Coalition Against Bad Blogging

Wikipedia is a free, widely used online encyclopedia, wherein the entries can be modified by anyone.

That is where the catch is.

I am not totally against Wikipedia.  Wikipedia gives the opportunity for anyone to create an encyclopedia entry, which was once a class project in college (though not mine).  It can be used as a quick - yet crude - research tool, just to get a general idea of a topic.  My professor sometimes borrows images from Wikipedia to illustrate biological mechanisms in class.  Many articles are reviewed, or scrutinized, by the world; Wikipedia's hope/argument is that since the people who read Wikipedia include those who are knowledgeable on the subject(s), any mistake found on the article can be easily corrected by them.  In time, the information presented in the article will be "balanced" or almost (or totally) accurate.  I think that Wikipedia provides a good service to the global community by providing easily accessible information.  Read More »

I know that every time you post a comment, you get 10 points.  You also get a point for every read on your blog.  This blog site is aimed to promote progress in thinking and action.  The comments are part of discussion and debate.  However, it is unfair and unprogressive to write nonsense comments only for the points.

I mean nonsense literally.  That would mean logging out of your account, posting a comment as a "Guest," and typing in random sentences, words, or letters, like "dflkjadlkf dkfjasljf akldfjlasdjoi."  Also, that is advertisers putting random web links, such as Home Equity Loan, which are unrelated to the subject of the blog.  It can be writing something with a point, but which is totally unrelated to the blog's point.  Otherwise, if the blog has specific questions for the audience and the comment just says, "I like ..." or "I don't like..." without elaborations and which does not even answer the question(s), it is semi-pardonable, but still rather pointless. I think that these types of nonsense are almost the same or worse than comments containing profanity.  Spelling errors - although I personally do not like them - can be pardoned as long as the comment has a point.  Read More »

Much ado has been made about this issue elsewhere, and yet it's still a problem. Progressive U flags any comments containing the word "socialism" as potential spam, refuses to post them until they've been approved by an editor, and logs the IP addresses of the "spammers", preventing them from doing things like edit posts while so logged.

This has resulted in a mandated self-censorship, under which we all use "s-ism" in our comments to get them past the filter. This proves that not only are the spam filter's motives questionable to begin with, but it also achieves literally nothing.  Read More »

I've seen alot of people citing things like Thomas Jefferson's letters and the Federalist Papers as if they were bona fide pieces of legislature.  This is not true.  Just because one framer or two or three framers had a personal opinion does not mean that that is a part of the US Law & Government.  These people, like law makers and justices should be, were trying to be as impartial as they could when framing the workings of our country, so to cite their personal beliefs towards religion or any other topic is invalid.  Most of the framers believed in slavery and the necessity thereof; however, almost no one will cite that as US law.  If you're going to make a case regarding the law, use the law as your foundation.  Read More »

Well, I've been in contact with Art, and he's given us a category (which he says, over the summer, he will turn into a group).  The idea of the group (or my conception of it, anyway) is to offer constructive criticism for the blogging community on Blog Method.  Some of you (myself included) have already taken the initiative to do just that, and I am eager to see this trend continue.  Read More »

Okay, we all post on here how we are tired of those people who over blog and how we need to find a way to stop it. Most of us dedicated (but not overly, lol) bloggers had come to the concession that no one reads their frivolous entries anyway and there is no way they ( the over bloggers) are going to win the contest because of the lack of reads, so we all need to calm down. BUT I am caling for help from all of you versus complaining as we have done in the past. Overblogging does become an issue when people are posting over 30 times a day. Yes, certain users are doing that. Most of us may have only posted 30 times in the last 2 months. SO it DOES MATTER! In the past reads were the most effective way to get points; but that is no longer true. Because the site has had so much traffic, posting is the only real way to get points, which encourages overblogging. But what can we do, short of calling out names and directly attacking said overbloggers? Start a boycott.  Read More »