Blog: A Pragmatist's Take: Guidelines
Background / Blog Motivation
About this blog: As a teenager (in the 1960s), I stumbled across the insight that real power doesn't reside with those who make the final decision, but with those who decide what qualifies as the viable choices. As a grad student, I belonged to an organization where people didn't prepare for meetings and then spent 3-5 hours speculating and arguing about what were the facts, followed by 4-6 hours in subsequent meetings trying to remedy those mistakes. When I became president, I got meetings down to 1-3 hours by investing many hours in preparations. My professional career focused on creating computerized tools to support decision-making, including dealing with missing, ambiguous and false information. I moved to Palo Alto in 1983, and became active in local issues in the early 1990s through participation in workshops and hearings on the Comprehensive Plan and in neighborhood issues. I have since served on multiple official citizen advisory groups. I served on the Barron Park Association Board 1994-2013, including 6 years as president. The focus of this blog will be framing questions and explaining perspectives, starting with mine as a resident but encouraging others to share theirs. For I'm right, you're wrong,
go elsewhere.
Introduction
PaloAltoOnline is allowing this blog to experiment with trying to have a higher threshold
for what are acceptable comments
(than what you find in its Town Square Forums).
The primary measure of success of a blog here is number of readers (page views),
with comments being a distant second.
Research from around the Web has found that common commenting practices are often detrimental.
What I want to encourage here is a high-enough percentage of substantial, informative comments—ones
that someone with interest in the topic will be glad to have read.
And that the percentage that such readers regard as time-wasters to be a small-enough percentage
that those readers will return.
Among the people interested in local politics that I talk to,
the return rate for the current Town Square Forums is extremely low.
Why this might work:
I am hoping to create a virtuous circle.
I hope to get more readers by having less clutter (comments they don't value).
And I am hoping that having more readers provides incentives for commenters to provide
more substantial and insightful comments.
And hopefully, those comments attract more readers…
There will inevitably be rough periods,
and I hope that commenters and readers will bear with me
and give this approach a chance to take hold.
General Guidelines
- This blog focuses on data and analysis,
and the comments are expected to be similarly focused.
Statements that are predominantly personal opinion are inappropriate
(see:
New Report Confirms You Are Most Interesting, Most Important Individual On Earth,
from The ONION, America's Finest News Source, 2014 January 03. ☺)
Note:
This is not a requirement that comments be impartial:
Anyone with enough knowledge to add to a discussion is likely to already have
some sort of position on that issue,
and it is impractical to expect them to totally divorce that opinion from their comment.
My deciding factor is whether the comment is predominantly helpful
to an analytically-oriented person new to the issue, or otherwise undecided.
- Interesting issues typically involve conflicting goals
as well as risks and other uncertainties.
A position on an issue typically involves weighing the risks
and prioritizing the tradeoffs between goals.
This is often missing in the public debate on issues and is welcome here.
This can be either explanation of the priorities of an individual group,
or a compare-and-contrast.
However, arguments that one set of priorities is correct—or the only reasonable one—crosses
the line into inappropriate comment for this blog.
Note:
Groups involved in the controversies are often poor at explaining their own view of the tradeoffs and risks,
or understanding those of other groups.
People who can explain these differences are rare and extremely valuable:
They help people who are new to the issue hear nuances, code phrases…
- Advice:
Take an audience-centric approach to your comments.
The natural inclination is to write what you want the audience to hear,
instead of what the audience wants to know or will appreciate learning.
Also remember that as a commenter, you are likely much more immersed in the issue
than is the typical reader.
Think about structuring your comment to accommodate readers with interests
in different levels of detail.
To be encouraged
The role of the blog posting is to provide a beginning, focus and organization
for a discussion to be pursued in the comments.
- Elaborate/extend the data and analysis presented.
- Present viewpoints, analysis, and data not included in the original posting.
- Critique the presentations (original and comments).
Data
is not just formal collection, but experiences and other anecdotal data.
To avoid confusion, please try to make clear what you are reporting,
and for commenters, please don't jump to conclusions when this is ambiguous.
- Connections of the issue being discussed to other issues and as part of a larger pattern.
However, I will judge such comments as being off-topic
if it appears that the connection to the current topic is only an excuse
for writing about that separate topic.
- Historical perspective.
Many of these controversies drag on for years and years,
or re-surface every few years.
Those who have been involved over time often forget the old assumptions and the basis for the previous decisions,
or they forgot to explain them to those newly involved.
- Honest (non-rhetorical) questions about the topic.
A carefully thought-out set of questions can be one of the most valuable
aids for people seeking to understand an issue.
Inappropriate Comments
Of special note on what will I treat as inappropriate comments:
- Comments that don't show a basis in facts and logical analysis,
and don't focus on addressing the issue under discussion.
Recognize that the key word in the title of this blog is
Pragmatist
.
That is the target audience.
- This applies to statements of ideology and other rants.
I'm right
and/or You're wrong
- Logical Fallacies: Resources
- Biases: Resources
- Statements intended to provoke argument (rather than thought). Including:
- Disrespectful/dishonest treatment of prior comments
- Misrepresentation of what was said, of positions taken by others…. For example, if the prior comment was about
a few
and you treat it as having been about most
,
your comment will be deleted.
- Misinterpretations of what was said that seem to be belligerent.
- Picayune objections, verbal sniping…
- Note:
This being Palo Alto, I expect commenters to have college-level reading comprehension skills.
Although I can't and don't expect close reading of blog posting and comments,
significant
misunderstandings
of what other commenters said
will be treated as potentially intentional.
- Comments that ignore what was said in previous comments (a form of disrespectful behavior).
Comments on a blog are supposed to be a form of discussion,
not a place for people to barge in, make pronouncements and leave.
- Banter and other behavior characteristic of informal discussion among a small group.
Palo Alto Online wants its blogs to each have readership in the hundreds.
Such banter is seen as clutter to the larger readership.
- Vanity statements, that is, for your benefit, not the readers.
- Proclamation of your opinion (especially if you are commenting under an alias).
- Comments to have your name/alias appear,
[sarcasm start] because, you know, no discussion is meaningful without your input.[sarcasm end]
Just because you have scanned the blog and comments
doesn't excuse your posting a comment
before you have taken the time to come up with something
meaningful to say.
- Discussion of this policy on appropriate comments,
especially complaints that deletion of inappropriate comments
constitutes censorship.
Note:
If you have comments, suggestions, complaints… about these guidelines,
do not make them as comments to the blog,
but send to my blogger email address
(also in the header to the blog).
- Note:
For comments inappropriate for this blog,
there often is a simultaneous Town Square Forum discussion on the topic
where you can post your opinions.
If there is not already such a discussion (thread),
it is easy for you to establish one.
It is appropriate for you to post a comment
pointing to such related discussions.
If a comment has a mix of appropriate and inappropriate elements,
I will make a modest effort to separate them,
and failing that,
I will just delete the whole comment.
The primary burden is on you, the commenter, to have appropriate submissions.