Comments on: People Behaving Badly

By: Peter M.

Peter M. — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:34:23 +0000

A great threat – about standards in civil society. I hope that something is changeing in the blogosphere. Thanks for this great post. Peter.

By: flawedplan

flawedplan — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:13:21 +0000

This is one of the best threads I’ve ever read.
And I get around. I’m not a blogger, I come from the message board milieu, but have been following the BPHD controversy as it applies to online community building in general. I just stumbled on this site for the first time and am full of wisdom and ideas. I know I’ll be sending other message board owners over to see it should the need arise, this discussion applies to a range of audiences, just wanted to toss that out, and say I’m glad to have found it.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:24:42 +0000

Well, I kind of agree, Adam–that’s why pointed out that the only way sometimes to enforce standards in civil society is through shaming and invective, through defending customary boundaries with any social sanction available.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:41:55 +0000

Huh (insert thoughtful head-scratching here). I hadn’t thought of it that way.

Like Tim, I do worry about the functioning of the blogosphere as a public sphere, and I think instances like this not only justify the Tribbles of the world but also damage the blogosphere as a whole. I would like to see that damage avoided and this whole thing fading away would be a good start.

And, while Deignan might make a good test case, it seems unlikely that Bitch PhD or even the hapless Hettle want to be involved in it.

By: jim

jim — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:51:02 +0000

Rebecca: “I hope that this goes away soon, and with as little additional fuss as possible.”

I don’t. I rather hope that this _will_ result in a libel suit. At some point, and this is as good a point as any, we need to decide if online activists, if I can call us that, are public figures within the meaning of _Sullivan_. Deignan makes a good test case. Google him. There are other Paul Deignans (one’s a lawyer in charge of a settlement). But the bulk of what Google turns up are not merely about, but by our Paul Deignan, mostly commenting on other blogs: the Schiavo case and recent Supreme Court nominations for the most part. Does that public activity, plus perhaps his advertising campaign against Ms. Miers, make him a public figure?

He clearly thinks of himself as a private citizen, cruelly put upon by those with powerful voices. As do we all. Hence the desire to sue. If it became clear that we are, in fact, public figures with voices of our own, then there would, I think, be less threats of litigation. Which is the state we need to get to.

By: KenC

KenC — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:12:45 +0000

While I agree that Dr. Bitch has every right to ban anyone she wants, for any reason, I thought Deignan’s remarks were actually pretty mild, and I wish she hadn’t banned him.

I understand the importance of blogs in building community. (If not for blogs, how would we know that anyone in the U.S. was to the left of Joe Lieberman?) However, I find long comment threads consisting of people in violent agreement to be boring and often pointless. It’s more interesting to talk to people with whom you disagree, unless they’re intellectually lazy or dishonest, and make coherent discussion impossible. The latter happens painfully often, but it didn’t seem to be happening in Dr. B’s comment thread.

While I understand Wallace Hettle’s distaste for Deignan, I agree that going to his advisor was out of line. Of course, since Deignan is posting openly, his advisor can examine his online life at any time, so Deignan shouldn’t care about this.

Of course, I agree with most everyone that Deignan’s legal threats and assaults on Dr B’s anonymity are bizarre, way excessive, and a threat to open discussion. If I were his advisor, this would worry me more than anything else.

By: Scott Lemieux

Scott Lemieux — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:20:50 +0000

“Just one p.s.: if I were Deignan’s advisor, and I got an email out of nowhere from Hettle about my student’s behavior, I would think of Hettle as a grade-A crank, and file his email accordingly. I’m hoping that despite Deignan’s overreaction, his advisors will regard Hettle the way I do — and that Hettle’s email to them will damage no one other than the sender.”

Right. That was Ivan Tribbilism if I’ve ever seen it…

By: kieran

kieran — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:46:19 +0000

Dropping by Deignan’s site I see the whole thing has exploded again, in another (but related) direction. Sad.

By: akotsko

akotsko — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:47:28 +0000

I don’t know. This post is certainly a marvel of even-handedness, but somewhere along there I almost started to lose sight of the fact that someone is threatening to sue based on a minor misunderstanding in a blog comment spat. In a consensual community such as the blogosphere, the full resources of invective, mockery, and shaming must be deployed against such people.

By: Scott Eric Kaufman

Scott Eric Kaufman — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:36:09 +0000

Tim, this post and the one above it are two of the most lucid, instructive articles–I don’t want to call them “posts”–I’ve read in ages. You do the world a disservice when you post infrequently. That said, I hope what we hear from Deignan now is nothing more than the unfortunate affair’s diminuendo.

Michael, sorry about that infection. Immediate deletion is the only viable option. He’s prolific, but tires (or passes-out) eventually.

Adam, if you read the following (from a certain Kern Country-oriented blog) carefully, I think you’ll see that some of his pet peeves have started leaking from one personality to another:

I think many current PC leftists (including those who haunt various UC campuses) generally fall in the ‘Toid category, more often than not as do the great majority of Cali suburbanites: the Net and blogopolis itself becoming some sort of gloomy Orwellian zone where simple jokes or insults cause some so-called liberals to start calling the FBI.