A few days back I reported Christopher Carfi’s focus on the comments as being a better guide to what to read here. I have to admit this has had a bit of an effect on me. And lately I’ve found taking part in the comments here has been more engaging than adding new posts. (Blogging changes the blogger).
There’ve been a lot of comments on the posts about Schapelle Corby. Some have been pretty offensive and I even deleted some, which I’ve not done before. But I haven’t enjoyed censoring and instead I’m trying responding to them online. It’s been an interesting experiment trying to work out what my policy is on insults and racism. At the moment, I’m arguing against name-calling in the comments but not censoring it. I’m not sure about this; it’s probably a bit easy to get pious about name-calling and sometimes a good venting of fury can energise a debate. Racism is tricky too; at what point do stereotypes about a nation move from humour or acceptable generalisation to racism?
I find responding to these comments is good practice in faciltation. And I realise I’m not willing to be the sort of facilitator who tries to be studiously accepting or neutral. I don’t believe in the notion of completely objective observer.
