A note on 'hateful commentary'

The MANN admins list got an email from a reader who said he felt some of the comments left by others here were hateful/vile and he gave some examples. All in all, I agreed with him re those exaamples. Following was my reply:

"Thanks for your note. I agree there are some really hateful and bigoted things in comments on our site. The MANN admins have discussed this issue at length in the past and have concluded that when we start censoring one comment, there is no end to where it goes. We think that as offensive something is, it tarnishes the poster far more than the site itself. This issue has come up a lot before in legal circles on other forums, such as newspaper forums.

Anyway, MANN admins concluded that to keep from injecting our own editorial bias into comments (we have it in what we post, since all editorial decisions re posted/printed content in newspapers or, as in our case, aggregation sites, is inherently biased), that there would be only one rule: No personal attacks against other posters. That is because personal attacks drive members away and more than that, they turn the subject matter from ideas to personalities. We want to stay focused on ideas, not personalities.

But I will say I understand your POV. The good news about these folks who post the hateful stuff is that the post usually goes nowhere. People usually don't reply to it, for they understand that that is 'feeding the trolls'. By editing out the hateful commentary, that would also be feeding the trolls and making them into martyrs. As it stands, we are simply starving them for attention and they only look bad.

I hope this clarifies some on the whys and hows of MANN editorial policy. In fact I think this is such an important issue to point out that I will take my reply to you and post it as an item, though I will not post your original note to the MANN list."