Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A comment on comments

I use comments in my Moodle assignments to keep students accountable for what they write in their posts. Also, the conversations that result can sometimes lead to new discoveries, depending on the motivations of the students. The main thing, though, is the insight I gained from Bob Marrs (I think) years ago: students don't mind appearing dumb in front of a professor (learned role playing), but they don't want to look dumb in front of their fellow students. The potential that someone will read what they post helps keep quality up.

I think the same thing can apply to blogs such as this one. Comments can help us clarify what we're trying to say, and keep the more curmudgeonly among us from ranting because we have to think about how what we write will be read by different people... most of whom work with us.

Having said that, I haven't had the nerve to read the one comment this blog has generated so far.

A different, less healthy, dynamic seems to obtain for the politics and sports sites I often visit. The comments are made pseudonymously--sorry, Blogger, but that is a word, and it's spelled correctly--and are frequently vulgar and insulting. Today, someone calling themselves "CubsWillWinWS" offers this bit of wisdom on the Cubs' site:

This is like BP doesn't do something about oil spillage and cleanup. Why don't we borrow "Chicago boy" Obama for few minutes and let him talk horse sh it cra p about how horrible the team is?

For a story on the Chicago Tribune site on the White Sox season to date, two of the three "comments" were actually commercials.

Who cares!!! My boyfriend thinks the same with me. He- is eight years older than me, lol. We met online at an age gap dating site[ S E E K C O U G A R (C 0 /M)_]---a nice and free place for Younger- Women and Older Men, or Older Women and Younger Men, to interact with each other. Maybe you wanna check out or- tell your friends

Sometimes I think the story of the Internet is people forming some sort of e-community on the tech frontier (remember e-mail at first?) until commerce catches up with them and they have to move on to some new e-space.

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