May 15, 2007 at 21:54:57

Ethics In Writing Articles In A Relatively Unsupervised Multi Column News Service Milieu

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By ProfessorPete (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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2)-In another case, in which I critiqued a rather unfair and I thought mean spirited attack on a celebrity, I was blindsided by one of the most, over-the-top, slanderous, unethical, and even more mean spirited, Swift-Boat manure, slobbering (though rather brief), attacks, I have yet seen on this site, and by a colleague, no less. (Well not in spirit, at least) The person doing the attacking was the author, and indeed seemed to have no clue about the rules of engagement in discussion, debate, collegiality or civility, and who leaped to slander at little provocation.

3)-In another case I observed on another column, (Not mine) a person, (I traced the persons background) registered solely to attack a writer here (one registered comment) and to my knowledge has not appeared again.

4)-In still another case, attacking others and me was a person who had been, banned but because of the key-word, language, mean-spiritedness, style and technique, I recognized as the banned one back with a new IP.

5)-I have also seen, and been guilty of myself, comments that were as, or longer than the article upon which the comments were commenting. Perhaps we ought to have a word limit on comments: 500 words, 750 words...? ? ?

6)-Also, I wonder, shouldn't trusted authors be given the option of deleting harassing, stalking, abusive, mean spirited, threatening, comments and inappropriate comments where a person commenting is merely using the space to rant about something irrelevant, or to self-promote.

That is a viable option left to the authors on my blogspot and it has not been abused. Most of us welcome a lively debate, but few are masochistic enough to want to visit our article several times a day and have to see repeatedly harassing, stalking, abusive, mean spirited, threatening, and inappropriate comments. It intimidates others from participating if they see virulent comments, or personal attacks upon authors and deflects readers from reading the column and commenting.

Let me know what you think.

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Professor Bagnolo has majored in: Cultural Anthropology, Architectural design, painting, creative writing. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, he was offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8.
Later He was a (more...)

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