JR blogs that he shut down the comments on a single post at the Chalkboard. The reason? Name-calling, personal attacks, potential slander of private citizens, and general ugliness. According to JR, a new registration system in the works might help raise the level of discourse by reducing the numbers of trolls (they really are hard to ignore, eh?).
In the WaPo incident, posters went after the blogger. Only in Greensboro can Bruce Buchanan put up an open thread and have it turn into a cesspool that has to be shut down. This is qualitatively different from what happened in DC but no less sad.
It certainly is sad, Sue. The Chalkboard has been a bare-knuckle neighborhood for some time now, but this is the first time it’s gotten so bad that we’ve had to shut down comments on a post.
On one hand, I hear people say they like being able to leave anonymous comments. We get posts from people who work for the school system who might get in trouble if their bosses knew who they were.
But I’m convinced that a number of posters hide behind that anonymity so they can take cowardly cheap shots at other participants. Sadly, the three people who took the brunt of the name-calling were folks who were brave enough to use their real names, which apparently made them targets.
It could be a couple of rotten apples, but I think we should try to find out why so many people are SO angry about GCS. On the one hand, I don’t think Dr. Grier could do anything and not generate some segment of the community’s wrath. On the other hand, schools are critically important to families. I haven’t seen it this bad in 30 years in Greensboro – the divisivenes, the name-calling, the polarization among communities and the High Point outrage. I don’t have the solution, but we might not be looking at the real problem: why are people so angry?
Is this simply a reflection of the polarization of our country?