Why does BloodhoundBlog have a comments policy? In order to prevent my property from being hi-jacked and our contributors and guests from being abused, insulted, maligned and harangued

Dave Barnes, may the gods cherish his every atom, offers up this observation in a comment to another post:

Ardell wrote (on another blog): “Greg blacklists and deletes comments when anyone chooses to argue a point on BHB. You can’t have a conversation there or call them out there. That’s the joke of the whole “let us teach you about WEB 2.0″ thing. AS IF!”

Is this true?

Do you blacklist and delete?

Oh, you bet! We have to.

We don’t blacklist. In all of our thousands of pages, there is no black-bordered list of unpersons. But our comments policy is carefully defined and elaborately documented:

Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: When you’re done, you’re done. Anyone can make a mistake, but if your behavior is palpably malicious, you will be banned from BloodhoundBlog forever.

I think I’ve probably told you this before, but I have a great respect for you, Dave. I’ve always found you to be open minded, and I don’t think you are one to be swayed by what one might call political considerations — looking good (or bad) in someone else’s eyes. I don’t think this was intended to be a softball question, but, who, practically speaking, tolerates intolerable behavior on his or her own property?

Even so, Brian Brady and I are each playing our own variations of a game we call What would David Gibbons do?, so I am going to take some pains to answer every implication of your question that I can think of, if for no better reason than to have this post to point people back to in the future. If you get bored and want to go do something productive, I will understand completely. As far as I am concerned, this is all entirely obvious — and therefore irredeemably boring.

So: Is Ardell DellaLoggia banned from BloodhoundBlog? No. She has around 130 comments on the blog, the last one posted eleven days ago. I do think she is grandstanding, for what that’s worth, but she wouldn’t be Ardell if she weren’t grandstanding.

On the other hand, I have demonstrated in the past that John Lockwood is lying when he insists he is banned at BloodhoundBlog — albeit his last comment was over a year ago — but he persists in repeating the lie.

Have Ardell, Lockwood and other people had comments deleted (or not released from moderation) at BloodhoundBlog. Oh, you bet. Why? Flaming, in both of their cases. During the ActiveRain/Move fiasco, Ardell took it upon herself to flame Brian Brady in words that I thought were beyond the pale. Your own opinion might be different, incidentally, but this is my property; it’s worth keeping that in mind every time an objection pops into your head. Lockwood’s second comment here was deleted for what I thought was palpable malice — ironically against Dustin Luther. I actually did ban him at the time, but reinstated him that same day as a courtesy to Jeff Brown, who had befriended him. John doesn’t come around very much, and I certainly don’t miss him, and now that he has been exposed — factually and beyond all possible caveats in his defense — as a bald-faced liar, I expect we will be seeing even less of him. (Another reason to be grateful to you for bringing this up!)

The next question would be: Why does BloodhoundBlog have such a elaborately detailed comments policy?

Is it because I find insults abhorrent? Obviously not. For all of me, well-crafted satire is the essence of Western art — the primordial expression of independence by the nascent Greeks toward the hegemonic Persians. To the Greeks and later to the Romans, to be of the East was to be docile, obedient, subservient — a domesticated animal in the guise of a homo sapiens. (They’re not talking about particular people, they’re talking about categories of behavior.) To be of the West is to be wild and free, a truly human being. To deliver a scathing insult to the powerful is to defy the very idea of one person having power over others. This idea I absolutely love.

Does BloodhoundBlog have a comments policy so that I can squelch debate? Or so that I can prevent people from disagreeing with me, particularly? If you will take some time to read our comments threads, you will see that neither of these propositions is true. I do almost all of the moderation, but I don’t care if someone disagrees with ideas — mine or anyone else’s. I love it that so many smart, thoughtful people comment here. One of the things I detest about the kind of calumny you quote above is that it may tend to make smart people afraid to speak out here. As a matter of policy: If you want to talk about serious ideas, no matter what your position is, we want to hear from you — me at least as much as anyone here.

So, Greg, if you don’t think insults are necessarily wrong as a device in the rhetorical arts, and you embrace disagreement — why does your comments policy forbid, specifically, “extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting”, “sock-puppetry” and “palpably malicious” behavior? Is that a question that a thoughtful mind — a human mind actively engaged in its only proper function — can even entertain? I police commenters — and not our contributors — in order to protect the “guests in our salon.”

Flame wars are unpleasant, but that’s not the reason for the policy. We didn’t have a comments policy before we became a group blog. I instituted the policy, at first, to protect the contributors I had asked to join us. I felt that, since they were invited guests in my home, it was my moral obligation to shield them from injury. I am a Greek to the core: In the public arena, the debate is everything. But in my home, guests are sacrosanct. That notwithstanding, as an unintended consequence our comments threads changed overnight, going from slurs, threats and epithets to the vital intellectual marketplace you see here now. Truly astounding to me, but, after all, the moral is the practical: Doing the right thing is almost always equivalent to doing the best thing. By making an effort to shield our guests from poisonous bile, we attracted a much better-quality population of guests. Should have been obvious to me, in advance of these events, but it wasn’t. Live and learn.

Now, if you’re still with me, what part of this is not completely obvious? As Alice the consumer discovered earlier today, I auto-moderate the first posted comment from anyone. This is to frustrate sock-puppets and trolls like Keith Brand, who are constantly trying to sneak in to vomit on our guests. For our commercial real estate weblogs, we auto-moderate all comments, to make sure that nothing that would be offensive to a client leaks in unnoticed. I would recommend this as a matter of policy to all commercial webloggers. The conversation is important, but so is your reputation. (Practical nuts-and-bolts advice even here!)

So what is this really all about, Dave? My take is that Ardell and other largely-decent folks — including Dustin Luther, incidentally — are being manipulated, stage-managed in a political game being run by Joseph Ferrara. Ferrara is permanently banned from BloodhoundBlog — for being palpably malicious, this many more times than once. If your immediate rejoinder is, “Jeepers! He’s not that bad,” permit me to remind that this is my property, and the people who come here are my invited guests. I will keep my own counsel as to how I husband my financial resources, protect our contributors’ intellectual property and discharge my duties and obligations as a host. If it means anything to you, I am already extending to you the same courtesy with respect to your property. In the deserts of Arizona, we call this minding your own business.

But: You asked — do you regret having done so?

This is my further elaboration of the praxis behind our comments policy:

We don’t have many problems, but the problems we do have are almost always flaming or flame-baiting — essentially just bullying. Even then, most of the problem cases are so outrageously malicious that I don’t even bother with them. I set the moderation bot to ban the commenter, then forget all about them.

The interesting cases are the gray areas, situations where I think the commenter may not have intended to offend. In those circumstances, I’ll send an email pointing out the offensive text and offering to let the comment go through if that copy is excised.

What happens next is always an eye-opener.

Most people will say something like: “Dang! You’re right. My apologies.” Or: “I am so glad you killed that! I hit post and instantly regretted it.” Or simply: “I didn’t know I was in the wrong. I’ll do better from now on.” Those folks I don’t worry about, not ever again.

The rarest few will instead mount the nearest high horse and say something like: “How dare you try to censor me?!” Or: “I have a First Amendment right to say whatever I choose!” Or simply: “Go [omitted] yourself!” Those folks I ban forever without a backward glance.

The point and purpose is simply this: We have built an important, useful and stimulating intellectual salon. It works as well as it does because we maintain high standards for our contributors and guests. I learned early on that bad behavior drives out the good, and so I am very careful to make sure that people who strive to dominate debate with obnoxious behavior are excluded from our soiree. Good ideas are always welcome. Bad behavior, never.

And even though — when you are building your own real estate weblog — you ought not emulate BloodhoundBlog in the large, many real estate webloggers have used our About page as the model for their own. You don’t have to be quite so snarky, if you don’t want to, but our comments policy is a good way of making sure that misanthropes don’t hijack your weblog and chase away all your guests.

I have Ardell DellaLoggia’s particulars set so that, when she posts a comment, it is always held in moderation, this since her flaming incident. I don’t believe Ardell is malicious, but I know, by now, that she is impulsive, and I’m not going to take a chance that she might abuse another guest in my home while I’m occupied with something else. The instant hot-headed rejoinder to a disclosure like this is, “How dare you try to control my behavior?!” This I am not doing. I am simply setting standards for what Ardell and my other guests can do while they are guests in my home.

My categorical exclusion of Joseph Ferrara seems to have caused him to come completely unglued. I know of this only by inference, since I don’t read his weblog. But, apparently, the only audience to which Ferrara can ever express himself with complete satisfaction is the audience that we have accumulated here — by mixing our labor with our minds — the physical substance of which is paid for from the proceeds of my own laboring. In other words, there cannot possibly be any justice in Ferrara’s universe until he gets free reign over my property. You might buy winter clothes when they’re on sale, because hell will have frozen over before anything like that happens.

Ferrara — and anyone else similarly inclined — is at perfect liberty to abuse me, BloodhoundBlog, our contributors or our guests anywhere else he or she choose — and do you have any doubts at all that many people are expressing this freedom with careless, reckless, wanton abandon? But despite Dustin Luther’s dictate, it’s still a free country. They are simply not free to do it here. I am by long odds the most libertarian person you will ever meet, but this has nothing to do with free speech. The overriding issue is my absolute right to manage my private property as I choose.

Here’s an irony: Ferrara’s actual complaint is that I am managing my property properly — doing exactly the right things to take the best possible care of our contributors and guests. This is why our comments threads are so interesting, and this is why the BloodhoundBlog comments policy has been adapted for use by so many other real estate weblogs.

Here’s another choice bit, less ironical than tragic: An astounding number of otherwise decent people have allowed themselves to be manipulated into being, to say the brutal truth, political stooges in Ferrara’s campaign to usurp this audience. Simply looking at things indifferently, which is never hard for me to do, this all would be astounding — if I hadn’t seen the same sort of drama play itself out so many times before.

In any case, here, Dave Barnes — because you have always been a straight shooter with me — is a full and comprehensive answer for you:

Question: Why does BloodhoundBlog have a comments policy?

Answer: Because it is my property.

And again, for the benefit of all the other people reading this post: My property. If you find yourself second-guessing me, if you are reading Ferrara or some other demagogue calling my management of this weblog into question, if you just happen to wonder, “Hey, what if…” — remember: My property. The contributors and commenters writing here are my invited guests, and I am beyond ecstatic about all of the great work we have done together. But I built this, I pay for it, and I am responsible for its upkeep. If you have time to kill and want to indulge yourself thinking about what you might do differently if you were in charge around here, go right ahead. But even then: My property. I will keep my own counsel — always. This may not be satisfying to you if you happen to be riled up at me or another BloodhoundBlog contributor, but it can serve you as a good example of how not to cave into to mob pressure when other people are riled up at you. Two simple words: My property.

Inlookers: I will be happy to entertain any other What would David Gibbons do?-type questions. You can email me; I’ll shield your identity. Or you can use the “Ask the Broker” button — if you fudge the email address field, it’s completely confidential. If your question is obnoxious, don’t waste your time — because I don’t waste mine. But if you have a sincere question about BloodhoundBlog or me or whatever — perhaps, like this question, incited by some unwitting agent of Ferrara’s seemingly boundless malice — fire away. I am surely also the most forthcoming — and loquacious! — person any of you are ever likely to meet. If you want to know something, just ask.

And: Because I personally think all of this really, really boring — a complete waste of any productive person’s time — I am creating a category called “Dirty Laundry” for these kinds of posts. If you really need to understand what’s going on here, read away. If your appetite is aroused by the scent of festering gossip — ew! — dig in. If you’re busy and you just want to learn how to do a better job on the job, skip these posts.

My thanks to you, Dave, for asking the hard question. I’m in your debt — and not for the first time.

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