We've been having increasing difficulty with the comments on this site. There are technical problems with the commenting software, but more troubling has been the increasing disregard for the commenting rules of the site, especially commenting under other people's names.
For this reason we are temporarily changing the comment settings to that we moderate every comment. This is a lot of work and we might not get to your comment quickly. This is the result of many commenters making the comments section unworkable. If you have something worthwhile to say we will be glad to put it up, if not don't even bother.
To Whom It May Concern, As an American Jew, I found your youtube video incredibly disturbing and irresponsible.. You are giving Jews a bad name and should be ashamed of yourself. Why would you ask questions like that to obviously drunk individuals? It was very poor judgement on your part – we live in critical times and you are not doing anything positive except draw people to your website. Honestly, as a young Jew and an American, you make me sad. Those people you showed were idiots and if I had been there to witness it, there would have been a scene. You idiot…. you child….
@ johnny utah utter silliness. blame the messenger. if you love israel and jewish culture, you would be more concerned with rescuing it from this very real strain that threatens it. it is more widespread than you wish to admit, but denial is par. lots of other footage from the settlers etc, not to speak of the fact that israel was the last friend of the apartheid regime in south africa in its pariah days, or the stratified existence of non european jews in israel proper. what you feel is embarrassment. it can guide you well, as the shame of the katrina footage turned opinion on bush, or the civil rights footage brought white northerners into the fold, or you can attack the messenger as you have. dont shove your head in the sand. join in fixing the problem or find yourself on the wrong side of a history which you will not have the benefit of writing. it is time for your epiphany, the narrative of victimhood shrouds victimizer.
It is my opinion comments are why blogs become popular. Mr. Weiss, Mr. Horowitz and others do a good job reporting on the Palestinian, Israeli and American issues, and I thank them, but this blog is popular because people like to make and read comments about these issues. That said, intensedebate sucks.
Wouldn't it be possible to limit comments to those registered at intensedebate? I haven't registered with them yet, but I'd be willing to if necessary. Even better, in my opinion, would be a bona fide discussion forum (phpBB), with links to a separate forum threat for each blog article. I've seen this on other blogs, works fairly well.
Johnny Utah, welcome to Mondoweiss. And yes, it's not your grandma's website. It's the crossroads of an enormous historic shift in the Israel-Palestine dialogue, and the people impassioned by this website's core mission are engaged in a high-level debate about the future of the U.S.'s interests in the region. I can imagine this is shocking to you and that the "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem" video that brought you here shocks your conscience as a Jewish American. Relax. We understand that these skinhead, Semetic-supremacists don't represent who you are. But by ranting "you idiot. . . you child" . . . well, that's the kind of name-calling that nearly 400,000 people watched on the YouTube "Hate" video. Relax. Join the conversation. Make a difference.
Alcohol tends to bring out the worst in people, but the fact of the matter is that these young people wouldn't have said this if it weren't a part of their subconscious to begin with….Remember Mel Gibson….
Don't you think that people who see that kind of behavior all the time (and many people do see that kind of behavior all the time) can tell that it's not just one video, or one small group of intoxicated young Jews, where those attitudes are displayed? Highlighting those kinds of behavior where they exist doesn't give Jews a bad name. What gives Jews a bad name is when people try to hide that kind of behavior under the excuse that to do otherwise gives Jews a bad name. When Jews focus enormous amounts of attention on, and roundly condemn anti-Semitic comments from people like Mel Gibson while they are drunk, but try to suppress any awareness of when Jews do similar things in reference to other groups, that sets up a dynamic in which people resent Jews for expecting to be treated differently than all other groups. That's what gives Jews a bad name. Anyone who is concerned about how the behavior of the group of Jews in the video will impact on the attitudes of people who are not Jewish, should make themselves busy trying to educate Jews with those kinds of attitudes about why they are wrong, not trying to hide the existence of such people.
Does your new software allow you to ban people? This worked quite well and deterred a number of trolls. By spending too much time on filtering comments you detract from your primary job as journalists, I feel. It will also kill the spontaneity of exchanges, which are extremely informative in their own right. I feel that your interventions are essential in some cases, but let the readers do the initial self-policing and only step in when required.
What’s surprising about the video is not its content; Israeli Jews already have a bad name – even Avigdor Lieberman recognizes this as he pursues his “Israel rebranding” project. What’s surprising is that this video was made at all, and that it was linked to other sites, Ha’aretz being one of them. In my view, what we’re witnessing in the video is a performance – college kids showing off for a camera and doing their best to push some adult buttons. They succeeded. What’s also surprising is that the content of the video is not being deconstructed. The debate is all about controlling the discourse, not about the discourse itself. This serves the Right-Wing’s purpose: rather than examine the racist content of Israeli culture, keep the debate on the level of whether or not journalists should present that content. As for the content of this video, the PoliSci major who supposedly “knows her shit” but doesn’t know who Binyamin Netanyahu is says more about the program in which this young woman is enrolled than it does about her silly performance. The young man who offers the Holocaust experience of his grandmother as Jewish justification for resisting justice for the Palestinians should prompt us to ask who has educated him in this notion. His elders, no doubt – the same Jews who’ve been whining about antisemitic school textbooks used in the OT.
Johnny Utah, Respond to these studies on racism (typical colonial mentality) amongst Israeli Jews: http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3... http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3... http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3... http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3... http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3...
i second the request to go to a phpBB format. something that functions like a forum but looks more like a blog–i'm sure there are decent templates. and back to the journalism 2.0 theme phil brought up in a post last year — it's about the reporting and the conversation both. it can be even more integrated than the post-comment format now. the thing and the meta-thing all in the same place. you can oblige people to register in order to post, and the diehard will, but free access for all for reading. then you can easily ban the idiots. good luck, guys.
there's a room down the hall with no windows at all where folks go to let their thoughts flow it's open to new views and always to new news i just hope that each of us knows we should take it always like in empty hallways our voice will echo you know unless you can hear me you'll never get near me but that you already know once you've been bitten you'll always be smitten the bug will never let go let your thoughts flow now wherever they go now without a worry or care you know the limit the light you can't dim it and in the end you can't help but share
If the media is the message, then to criticize the mode of the message is very relevant. Although I hope that debate will be more civil with more oversight of comments, I think the review of all posts is cumbersome for hosts and for patrons. I don't know what else to suggest to moderate the posting though. People posting under my name was irritating. I'm sure others have experienced much worse than my single incident.
Richard is indeed a brave, contrarian voice on Mondoweiss. I don't agree with virtually anything he says, but he is an important voice on Mondoweiss. (Remember how he protested the suppression of anti-Zionist voices on campus?) He has been attacked with people posting under his name — it demeans the intellectualism of the website. I agree — let's all register with IntenseDebate.com and have our IPs registered.
I like the anachaic nature of this blog. ps I changed my blog name so as not to offend my jewish brother. jim byers
I wouldn't recommend going the message board route because from my own experience moderating forums that's a full time job and would cause a lot headaches for Phil and Adam. If you're looking for an(ahem!) intense debate I would suggest the Israel/Palestine forum at DemocraticUnderground.com: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo... Several Mondoweiss articles have been posted on DU and it seems a lot of people there appreciate what Phil is writing about. In fact I don't see why someone couldn't post more Mondoweiss articles (hint, hint!) Anyway, I too have had problems viewing IntenseDebate comments. I'd be happy going back to the old typepad comment form, anyone else?
Oscar, if you think Richard Witty represents 'intellectuallism', then you must be rather dim.
Intensedebate has been working well for me, but I did set up an account. I've noticed that many of those people with problems don't have ID accounts. Maybe if more of the commenters used ID they would have fewer problems. I'd prefer trying to get ID to work to trying to break in a whole new system. I like being able to review the comments of my favorite posters. The problem with the mixed ID and non-ID comments may be with the scripting on the page. Unfortuately I have no idea what it could be. I second what lurker said about a message board. Those things are a nightmare to moderate and attract spambots.
Many internet fora have volunteer moderators just for this sort of problem. If the blog owners wanted to moderate the comments section without having to devote too much time to it themselves, that might be an option. A forum format would be easier for moderators to navigate than the format in most blog comments sections.
Clearly, it is intolerable for Phil and Adam to waste time monitoring comments. – I'm not unhappy with intensedebate (I like especially the feature that allows you to respond directly to a particular comment) – I agree that allowing only registered persons to comment would avoid a lot of the problems. Besides, I don't then have to fill in a new form every time I comment – Regular and genuine commentators/debaters could help out by using the REPORT button for offenders against the rules and good manners. Intensedebate should be able to identify transgressors from their registry. Phil and Adam could then warn them or ban them. – Name-calling and personal attacks are not good manners. (With the exception, of course, of Richard Witty ;-) whose contributions I might admire if I could understand them) – I would recommend getting a Google toolbar – it enables you to spelchek
I like IntenseDebate because you can track peoples posts. A nice quick way of recording the history of the blog.
Strahl, Your many past comments on this website are an on-going study in racism against the Jewish people.
Rowan, I'll concede that I've long respected your posts and certainly believe they represent "intellectualism." If you noticed, I didn't say Richard's posts were representative of intellectualism or not, I simply meant that when a stray commenter comes in calling himself RichardWittyI, or even some haters who use an ID that has some insult to Phil — it lowers the intellectual standards we've come to expect on the Mondoweiss website. And no, I'm not rather dim. I know who "Benjamin Yahoo is", so "I know my s–t!" PS – Max & Joseph's video is closing in on 400,000 hits . . . with 94,000 hits coming from the J-Post article on "Feeling the Hate."
Richard Witty1 is me from a different computer. If that was the basis of the comments time out, that was an error. There were two incidents last week, where someone other than me posted under my name. On "intellectualism". If you have questions about what I'm saying, ask. Its an easy and cheap shot to simply dismiss my comments because they don't meet some litmus test. My comments are quite "typical" of the liberal Zionist perspective. We take offense when slanders, personal and cultural, are thrown around, and they are OFTEN on this site. My use of the term "left" is meant to be descriptive of the method of analysis that is solely critical, rather than representing a proposal. Criticism is easy, and to call that first step "intellectualism" is a fraud. Proposal, considerate design, accomplishes peace and justice. Force or threats of BDS are as much vanity as "intellectualism".
Oh, no, you have got to be kidding me! First, Phil publicly asks us not to be vicious to Richard Witty. Witty pays Phil back by continuously disparaging Phil's integrity. Now somebody name-steals Richard Witty, so Phil destroys his own comment section so Witty won't be inconvenienced! Phil and Adam don't have what it takes. When push comes to shove, the shofart will always call them back.
Johnny Utah sounds like a real rebel. A rebel WITH a cause!