Some Observations On Blogs

Now that we are slowly moving past Election 2008, I thought I might offer a few thoughts on my experiences with some of the bigger blogs. While I am sure some of you would disagree I think that my self proclaimed status as a slightly center right moderate is reasonable. As a result I tend to find myself in disagreement with both right and left blogs.

Of course as someone who loves to debate and argue, this is not a bad thing, and it has given me some interesting insights into the various blogs out there. While I visited a number of sites during the campaign I will use two of the bigger ones to illustrate my experience.

On the right I have chosen Redstate.com

For the left I am using Daily Kos

As you might imagine I frequently found myself shaking my head at some of the political views being expressed on both sites but to be fair I seldom found myself disappointed with the quality of the writing or of the analysis of the writers. While some (well many) of the responses to the posts were best ignored the general quality of the writing was excellent.

In addition both sites were also quite informative and had some excellent lines into not only both Presidential campaigns but also into news and information in general. If you wanted to know what was going on in the Obama campaign or with the Democrats, Kos often could tell you and the same was true of Red State with the Republicans and McCain. They also offered wonderful analysis of voting and polling patterns that helped you get an insight into the campaign.

Now having said these positive things I have to be fair and offer some critiques. Both sites have shown a disturbing intolerance for the other point of view. It’s not that I expect Kos to advocate the policies of the Bush administration or for Red State to back Obama. But especially with the comments section there was a strong lack of tolerance for even allowing the opposing view.

Both sides are eager to ‘purge’ their side of any moderates, though Kos was a bit more tolerant of moderates in the aspect of cold political calculations. But Kos is also a bit more likely to see comments about ‘banning the Republicans’ or such views. I have no problem with a site advocating their own point of view but I take exception with open contempt for the other side.

While both sites were fairly even in the good and the bad when it came to what I was reading there was a distinct difference when it came to my participating in the debate. Obviously when I went to the sites I was normally expressing disagreement with the point of view of the writers and other commenters. As a result I did not really expect to get much agreement or to see anyone change sides.

The responses to my comments were divided between the reasonable but opposed and the outwardly hostile (IE using language that I can’t repeat here). In this aspect Red State did a bit better than Kos. I did not keep details statistics but I would say on RS that the respectful responses outnumbered the hostile by a 60-40 margin while on Kos it was probably the reverse.

I don’t think that these figures should be taken to much against the web sites though since you don’t really have too much control over what the people say and when the debate got too heated the moderators were quick on both sites to respond.

However, the degree of censorship from the sites themselves were strikingly different. Both sites required registration to post comments.

When it came to Red State I was able to use the same account for as long as I wanted, at least from the point of view of the web masters. I did have to change once or twice because of trolls but otherwise my comments were not limited by the site.

By contrast, I had to re-register on Kos so many times I lost count. Once you started expressing a view that was not in line with the views of the web masters you were banned. I find this a very disturbing attitude for a site that quite properly condemned the Bush administration for their overreaching civil liberties restrictions.

Indeed, it makes me more concerned with them when I read about ‘banning dissent’ from a site that has already made its own policy of doing so.

Overall both sites are excellent, but I would prefer to see both have a little more respect for all points of view.