5 ms·
The sincerity of your feelings is not the point. The point is that calling people names reduces the quality of the comments.
by jessriedel 10y ago
The sincerity of your feelings is not the point. The point is that calling people names reduces the quality of the comments.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI think that calling people names here was making the comment much closer to what 'stcredzero actually thinks. I.e. it boosted accuracy and clarity of the comment. Also, personally I don't have any other idea how to fix journalism than calling them out every time, and calling them out hard.
- jessriedel 10y agoYou literally used "accuracy" and "clarity" as synonyms for intensity of emotion. Under that logic, everything becomes a screaming match, and the comments devolve into a competition to see who's feelings are the most virulent.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI meant something else. When you write a comment, you transcribe your thoughts and feelings into text. That text may or may not be close to what you actually think - e.g. to the words you use in your internal monologue. In this case I think the word choice serves to portray the actual thoughts and emotions of the author more clearly/accurately.
- jessriedel 10y agoWhat ideas, as opposed to emotions, can't be communicated without name calling?
- dwaltrip 10y agoHigh quality comments are written to convey an idea or present an argument (low quality comments are often written to make the writer feel good about themselves without conveying any meaningful idea). Removing words with high emotional charge but low signal (such as "idiot") will increase the quality and effectiveness of the comment. Others will view the comment more favorably, and any additional discussion is likely to be more productive this way.