http://www.myeverydayshop.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/caramba-suck-ft.jpg

Yum.

Thanks for letting us know! We looked into it and it should be fixed soon. Please let us know if you’re still having trouble over the weekend.

However, can you please do something about the template so it doesn’t make the text default to size TINY. I have my browser set up with a suitable text size, and when someone sets a CSS font size of 10px or less, it makes it extremely difficult to read.

I personally feel setting a specific text size on a web page is quite poor practice.

At least perhaps provide one of those widgets so we can select larger text (or, to be more precise, non-tiny text).

P.S. I’ve commented here before, but I absolutely love this site and look forward to reading it!

Consider the Shakesville post you linked. The first five replies are completely unproductive by any reasonable standard – they contribute nothing to the conversation, being simple variations on unconditional support for McEwan’s post. In fact, that entire comment thread consists of:

1. Unbridled adoration, and
2. Quibbles or asides about minor details.

So is McEwan right or wrong? Obviously there is another side to the issues she discusses – McEwan is explicitly arguing against some existing ideas. But we do not see it in the comment thread on her post. No fruitful debate had been sparked there.

That is the effect of systematically suppressing comments one disagrees with. Such a practice is unbecoming to any blog devoted to social science, or, indeed, discussion of any kind.

Same with feminist sites, or any similar group. It’s funny, because not so long ago I shared your concern about objectivity and discussions on blogs, but then I realized that objectivity is a hard thing to come by, and a lot of the time those promoting it don’t realize that.

I think that the “entire rest of the world” argument, to use McEwan’s phrase, is a poor justification for deleting every “unproductive” comment. (I would love to hear your thoughts on what constitutes “unproductive” in this sense.) The world is not so easily reduced to this black-and-white picture of the brave blogger challenging social norms and the evil kyriarchy-loving trolls tearing him or her down. No one has the monopoly on being “alternative,” and being “alternative” in no way guarantees that one is right in the first place. Feminists, vegans, objectivists, otherkin, militia members, conspiracy theorists and countless others are all challenging social norms in some way. But even though their various ideas may challenge social norms, they do not automatically earn special immunity from criticism and dissent – just as the wide acceptance of an idea does not automatically make it valid and truthful.

Deleting abusive comments frees up comment threads from offensive clutter. Selectively deleting “unproductive” comments creates an “us vs. them” mentality, shuts out scrutiny of the author’s premises, and presents the illusion that only the smallest details of the author’s argument are negotiable, and the rest is solid truth.

Scratch the surface of any comment policy prohibiting “unproductive” comments and you will find a tendency to moderate only those “unproductive” comments which disagree with the main thrust of the blog. I believe this is not conducive to fruitful discourse.

Anytime an alternative message is presented (as a lot of sociological analysis is — not all, mind you) it’s challenging social norms. If anything, most of society can be seen as the “feel-good echo chamger” or “thought police” (a favourite slur of those who dislike feminism), not those challenging people to see things in a different light.

That’s why I’m wary of totally open comments. They can be instructive sometimes, but we have the WHOLE REST OF SOCIETY to say the expected, accepted response. We already know what that is, a lot of the time. That’s why we don’t need to hear it here too.

If you aren’t blogging from the WordPress.com control panel (in which case you can edit your profile to choose a picture), and your WordPress install is local, you can go to gravatar.com and upload the profile picture that will go with your email address when you comment on weblogs that support Gravatar.

As for myself, my personal WordPress blog uses identicon to display something pretty for people without a defined gravatar, even if it’s only a randomly generated abstract drawing.