgang, a doctoral researcher in journalism at the University of Missouri.

A theocratic Conservatrolla

Wolfgang, who has been researching the state of online news comments, said many newsrooms were unprepared for the deluge of acrimony but should not give up.

"If your local news organization isn't going to provide a space for this conversation, who will? It doesn't always work out the way we want, but that doesn't mean we should throw it out," he said.

- Tech solutions? -

Large news organization employ teams of moderators, sometimes with help from outside contractors, to weed out inappropriate comments. But that's not feasible for many budget-stretched newsrooms.

Some are looking to technology, to filter out nastiness and highlight constructive conversations from readers. Several private vendors offer software for this.

A typical Proglotroll

The Washington Post and New York Times have joined forces on a project funded by the Knight Foundation to create open-source software that can be adapted for news websites to get a better handle on online discussions.

Greg Barber, director of digital news projects at the Post and a member of the "Coral Project" team working with the Mozilla Foundation, said the competing dailies realized that "we had the same problems and it made sense for us to work together."

"Civility is a challenge for everyone," Barber said, adding that the Post gets some eight million comments a year and struggles to keep a positive tone with its own moderators and an outside contractor.

"When users come in and see a pie fight, they are likely to pick up a pie and throw it," he said.

"If they see a reasoned discussion, they will want to contribute in a reasoned way."

Project members have spoken with publishers in 25 countries interested in trying the software, which will be offered free.

News sites may use their own criteria to keep the dialogue on course, according to Barber.

Barber said the software, set to be released for testing in January, aims not only to filter out the ugliness but to identify the "trusted" readers and display constructive comments more prominently.

"It's not just to scrape the mud off our boots, but to find and highlight the valuable contributions," he said.

View Comments (1219)

http://news.yahoo.com/nastiness-threatens-online-reader-comments-053929979.html

 

Last-but-not-least we have the Lescarpentroll

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower 

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees 

Is my destroyer. 

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose 

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

~ Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born on October 27, 1914, in Swansea, South Wales. His father was an English Literature professor at the local grammar school and would often recite Shakespeare to Thomas before he could read. He loved the sounds of nursery rhymes, foreshadowing his love for the rhythmic ballads of Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Edgar Allan Poe. Although both of his parents spoke fluent Welsh, Thomas and his older sister never learned the language, and Thomas wrote exclusively in English.

Thomas was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own. He read all of D. H. Lawrence‘s poetry, impressed by vivid descriptions of the natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading but neglected other subjects. He dropped out of school at sixteen to become a junior reporter for the South Wales Daily Post.

By December of 1932, he left his job at the Post and decided to concentrate on his poetry full-time. It was during this time, in his late teens, that Thomas wrote more than half of his collected poems.

In 1934, when Thomas was twenty, he moved to London, won the Poet’s Corner book prize, and published his first book, 18 Poems (The Fortune press), to great acclaim. The book drew from a collection of poetry notebooks that Thomas had written years earlier, as would many of his most popular books. During this period of success, Thomas also began a habit of alcohol abuse.

Unlike his contemporaries, T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, Thomas was not concerned with exhibiting themes of social and intellectual issues, and his writing, with its intense lyricism and highly charged emotion, has more in common with the Romantic tradition.

Thomas describes his technique in a letter: “I make one image—though ‘make’ is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be ‘made’ emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict.”

Two years after the publication of 18 Poems, Thomas met the dancer Caitlin Macnamara at a pub in London. At the time, she was the mistress of painter Augustus John. Macnamara and Thomas engaged in an affair and married in 1937. Despite the passionate love letters Thomas would write to her, the marriage was turbulent, with rumors of both having multiple affairs.

About Thomas’s work, Michael Schmidt writes: “There is a kind of authority to the word magic of the early poems; in the famous and popular later poems, the magic is all show. If they have a secret it is the one we all share, partly erotic, partly elegiac. The later poems arise out of personality.”

In 1940, Thomas and his wife moved to London. He had served as an anti-aircraft gunner but was rejected for more active combat due to illness. To avoid the air raids, the couple left London in 1944. They eventually settled at Laugharne, in the Boat House where Thomas would write many of his later poems.

Thomas recorded radio shows and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. Between 1945 and 1949, he wrote, narrated, or assisted with over a hundred radio broadcasts. In one show, “Quite Early One Morning," he experimented with the characters and ideas that would later appear in his poetic radio play Under Milk Wood (1953).

In 1947 Thomas was awarded a Traveling Scholarship from the Society of Authors. He took his family to Italy, and while in Florence, he wrote In Country Sleep, And Other Poems (Dent, 1952), which includes his most famous poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” 

When they returned to Oxfordshire, Thomas began work on three film scripts for Gainsborough Films. The company soon went bankrupt, but Thomas’s scripts, “Me and My Bike," “Rebecca’s Daughters," and “The Beach at Falesa," were made into films. They were later collected in Dylan Thomas: The Filmscripts (JM Dent & Sons, 1995).

In January 1950, at the age of thirty-five, Thomas visited America for the first time. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as a new medium for the art, are famous and notorious. Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination — he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling and a singing Welsh lilt.

Thomas toured America four times, with his last public engagement taking place at the City College of New York. A few days later, he collapsed in the Chelsea Hotel after a long drinking bout at the White Horse Tavern. On November 9, 1953, he died at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City at the age of thirty-nine. He had become a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. He was buried in Laugharne, and almost thirty years later, a plaque to Dylan was unveiled in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dylan-thomas

After great pain

A formal feeling comes

The nerves sit ceremonious –– like tombs.

The stiff hear questions

Was it He that bore ––

And yesterday –– or centuries before?

The feet mechanical go round ––

A wooden way

Of ground or air or ought.

Regardless grown ––

A quartz contentment lie a stone.

This is the hour of lead.

Remembered –– if outlived ––

As freezing persons recollect the snow.

First chill ––

Then stupor ––

Then –– the letting go.

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I measure every grief I meet

  With  narrow, probing eyes;

I wonder if it weighs like mine,

  Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,

  Or did it just begin?

I could not tell the date of mine,

  It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,

  And if they have to try,

And whether, could they choose between,

  They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled—

  Some thousands—on the cause

Of early hurt, if such a lapse

  Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still

  Through centuries above,

Enlightened to a larger pain

  By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;

  The reason deeper lies,—

Death is but one and comes but once

  And only nails the eyes.

There's grief of want, and grief of cold,—

  A sort they call 'despair,'

There's banishment from native eyes,

  In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind

  Correctly yet to me

A piercing comfort it affords

  In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross

  Of those that stand alone

Still fascinated to presume

  That some are like my own.

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

In loving memory of GWS.

Requiescat in Pace

  Seven Years Ago Today 

A Shadow Fell Across Our Land

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! ’t is a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years —

A mystic throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

 

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly —

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast shadowy things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

Invisible Woe!

 

That motley drama — oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased forevermore,

By a crowd that seize it not, 

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

 

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued!

 

Out — out are the lights — out all!

And, over each dying form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

And the seraphs, all haggard and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy “Man,”

Its hero the Conqueror Worm.

~ Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

ADDENDUM

In Memoriam 

With you I always saw the potted palms

Marble floors and Chinese jardinieres

Polished ancient oak and well-worn arms

Of venerable tufted leather chairs.

Curious how your face evoked the glow

Of firelight and candles in old brass!

When I knew you, the wine had ceased to flow,

And so I have no love for Irish glass.

But crewel and damask –– spices from the East ––

Herbal tea and pottery Quimper

Feed my sorrow, as my eyes do feast

On relics left from life within your care.

O, dearest, gentle one, you were the Past ––

A waking dream –– a joy I still hold fast.

~ FreeThinke  - November 3, 1984

Fred Thompson (1942-2015)

___ A Big Ol’ Papa Bear Has Left Us ____

The news was sudden –– caught us unaware.

One never knows. They say, it’s up to God.

Finality is always in the air ––

Reaching out to claim us as we plod ––

Earnestly –– erratic, or dogmatic ––

Dogged –– fearful –– frivolous –– romantic ––

The pious –– the heroic –– the pragmatic ––

Hold on to Life, and try not to feel frantic.

Or lose heart while knowing we are stalked ––

Mercilessly –– from the day that we are born.

Papa Bear was taken while we talked.

Sadly, he won’t see another morn.

Of him now, as we contemplate his loss,

No one should speak unkindly or be cross. 

~ FreeThinke (11/1/15)

In loving memory of Fred Dalton Thompson (1942-2015) 
Truly an American Original.
Rest in peace, Fred. We'll miss you.

~ § ~

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3299570/Actor-former-Republican-senator-Fred-Thompson-dies-aged-73.html#ixzz3qI4KGKoi

FORMER CONGRESSMAN 

[TOM TANCREDO] 

"I’M QUITTING GOP"

Tom Tancredo, former representative, Northern CO

by TOM TANCREDO 

30 October 2015

In a panel discussion at the University of Colorado after the recent Republican debate, I was asked by a student why she should be a Republican. The question forced me to ask myself the same thing.

Moonstruck lovers of the abominable status quo helped spark decision

I gave the young woman the standard talking points–that Republicans believe in smaller government, individual rights, fiscal responsibility, and free enterprise. But as I drove home, her question–and my inability to respond with any level of real conviction–got me thinking: Does the Republican Party leadership fight for these values and principles today?

After much thought, I reluctantly concluded that the answer is “no.” The proudly socialist Democrats are full of passionate intensity, while the Republican leadership is full of pathetic excuses. After this week’s House GOP “budget deal,” which betrays nearly every promise made to grassroots conservatives since 2010, I have decided it is time to end my affiliation with the Republican Party.

This decision has been incubating over the past 17 years, years of watching the downward spiral of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan into the Party of Democrat Lite.

• As a Member of Congress for ten years (1998-2008), I was subjected to threats and pressures from the Congressional Leadership and President George W. Bush to support the creation of an expensive Medicare prescription drug program–even though creating a new government spending program financed by massive debt flies in the face of the Republican Party’s core principles.

• Our most powerful and influential “leaders” were shoving this down our throats in a crass political effort to use taxpayer money to buy the votes of senior citizens–particularly in the state of Florida in the next presidential election.

• I was incredulous about the fact that the most intense lobbying I had ever seen undertaken by our “leadership” was not an effort to limit government or the dollars it spends; it was to do just the opposite.

• That incident came just months after I was told by President Bush’s top political operative, Karl Rove, “never to darken the door of the White House again” because of my criticism of the administration’s dangerously lax immigration policies in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

When I first arrived in the U.S. House of Representatives, I naively believed that it was primarily the Democrats who were committed to open borders. But I quickly learned the entire Republican establishment also supported a policy of immigration non-enforcement.

I was repeatedly pulled into the office of the then-Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, and threatened with dire consequences if I continued to speak out publicly for common-sense immigration policies and true border security – particularly if I was doing so in the districts of other Republican Members of Congress.

For most of those years after 2000, we had a Republican President and a Republican-controlled Congress, but the conservative agenda was largely ridiculed and abandoned.

Across America, in every state, countless hardworking Americans have taken time away from their families and their jobs to volunteer on political campaigns– knocking on doors, making phone calls and talking to neighbors – all to support the effort to beat back the Obama agenda.  In 2010, that grassroots effort resulted in the Republican takeover in the House.  In 2014, it resulted in Republicans sweeping to power in the U.S. Senate – and the largest House majority since Herbert Hoover was President.

Yet, despite these historic gains, nothing changed. The GOP neither advanced a conservative agenda nor checked the radical “transformative” agenda of Barack Obama. We got condescending lip service, and nothing more.

• Promises have been broken and principles abandoned, while millions of American families watched their dreams slip further and further out of reach.

• Republican congressional leaders maneuvered to deliver votes to fund President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty order, and more recently, his unprecedented job-killing EPA rules.

• They have voted twice in four years to violate the very modest, bipartisan caps on spending put in place with the laughably-named “Budget Control Act” in 2011 — and now have abandoned the caps completely.

• They have voted to continue funding what is essentially a $500 million macabre earmark for abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

• They have voted to fund Obamacare, and despite promises, have never passed a complete repeal of the PPACA.

• No one has been held accountable for the outrageous IRS and VA scandals.

• And now, as icing on the poisoned cake, House Republicans have elected a Speaker who was not asked to renounce his commitment to open borders and amnesty, policies which will betray the values of 75% of the party and give Democrats a permanent electoral majority within a decade.

Even in foreign policy the Republican Party leadership has deceived those who elected them by engineering passage of the pathetic Corker/Cardin amendment – which greased the skids for President Obama’s flawed Iran deal to clear Congress without having to meet 67 vote threshold for ratification that the constitution requires for binding international treaties. No one will be surprised if they do the same thing with the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership.

• Republicans are repeatedly asked to capitulate today in exchange for better options tomorrow.

• After the next election, after we win one more office or a few more seats – then, after that next election conservative reforms will be considered.

• Somehow, that brighter tomorrow never comes.

But times have changed. In 2010, the Republican rank and file stopped drinking the Kool Aid and started demanding accountability. And demanding results. The conservative electorate that elected Republican majorities is tired of capitulation.

The conservative majority in the Republican Party wants leaders who will stand and fight, leaders who will be as passionate about advancing an American agenda as President Obama and the Left are at advancing the global socialist agenda.

• Grassroots Republicans want Republican leaders who are as assertive and consistent in pushing a policy agenda as Senator Harry Reid, Democrat, Nevada was when Democrats controlled the Senate. They should use tools like Budget Reconciliation aggressively, adding conditions to spending bills and legislative initiatives that the White House wants.

• That hardball approach is the only way to deal with an imperial President and make good on the many promises that Republican politicians have made to Americans.

Sadly, it has become obvious that the Republican establishment simply has no intention of ever fulfilling promises made in platforms and campaign speeches. To their mind, there are elections, and then there is “governing,” and governing to them means not messing with a gargantuan government on autopilot.

• The Republican establishment does not want to control spending.

• It does not want to secure the borders or enforce immigration laws.

• It does not care about American sovereignty.

• It has no interest in ending the unaccountable and corrupt culture that has become a hallmark of official Washington.

By insulting the grassroots, the GOP leadership has set upon a suicide mission. The problem is that failed leadership is allowing Obama to destroy the Constitution and take the whole country down the drain. Well, count me out.

The Boehner budget deal is the last straw, and enough is enough. I cannot any longer defend this transparently dishonest charade called the Republican Party.

What I will do instead is join the largest political group in the nation, unaffiliated Independents. In Colorado, they outnumber both “major” political parties.

The next day I will begin working my tail off for the next twelve months to organize Independents to help elect Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas as President of the United States. Cruz is the only candidate who both understands the left’s agenda and has demonstrated the courage to fight for our liberties, our sovereignty, and the survival of constitutional government.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/30/former-congressman-im-quitting-gop/

All Hallows Eve

Trick or treating, barren branches claw

On rooftops ‘gainst the biting Autumn air.

Jack O’Lantern flickers. Would he gnaw

An arm away, or set aflame the hair ––

Conspicuously real above the masks ––

Kindling Kindergartners at the door?

Only Satan’s own perform such tasks,

Leering, lisping, limping as to war.

Awake! All Hallows Eve lets loose the ghosts.

No one escapes the Grave for long. Be wise.

The Jack O’Lanterns flicker on the posts ––

Each one a sentry for the Lord of Flies.

Run home to mother lest the Evil One

Nabs you, while you think you’re having fun.

~ FreeThinke - The Sandpiper, Autumn, 1996

}}} The Ultimate Halloween Opus {{{