More ideas for comment policies

Dan Klarman recently referred me to Pharyngula's comment policies. That led me to Pharyngula's High Crimes and Misdemeanors. I think that we have many of these covered in DI's comment policy, but I do agree that all of these behaviors serve to hinder meaningful discussion. I anyone else has good comment policy ideas that they've seen elsewhere, let me know. I want to have free and open discussion, but I do want to keep the discussion moving and meaningful. Perhaps more important, let me know what you think about the comments of Karl, who submits comments to this site almost every day. How much access should have have to this site? Unrestrained? Severely edited? How would you handle Karl's many comments if you were administering this site? What is fair? How tired are you of Karl? Or do you see his points of view as a valuable foil that drives meaningful conversation? Here are Pharyngula's High Crimes and Misdemeanors:

Concern trolling A particularly annoying form of trolling in which someone falsely pretends to be offering advice to favor a position they do not endorse; a creationist who masquerades as someone concerned about the arguments for evolution as an excuse to make criticisms.

Godbotting Making an argument based only on the premise that your holy book is sufficient authority; citing lots of bible verses as if they were persuasive.

Insipidity A great crime. Being tedious, repetitive, and completely boring; putting the blogger to sleep by going on and on about the same thing all the time.

Morphing Changing pseudonyms to avoid killfiles.

Slagging Making only disparaging comments about a group; while some of this is understandable, if your only contribution is consistently "X is bad", even in threads that aren't about X, then you're simply slagging, not discussing.

Sockpuppetry Like morphing, but with a specific intent: creating multiple identities supporting a position to create a false impression of popularity

Spamming Using the comments to sell real estate, mortgage assessments, little blue pills, porn, or Russian mail-order brides. Spammers are not tolerated at all; they are expunged without comment.

Stupidity Some people will just stun you with the outrageous foolishness of their comments; those who seem to say nothing but stupid things get the axe.

Trolling Making comments intended only to disrupt a thread and incite flames and confusion.

Wanking Making self-congratulary comments intended only to give an impression of your importance or intelligence.

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Song from Iran and other news

For the past few years, I've been receiving emails and attachments from a woman with close ties to Iran. Along with this Youtube she wrote the following:

Here is a song gifted to the new Iran emerging from the 2009 election by the one of the greatest musicians of present day Iran, Mohamad Reza Shajarian. And he rightly calls it "Iran, the land of hope.
She indicates that letters are circulating in Iran to weaken the grip of Mr. Ahmadinejad's government by doing the following:

o Refusing to give ads to the state run TV, and newspapers serving as the voice of the government. o Pulling out money invested in banks and financial institutions run by the government or by the revolutionary guards. o Refraining from contributing to the charity boxes scattered throughout towns all across the country. Protesting has become incredibly dangerous.

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Economics evolves into evolutionary economics

The July 2009 edition of Scientific American explores new ways of looking at economics in an article by Gary Stix entitled "The Science of Bubbles and Busts." The article explores the growing acceptance by professionals that people quite often are not rational when it comes to dealing with their finances. We are not homo economicus, as touted by many economists, including Milton Friedman. Our imperfections are many. For instance, we are supremely overconfident. We overrate our ability to make decisions in the market. We are also prone to "herding," following the crowd. We are also overwhelmed by our recall of recent events due to the availability bias. We are creatures who are strictly geared to the short-term. As a result of this mounting evidence establishing that we are not able to rationally deal with the market, new approaches are inexorably working there way into economics. These new approaches include evolutionary economics:

“Economists suffer from a deep psychological disorder that I call ‘physics envy,’ ” [MIT professor of finance Andrew] Lo says. “We wish that 99 percent of economic behavior could be captured by three simple laws of nature. In fact, economists have 99 laws that capture 3 percent of behavior. Economics is a uniquely human endeavor and, as such, should be understood in the broader context of competition, mutation and natural selection—in other words, evolution.

Having an evolutionary model to consult may let investors adapt as the risk profiles of different investment strategies shift. But the most important benefit of Lo’s simulations may be an ability to detect when the economy is not in a stable equilibrium, a finding that would warn regulators and investors that a bubble is inflating or else about to explode.

An adaptive-market model can incorporate information about how prices in the market are changing—analogous to how people are adapting to a particular ecological niche. It can go on to deduce whether prices on one day are influencing prices on the next, an indication that investors are engaged in “herding,” as described by behavioral economists, a sign that a bubble may be imminent. As a result of this type of modeling, regulations could also “adapt” as markets shift and thus counter the type of “systemic” risks for which conventional risk models leave the markets unprotected.

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HVAC sanity in Japan

How often have you gone into a store or business in the summer, where you needed to wear a sweater or coat to stay comfortably warm? Think movie theaters, for example. No doubt, Americans waste a lot of energy over-cooling in the summer and over-warming in the winter. Think of those businesses that keep their doors open in the winter, heat spilling out into the frigid outdoors. When we bought a Christmas tree this year, the lot was using propane heaters to heat the outdoors. As reported by Newsweek, Japan is using common sense in an effort to make itself less dependent on foreign fuel and in an effort to reduce carbon emissions:

In 2005, Environment Minister Yuriko Koike, a pioneering female politician, was seeking ways to slash energy use. And she came up with the Cool Biz campaign. The idea: Government would cut energy bills by keeping thermostats in its buildings at 28 degrees Celsius—82.4 degrees Fahrenheit—during the summer. It quickly produced results and was adopted by the business establishment as well. Since Japan's energy mavens realized that simply unbuttoning a shirt collar can make people feel about 4 degrees cooler, dressing down became part of the Cool Biz mentality. (Here's an ABC News story on the phenomenon.) The only people we met with this week wearing suits, ties, and cufflinks were Americans.

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What if record companies hadn’t been asses?

At Truthdig.com, Danny Goldberg has reviewed Steve Knopper’s book, Appetite for Self-Destruction. According to Goldbert, Knopper asks asks some good questions. Was it really necessary that the record companies had to suffer their massive economic collapses? Here are many of the excuses you hear:

If only they hadn’t charged so much for CDs even after the per-unit manufacturing cost went down; if only they hadn’t abandoned the commercial single when it ceased to be sufficiently profitable; if only they hadn’t cooperated with Best Buy and Wal-Mart at the expense of indie stores; if only they hadn’t sued customers for illegal downloading, etc. etc. Referring to the fact that some of Sony/BMG’s ill-fated watermarked CDs damaged some computers, Knopper writes: “This lack of empathy reinforced Napster-era beliefs that the music industry was more interested in suing and punishing its customers than catering to them.”

Goldberg disagrees with all of this. He points to the newspaper industry, which made none of these mistakes, but is also suffering massive economic losses.

This litany of real and imagined insults to the consumer [caused by record companies] ignores the central reality of what caused the decline of record sales: the ability of fans to get albums free.

Continue ReadingWhat if record companies hadn’t been asses?