Come on Kat, you didn’t need to come to her defense–you had laid out your positive opinion of her and her style quite plainly. And I think that any objective reader figured you disagreed with my disagreement. Not to mention it was a side thread, and I was the lone dissenter.

And I think that any objective reader figured you disagreed with my disagreement.

I guess I disagree most with the swearing thing. I don’t swear often, but do swear some. I’ve never found it to be invalidating from those who hear it.

I can understand that you do. My parents are much the same way, and that’s how I was raised. I’ve just deviated from it some.

My main gripe with the criticism many folks have of B’s and the conversations there is that–as William said–they reduce it to counting the F-bombs.

Kat,
That makes sense, and I think William was just grasping for an argument at that point (or flippantly attempting to deflect assertions). Come to think of it, I would be offended if I were AuntB and William criticized me for that.

But the language is undoubtedly a concern for me. I don’t want to have to use a password when I’m home or hide my screen or alt-tab to ESPN or Outlook whenever my 9-year-old plops down next to her daddy. I know that AuntB’s stuff is substantive and often profound and the graphic language is not such a big issue that I can’t appreciate her work.

Incidentally, I didn’t bring up the coarse language issue–I would suspect that people expect “Mr. Righteous” to be bothered by it and (how’s this for tolerance) I accept that most every-other-person-online does not share my opinion about appropriate language. My disagreement was/is mainly with her WWF-style of calling others out.

And again, she’s free to do whatever she wants, but I couldn’t discern much difference between what Glen was being accused of doing and what AuntB does (in her posts).

I couldn’t discern much difference between what Glen was being accused of doing and what AuntB does (in her posts).

The main difference that I see is that when B. does call someone out she does it on her own blog. Where my opinion begins and ends is with this blog here. As I told Glen and William, everyone has personal blogs where they can spend all day long calling people stupid, etc. If they don’t, they should sign up for one. It’s free.

My point (and Rachel’s) vis-a-vis Glen’s style was that it isn’t appropriate for the tenor of THIS blog.

When I referenced Aunt B.’s blog in the discussion to William I did so because it is, as far as I’m concerned, a good example of a thriving blog community, anthropologically speaking.

When I first dived in there a few years ago, I didn’t get the vibe of the place correct and sort of came off in the comments much the way William comes off here from time to time, but perhaps to a lesser degree. When I see you over there (at TCP) it reminds me of the way I was when I first started there, insofar as I disagree with the views of most of the posters and was pretty truculent about it.

In anthropological terms, I was applying my personal rules to someone else’s space.

The larger point I was trying to make–and had it not been very late I would have made it better–is that a blog community does best when the participants willingly subsume a part of their ways in order to fit in with the larger social organisation.

It’s not unlike a church or a chess club or a bowling team.

You have to go along to get along. And on blogs, the site manager sets the rules and the tone.

This site is unique because we have a board of managers, each of whom has a slightly different tone.

So, brother, if you’ve managed to tick off ALL the managers, you are way the heck out of line. (See! I didn’t swear there…just for you. ;-p)

B.’s done an excellent job at crafting a safe space where folks from different viewpoints can debate the issues–as long as they play by her rules.

And in blogland, that’s the way it goes.

That’s why I referenced her site. She’s got far left folks (Church Secretary) and crazed libertarians (me, Sarcastro, Exador) folded into the pudding quite nicely.

Glen’s old blog–before he went on hiatus–was actually much the same way. Those of us who commented there frequently (me, Chance, dolphin, and some other guys who I can’t remember off the top of my head) had a good feel for the “rules” of the site.

I’m sorry. I think I’m rambling now. I hope my general point is getting communicated okay. That point being that personal sites set their own rules and B.’s is an example of a personal site which has thrived under its rules.

a blog community does best when the participants willingly subsume a part of their ways in order to fit in with the larger social organisation

Oh, remember someone was asking a few days back on some thread or other what a communitarian is? Well, take “blog” out of Kat’s phrase up there and you have the basis of communitarian theory.

I think I understand, and your distinction makes sense. I don’t have much of a blog history so my relational perspective on most of the parties is limited. I guess I need to view AuntB’s SMART bombs (aimed at me) as love notes or social invitations (or, at the least, rites of passage), huh?

Pretty much, yes I would.