More revolution-y stuff

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with The Activists these days. Still, I can't resist going on their blog sometimes, and...well...

...Most of the articles are the usual left-wing stuff I've come to know. Some is good. Some is tolerable. Some is the illogical crap which made me quit in the first place. But I didn't want to write about that - it's ground I've covered before.

What I wanted to write about today is the comments section - or rather, the lack of activity in it.

I am of the opinion that a thriving comments section is a good thing. If your blog has 15,000 readers, as this tweet claims, it should have at least 1 comment on each article. I doubt whether there are 50 comments on all the articles combined.

Those comments that are published tend to be things like "yeah, I agree" and not much beyond that. Anything which is even slightly out of line is deleted during moderation. I know this from personal experience: I'm a left-winger myself, but because I wrote critical comments on some of the articles - and submitted things which they wouldn't like me to submit, since I defended intellectuals and asked them to get a plan - they deleted said comments.

Do I really need to go into why this is wrong? These people claim to defend truth and freedom while undermining both (their statements are somewhere between questionably true and blatantly false depending on the author, while blocking critical comments obviously goes against freedom of speech), for a start. Moreover, unless explicitly stated otherwise, the comments section is supposed to be for debates. Granted, most of the time it turns into a couple of people having a violent scrap, but we can dream of having nice things. By only approving comments which agree with your position, you stifle the debate.

Some people are now going to point out that I have written articles for them before. Firstly, I am going to point out that they picked the titles for the articles, not me. It's not a major point, but I don't want anyone thinking I would write titles like that. Secondly, I am going to point out that I started doubting The Activists long before I started writing for them. Look at the dates on the articles I wrote for them and on the two "doubting articles" linked to in this post. Thirdly, I decided to write for them because, for all their faults, they have their heart in the right place and I wanted to set them straight. It backfired, unfortunately.

I'm rolling an idea around in my head, and I wonder if anyone else would be interested. (If anyone knows of a place like this, send me a link.)

It would be a blog set up similarly to The Activists', with many, many guest contributions. The difference is that it would be focused on how to plan reform or revolution, and what goals we should be striving for. Ideally it would have quite an inclusive policy, trying to bring people together rather than splitting the group into "true believers" and "the unworthy". Debate from every quarter would be encouraged - high standards of debate, mind you, since I'm not really into ignorance and flamewars. Hell, maybe we could even plan protests together...

...I realise that this is just an idea, and a really idealistic one at that. I realise that inevitably something will go pear-shaped in practice. I just think that it's worth fighting for.

Remember, comments are love.

PS: If you're asking why I haven't updated for a week, it's because of school. This is probably going to be usual during school time, but I'm not letting the blog die.