text:
Comments Closed
On January 6, the National Catholic Reporter suspended and hid all comments indefinitely, citing the proliferation of "malicious, abusive, and vile" comments.
In September 2013, the traditionalist blog, Rorate Caeli closed comments, citing overload:
Moderating so many comments is becoming close to impossible at this point -- we simply cannot keep up with an international readership commenting around the clock. ...
Unfortunately, we cannot keep comments open and not moderated. Yes, from time to time, tired and weary moderators do let some go through we wish we didn't as there were many in the queue and we didn't have time to read them all. But, for the most part, we do well keeping the more eccentric ones out (and trust us, there are many of them!)
I've heard of a trend toward eliminating comments on other websites as well. And I know of blogs with increasing readers but decreasing comments.
Is the era of expanding blog discussion winding down? Collapsing under the weight of neuroses and the inability to self-censor? Is the commenter pool getting more vile? More immoderate? Are reasonable readers more likely to pass up a discussion these days?
Many of our readers read and comment at several sites. I am interested in your impressions. What do you think is happening?
About the Author
Rita Ferrone is the author of several books about liturgy, including Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium (Paulist Press).
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This is the only site that I comment on but I have been on other online discussion boards in the past. I think that it depends on the forum, the magazine, and the moderators.
I usually read the comments of you tubers when i see something on you tube. Often you have to wade through piles of just plain insulting and bickering comments but occasionally I come across something insightful and frequently they are good for the odd chuckle.
I think commenting should be allowed but in some places it is off the charts, inappropriate, and insulting. Not so much here. I think that there are ways to limit that if you wanted, rules requiring the use of a real name, for example, discourage some of it. I cannot comment on NCR or Rorate as I did not go there too often.
And online communities can and do self correct. Consider Wikepedia and you tube. You will not find pornography, or very little on you tube, as users will flag as inapproprate and the community ends up setting its own standards. With a large enough size, you get a fairly good standards of decency and you do not require policing as the community polices itself.
The Deacon's Bench site also turned off comments a year or so ago. Here is a reflection from that site's owner, Deacon Greg Kandra, prompted by NCR's decision. Headline: "The blogosphere shouldn't be Calvary"
I tend to get myself caught up in a number of debates here at dotCom - at least, I hope they're mostly conducted on the civil level of a debate. I suspect that most of us have aggressive instincts in our daily person-to-person, face-to-face interactions, as at the workplace or in school, but we're (most of us, anyway) well-trained to suppress the uglier impulses, as there is a personal/social cost to expressing them (anything from a public reprimand to getting fired to getting socked in the snoot). but apparently the cost is less in a remote, electronic forum, and so the temptation to leave the foot off the internal brake is greater. People's behavior behind the wheel is another area where the hidden aggression tends to come through.
I, for one, have the impression that I don't have much left to say on most of the topics that come up here regularly. I've said my piece, more than once. On gay marriage, abortion, contraception, married priests, women priests, the sex abuse scandal, and a few other topics that come back periodically, everything has already been said and most discussions are repetitive. This website needs new people commenting so that their voices at least are fresh. We know what to expect from most regulars, and it becomes boring.
Even when a post tries to give a new twist to old controversies, the discussions quickly drift back to the usual arguments. When two persons argue, the others who might have wished to comment refrain and leave them the field. It's sterile.
In addition, when people find themselves unable to convince someone else of something which they care about, they become irritated and the discussion deteriorates to the point where moderation is sometimes needed.
When you are used to this site and comfortable writing comments, you tend to write the first thing that comes to your mind and react quickly with cheap one-liners that seemed witty on the spot but are only silly and distracting from the main discussion.
Regarding my own comments, I could easily delete 90% and the website would be no worse. It's too easy to comment when you're used to it.
Regarding posts, if they were more focused then it would be easier to detect and deal with off-topic comments. Often the post itself consists of some interesting but unstructured remarks about recent events, and the lack of focus of the post almost guarantees that the comments will go off into the direction of one of the classic topics and fall back into the same old, same old.
What could help make the threads richer?
I have a suggestion: limit anyone commenting to, say, a quota of 3 comments per day. How would that help? I might be more careful before hitting the "save" button if I knew I was "spending" one of my three tokens. I might spend a little bit more time composing my comments. I would avoid one-liners. Then, the discussions would not get so heated because here would be less back-and-forth. There would be more thinking between comments, and a single person or two would not occupy the whole space.
Thank you, Claire.
Internet commenters are the worst.
To solve the problems: require every would-be commenter to subscribe to the magazine. Then, when they post a comment, their real name and real email address appear along with their picture.
Clicking on the picture takes the reader to a youtube of the poster in her/his house, introducing her/himself, showing the family, the pets, etc.
Hard to be mean to someone when you see them in their setting, hear their voice, see what books are on their shelves, etc.
OK, You first Gerelyn!!
I comment on this blog and over at Crisis, where I consider it almost a vocation to beg to differ. I have subscriptions to both magazines. The comments at Commonweal are well thought out, intelligent, articulate. Often, I just sit back in awe and say nothing. Over at Crisis, not so much. I have received many an insult from three or four individuals. And yet, I do have sort of a following there.
But as I surf and look at comments, it seem to depend on the site.
Contrary to NCR and perhaps Rorate Caeli, nasty people are flagged right away here and banned if they continue. Monitoring a blog is not easy. One can easily be too tolerant or to censurious. Very hard to control so many bloggers as in the case with NCR. The largest problem with NCR is that it allows too many to post anonymously. It encourages many to act without accountability. Secondly bloggers will call you on it here if you state something without substantiating in some way. There will always be here some who are too touchy or condescending. Overall it is a much kinder place.
At Commonweal the contributors share and express their opinions. That helps build more of a community and it is more personal. I like the America blog second to Commonweal. The only one there, however, who makes it more personal is Jim Martin. Their contributors are fine. But there does not seem to be the cohesiveness of this blog.
Like democracy, as imperfect as it is, the Commonweal blog is the best we have.
The best blogs with the most constructive discussions moderate the comments. That means dedicating staff time to reading and deciding. It's called editing. The internet speeds this process up. What used to be called Letters to the Editor are no longer to the editor but to the post, and are not edited for brevity or appositness. Do the editors ever read most of them?
The disconnect between the print and the on-line edition of many publications can be quite striking. In fact, the image of some publications is dominated by it's on-line blog rather than the print edition, which presumably gets most of the editors' attention.
Equally striking are reasonable blogs with good posts that seem to collect ignorant and vicious comments. I am a reader of Juan Cole's "Informed Comment," offerings news and comment mostly about the Middle East. Cole knows a lot, translates from the foreign press, and reports on his travels. Recently and for the first time, I read some of the comments and had to ask myself if there was a disinformation campaign on against the blog because so many comments were strident and off the point.
My infrequent looks at the NCR comments makes me think the editors have done the right thing in closing them down.
Thanks for posting this, Rita. In general, I enjoy the comments on this site, and I'm happy to have gotten to know some people because of them.
I would note, however, that my last post has 36 comments on it. Only about 6 have any connection at all to what I wrote. I can't help but think that others might have commented on what I wrote if the discussion hadn't moved in such a different direction.
I also wonder if we would get more new people commenting if fewer regulars commented. I'm not saying that's a good idea, but I do wonder if we get to be a bit inside baseball here.
My infrequent looks at the NCR comments makes me think the editors have done the right thing in closing them down.
I have to say I haven't found them nearly as edifying as the comments at this site (although my sampling of the NCR comments also has been infrequent).
I suppose one of the potentially valuable things for a publication in keeping comments is to get some rough, unscientific idea of what its readers think of its content. So NCR is foregoing that benefit.
Prominent writers for prominent publications garner hundreds of comments. This recent Dana Milbank piece in the Washington Post has 886 comments at the time I write this. I'm not sure what the benefit is of wading through so many comments. Who would even read them all?
I suppose comments become part of the content, part of the product, part of the brand. Perhaps they can tarnish the brand.
"Only about 6 have any connection at all to what I wrote. I can't help but think that others might have commented on what I wrote if the discussion hadn't moved in such a different direction."
Scott, that happens oftenand you are not the first contributor to be disappointed. John Dear happpened to be in the news at that time when you were talking about Jesuits. At other times the thread changes when people feel that another angle of the story should be covered. Unlike letters to the editor the editors do not and should not control it. I understand it feels like someone is messing with one's point. But oftentimes some very interesting sidelights occur.One shortcoming of this blog and others is that the contribuors do not always keep up with developments in the Catholic world and other relevant events. A contributor should not just talk about one's interest, but what will interest others.
I find the blog more stimulating than the magazine though the magazine still has some smashing articles. Dominic and others do a good job in informing us what is in each issue. Better still why not individual blogs on most of each issue? The reason I prefer the blog is that you just cannot put all these great bloggers together in a publication. (I do get the kindle edition of the magazine) Some may deplore the plethora of subjects but it is a fitting price to pay than lose some gems to the cutting room floor.
NCR might have made a big mistake in turning off the blog. John Allen just announced that he's moving to the Boston Globe which is a big loss for NCR. A pity they can't have someone monitor the way Grant does. I also sometimes participate at Rod Dreher's blog. He also doesn't put up with rudeness.
I suspect that one of the problems with rudenes is that people haven't been taught the difference between rhetoric, especially name-calling, and defending a thesis. However, there doesn't seem to be any excuse for calling others liars and hypocrits. Maybe some of them are, but that doesn't enlighten anyone. It's only a nasty distraction.
I for one would be in favor of only allowing comments if the person was willing to write his or her full name. (Not sure how you could authenticate this but I bet there is a way.) I believe that some years ago those who administer dotcommonweal debated this point but decided to still allow people to comment using a "nom de plume." I think that was/is a mistake. With some rare exceptions, Commonweal does not print articles or letters to the editor by an anonymous author. I think the same standard should be applied here. It is much easier to write something rude, crass or outrageous when you sign your post with "Teddy Bear III" or "Pope John XXIV."
Now let me practice what I preach: Anthony Andreassi
The best blogs with the most constructive discussions moderate the comments. That means dedicating staff time to reading and deciding. It's called editing.
There now exist other ways to decide: on many websites the readers can vote comments up or down, and the best comments make it to the top in a natural manner, by distributed decisions rather than by spending staff time. It's how MOOCs (online courses) maintain forums with questions and answers about the course.
"McGrory said Allen, 48, will play "several roles of prominence. He will be a correspondent first and foremost. He will be an analyst on all things Catholic. He will also help us explore the very real possibility of launching a free-standing publication devoted to Catholicism, drawing in other correspondents and leading voices from near and far." Boston Globe.
In an age when print journalism is struggling there will be a separate publication by a secular newspaper dedicated to Catholicism. Only in Boston. The reach of Francis is everywhere. Will be interesting to watch. How will Allen cover Opus Dei now that it is in apparent hiding. Allen has not written about it for a while.
Now that I have changed the subject, Rita or someone can file a separate thread on the Globe's new venture.
I always post under the pseudonym "unagidon", because I write about insurance related issues while working for an insurance company and I wouldn't be able to do this under my own name. When Commonweal started accepting things from me for publication, they allowed me to use unagidon for those things as well.
From this admittedly biased point of view, I think that the quality of the comments rests entirely in the quality of the moderators. We have had trolls posting here under full names and it hasn't seemed to stop them. What has stopped them is the moderators. But it is, as has been pointed out, almost a full time job.
NCR used to moderate comments.
But then NCR switched and started using the Disqus format, which is unmoderated.
Under the Disqus format, you can be notified by email each time somebody comments on your comment -- you don't need to check back to see if anybody has commented on your comment, as you do at dotCommonweal.
This notification feature could heighten the sense of compeitiveness among the commentators.
I assume that NCR switched from moderating comments to using the Disqus feature because moderating comments had become more of a burden than what NCR could afford to expend on the website.
If this assumption is correct, it would seem unlikely that NCR will now go back to moderating comments at the website.
NCR used Disqus. Any blog or article about gay-related issues would generate an order of magnitude greater number of comments. One recent article on gay-related issues generated some particularly nasty exchanges. Let's just say the insults went "rectal". Besides the usual gay bashing and gay condescension, the same commenters would constantly make smug putdowns of certain contributors such as Sister Chittister, Father Dear, and Eugene Kennedy with pure ad hominem content. As for suggestions, perhaps three level control for the blog visitor. The ability to totally switch off viewing the comments. A level just for subscribers. And an "anything goes, trolls welcome" level.
Re Claire's observations @ 6:49 AM: Reader's choices do promote to the top what readers consider the most helpful/interesting/funny (it's usually not clear what the standard is) comments. As far as I can tell, the NYTimes has a couple of systems at work. First, comments do not appear automatically. Somebody at the Times reads and then posts them; the commenter is notified that they have appeared! Second, there are three currents on posts that have comments (not all do): the chronological run of comments; editors' choices; and readers' choices. My casual observation is that the first choice of editors and readers is often the same, but as you read down there can be distinctive differences depending on the subject.
I don't think the Time's permits comments on news stories. The Public Editor when she dissects a particular news story allows comments though she presumably vets them.
The effect of an editor moderating comments seems to lower the volume and reduce incendiary comments. People know their mad/bad mumblings are not going to be posted, so they don't write them.
Thomas Farrell:
There must be some moderation on Disqus.
To their credit, the moderators at NCR would not publish a recent comment I made to a post of Fr. Z:
"The Fishwrappers claim that 'culture warriors' are no longer flavor of the month. Ptui!"
I remember how my classmates, both boys and girls, in Catholic grammar school used that word in conversation, so I commented how juvenile Fr. Z is.
I tried to post two times. I don't mind, because I was only trying to get a dig in.
The commenters at NCR are usually very informative but recently there seem to be more mean comments. Even John Allen was not immune. It would not surprise me that a tipping point was the article about the death of Fr. Nugent, which interestingly was not written by one of the NCR people but came from Religion News Service.
I wonder who will benefit more: the Boston Globe or John Allen, since Boston Globe website requires $3.99 a week to view any articles on their website.
I always post under the pseudonym "unagidon", because I write about insurance related issues while working for an insurance company and I wouldn't be able to do this under my own name.
Right. I do it the other way around as a commenter: I post under my real name but never mention my employer and rarely write about my industry, and never in a way that would reflect poorly on my employer.
Helen! I'm shocked :-)
I don't think I've mentioned my employer, and I don't write to cast aspersions on the company. But I do not necessarily share the company's views on the overall industry. The problem is appearing as a spokesman when I am not.
Stanley: I think that insults must be moderated. It is not enough that you personally can pick a level that shields you from seeing them. You don't want a public venue that is under the official Commonweal umbrella and on which insults flow freely, do you?
There are two issues here: one is to deal with offensive comments, and the other is to encourage constructive discussions. Offensive comments are what led to the change of policy of NCR, Rorate Caeli, and the deacon's bench. Boring discussions don't appear to bother people much (other than me), or if they do, no one is here to speak up against them. So, offensive comments are the main issue.
People here are pretty good at maintaining, by and large, at least a varnish of good manners when addressing one another, but they are defter at using snark, insinuations, and subtle put-downs. All of us use stronger wording than we would face to face, and I think that it would be less intimidating for newcomers if we were not just polite but also gentle. Easier said than practiced, of course. When you have great inner conviction about something, it's difficult to write about it in a manner that is simultaneously firm and gentle.
We also have offensive comments towards, not specific people, but categories. For example, I was once told that bishops do not read this blog because they are constantly exposed to bishop-bashing which, to them, quickly gets tiresome. I don't really notice that kind of comments (unless it's about a category I belong to, of course) but it surely is a turnoff. Is that really what we want?
I wonder if those who read this and who do not comment would be willing to say what would induce them to pitch in?
If we could post animated gifs in comments, then this whole place would be 1000 X better.
Margaret said, "I don't think the Time's permits comments on news stories."
Lots of comments today on news stories. Christie, etc. May be a feature of the revamped website.
Scott said, "I also wonder if we would get more new people commenting if fewer regulars commented. I'm not saying that's a good idea, but I do wonder if we get to be a bit inside baseball here."
Agree. The regulars say the same thing over and over. If the editors would restrict comments to one a month, it would be less intimidating for those afraid to speak up. (And the contributors tend to open threads on the same themes over and over.)
There is indeed a Groundhog Day effect with respect to both comments and articles. I wrote a dotcommonweal driking game a long time ago; it could probably stand to be updated.
Speaking of blogs and digressions from the topic at hand: I note, as I scroll through the blog this morning, that one of the ads is for something (a game?) called "Call of Roma". The artwork is of a curvacious young female clothed in armor, although in such a way that one wonders how much protection it would actually afford, and I feel I'm on pretty solid ground in noting it would not have met the strict uniform standards of the Catholic high school I attended - in fact, I feel sure that the saintly School Sisters of St. Francis who ran the joint would send her home. I assume Commonweal does not exercise control over the content of that strip of advertisements, and some web robot matched the word "Roma" to the stuff discussed here and thought it might be relevant.
Holy-moly, if you don't have Adblock, it's your own fault.
Scott, you raise a good point about some comments that need a separate thread. I wonder what can be done about that. One option is that the person who originates the thread can jump in and redirect the conversation back onto topic.
In the latest instance however (your post on Regis) what set off the discussion was a news item that people had instant and powerful feelings about. Redirecting at that point would have felt like suppressing discussion of an important news story.
I think the best outcome might have been for someone to promptly put up a separate thread on the John Dear story, even if only a brief news update linking to the two stories, and then for Scott to invite people to continue the discussion on the new thread. Sounds complicated, but really it's not.
Commonweal bloggers tend not to post unless and until they have something to say or contribute that goes beyond their source (unless it's humor). And maybe that is fair. For this reason, I think such a post could be put up by the moderator, unsigned so it's clear that it's a newsworthy item but not analysis or comment. It would be a win-win situation.
A new discussion gets its space, and a headline to match.
The old discussion gets to proceed on its natural course.
Would this work without sacrificing any important values?
Adblock! I should use that. I avoid the America magazine website because the ads have pictures of starving children that make me feel bad.
Agree, Jim. The ads seem to be triggered by the content of the thread. E.g., when there was a thread about the "donation" of human ova, an ad appeared soliciting college women to sell their eggs. Shocking to see something on a Catholic site asking people to commit mortal sin.
People have pet interests (or obsessions), and will frequently redirect a thread to go with what they're obsessed with (I am diagnosing here, but that doesn't mean I think am immune); the direction things head in tends to be predictable. People (again, me too) should begin recognizing nutballs as nutballs and let their nutballery fade away instead of engaging with it (especially if it's nutballery that pops up predictably). Just because somebody is terribly wrong doesn't mean you have to prove their wrongness to them. A quip will always beat some belabored multi-comment argument. (and an animated gif is even better, damn it).
Let me use myself as an example. In general, I think that the ultimate goal of comments is the bon mot. I always feel kind of dirty when I make an overly earnest comment. And I feel like a fool when I let myself get swept away by a troll (i.e., by genuinely engaging with him). A week or so ago, I did just that: I entered into a horrific morass of stupid comments because somebody said something really, really, really obnoxious--and I just couldn't resist telling them off. That was stupid, because it just added energy to something that needed to die. People should avoid doing that.
And if anyone ever finds themselves writing a comment that begins "This is totally off-topic, but I just had to bring up...," they shold hit delete and slap themselves in the face. Hard.
Re: adblock. If people want that I should be more specific in noting that Adblock Plus is what you want if you're using Firefox/Waterfox. Use Adblock if you use Chrome.
And I mean it: everyone should understand by now how ads on the internet work, so no complaining about what you see. Use protection.
I agree with everybody who has said that moderating is necessary. What you are doing in a blog is hosting a public space. A public space is fragile, and needs to be protected. It's open to the public, but only remains useful if the people who take part don't spoil it.
To make an obvious analogy: If people come in and throw trash around, your public park becomes a dumping ground. If playground bullies (trolls) come in and start smirking, shouting or throwing punches, it keeps away the very people it should be serving.
From what has been said here, the Disqus system sounds like a nightmare--an attempt to get away with self-moderation, which anyone could tell you would not work. I'm sorry to say that NCR comments have always seemed to me to be mostly a food fight, posturing, and very little actual exchange of ideas. I rarely read them. And being able to write as "Anonymous" or under some fanciful title only makes it worse. The comments at Rorate Caeli, though colorful, were not useful either, and mainly rehearsed people's already deep resentments, insular worldview, and false information. (Helen, comments at NCR sometimes take 2 or 3 days to post, so yours were not necessarily withheld, just unbelievably delayed!)
Gerelyn is right that humanizing one's opponents is key to dialing down aggression, although the remedy she proposes is not one I would want to pursue! ;) And Anthony Andreassi, I am all for real names as a curb on irresponsible blogging. The cloak of anonymity usually brings out the worst. Not for people like Unagidon, who has a legitimate need and is totally reliable and trustworthy, but he is an exception. If we did change to real names, he could take a nom de plume and we'd be no worse off for it. (We all appreciate Xavier Rynne, don't we?) As noted, the editors gave him the OK and they know he is not here to make trouble. Would that we could say that about some others, who turn up under various names to snipe and bully.
I've met a lot of great people through the Commonweal comboxes, and often find the threads informative and friendly (although of course there are some useless and vexing exchanges too). Like Bill M., I think that this is one of the very few places on line where you can get a solid, yet lively and informed discussion. But I am also aware that FAR more people read than comment, which is fine and should be a reminder to all of us that whatever the strength or weakness of the discussion in the threads, there is something else going on that remains valuable. If it wasn't, others would not keep on reading.
Thanks to the moderators, most of the public space here is well maintained.
What is the ratio of commenters to readers? Is that known?
Claire @ 6:49,
What a terrible idea (to have commenters vote on comments). It passes the work of moderating on to the commenters, which is unfair. We have enough to do without constantly evaluating everything. It's wearying. Maybe it works in MOOCs, but in a blog it's purely a way to put the opinions you agree with first. Once a blog is well moderated, voting on comments for another purpose may be useful (like highlighting topics for further discussion) but not before.
The consumer today is being asked to do a million things. Find and compare products, bag your own groceries, do what the bank teller used to do to prepare for a transaction, pump your own gas, and evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. The constant demand for evaluation (products, services, tell us how we did, automated phone calls, surveys, questionnaires, you name it, it's relentless) is an exploitation of the consumer/participant's time and energy supposedly to benefit everyone but really it is all for the producer, not the consumer.
Rita: FYI
"Helen, comments at NCR sometimes take 2 or 3 days to post, so yours were not necessarily withheld, just unbelievably delayed!"
Any comments that I posted over the past two years on NCR were on the website within a few seconds of my writing. I think that considering the bad blood that Fr. Z has toward NCR, my guess is that the name Fr Z was blocked.
Rita you use the word moderator suggesting there is one for dotCwl. Who would that be? My experience is that I have to moderate my own posts, i.e., delete or try to redirect to topic or respond. Most topics don't require much attention, except to have fun. As regular readers here must have noticed it is almost impossible to write anything about U.S.-Israel relations without a major set-to with "anonymous" Jeff, and others less anonymous. Delete? Respond? Put up with sh--? Close the comments? The general thrust is to bludgeon readers into agreeing that "there's no story here, folks."
Another topic, well-worn, by now, and that seems to drive a kind of frenzy, is the clerical sex-abuse scandal and its after-life. The comments seem to fall into two categories: "thank you for another nail in the coffin," or "show me what's the problem." I read the posts and skip the comments--nothing new there. Ditto Catholic high schools and their policies on same-sex marriage. What more can be said? Indignation!!! And then what?
As Commonweal's digital editor I've been following this thread with understandable interest, and I want to thank Rita for getting the discussion started
A few thoughts. We have a stable of reliably frequent commenters. Many are knowledgeable and thoughtful; some are particularly incisive and direct. Some like to throw cold water on a discussion while others like to troll. Some we read eagerly to see what they have to say; others we tolerate or (gasp) ignore. And there are those who, deftly or not so, send the discussion off in a different direction—not all that unusual for what is ultimately a group conversation, and something that might make the conversation yet more interesting. Such are the risks and rewards of unfettered exchange.
One thing I have noticed here is how rare the ad hominem attack, the profanity, the name-calling, relative to other sites I've worked on and to many I follow. Depending on your tastes, that's either a good thing ("a testament to the seriousness and maturity of our readers") or not so good ("anathema to the spontaneity and freewheeling nature of online exchanges"). At the moment, I see it as good, if only because it makes the job of moderating comments that much easier.
And yet it raises an issue that some of you have touched on: Are we too closed, or at least, too "familiar" a community here? Do we discourage the "quieter" readers who might feel as if the conversation long ago began without them? What can we do to elicit more comments from those who come this close to hitting the "save" button but then decide not to? (Heretofore hesitant or would-be commenters should take this as the invitation that it is.) Personally, I'd like to see more and new voices here. What can we do to encourage that?
Something I don't foresee is a blanket shutting-down of the comments feature. Just as blog posts should not be compared to traditional articles, online commenting should not be compared to letters to the editor; it is a different breed (if not species) of engagement with the editorial staff and the community of readers. It lets us know what people are thinking and feeling in the moment, and sometimes an unfiltered response is the most honest response. And, comments occasionally and helpfully alert us to different ideas, related reading, new sites, new voices – while the iron is hot.
I also trust that our online readers have trained themselves somewhat to sort the wheat from the chaff, the substantive from the stupid. Just as you might skim through a hundred or more comments at The Washington Post or New York Magazine, recognizing what's worth your time and what's not, so I hope you do the same here with the mere score (or two) of comments. To that point, I encourage you also to see Abe's comment of January 9, 11:02 a.m.
Also know that Commonweal's editors are all rabid readers of the comments. Not just for the occupational purposes of moderation, but for the same reason most of you read them: to learn what others are thinking. That's the value of our commenting feature here, and something I'd hate to lose.
We'll revisit this issue if needed, and we're obviously not averse to modifying our policy as circumstances and conventions might compel us to. But for now, I'd say that the discussion generated here makes a pretty good case by itself for continuing as we have.
As a long time reader of DotCommonweal who has posted a grand total of two times in the last 6-7 years, I guess I will take up Claire's question for readers who never post.
I do find the discussion edifying a great deal, even if one can predict responses based on topics very quickly.
I'm not one to chime in on terrain that seems as well-travelled as the trenches at Verdun or something...What would get me to comment regularly would be coverage on topics that hardly ever come up, particularly issues related to Catholicism in Africa and more generally outside the US and Europe. I'm a professor of African history at Marywood, a small Catholic university in Scranton. So I realize I might be in a minority of one here!
Case in point - Catholic churches in the Central African Republic are hosting literally tens of thousands of refugees right now during the ongoing civil war. I'm a bit astonished that this seems to have not received much attention in Catholic blogland anywhere, regardless of the politics of any individual site. If there was more coverage on issues like this - or just things not being rehashed again and again - that weren't being covered elsewhere, then I'm all in.
Thank you, Dominic. This is very helpful.
Your presence as digital editor was not accompanied by fanfare, so I think many of our readers have assumed that Grant is still moderating the blog. Now it's Dominic.
This goes to your question, Peggy.
Grant did moderate it, in times past, and I was grateful to him many times for stepping in and sometimes spamming people who were saying truly objectionable things, calling names, or whatever. If tipped off, he took the offensive comment down quicker, but I don't think anyone knows the full extent of his intervention and troubleshooting behind the scenes. Up front, he appeared to be very tolerant and only to step in rarely. Dominic has continued this smooth performance.
It's a fact that there are some topics, like the Middle East or traditionalist liturgy, that elicit a very determined and hostile cadre of naysayers online. Peggy, I know what it is like to be dogged by people who don't want an exchange of views but are out to deny and nitpick and otherwise harrass or bully the writer of the post. If the goal is to have a discussion and not just keep correcting disinformation or dodging brickbats, more active moderating is needed on threads of this type, imho.
As to the other question you raise -- about topics done to death, indignation repeated ad nauseam and predictably on the same subjects -- I think this is a real problem, but I am not sure how to resolve it. I certainly don't think it's a good idea for the blog to become an echo chamber, a platform for the-two-minutes-hate, or a place where the self-righteous gather to reinforce their views. But the key seems to be in the posts. Is there a real point for discussion, or is it merely "there they [the recognized enemies of truth and justice] go again" from the start? No easy fix on that one.
Jeremy @ 12:52, bravo! I agree. Let's do it. I promise to put up a post concerning some subject in Africa next week. (Lots going on there liturgically too.)
Rita -
I realize there's issues that will be covered repeatedly on any online forum, and I wouldn't expect it any other way...I do not think there is any way to really stop that. I'm just speaking for myself about what would lead me to participate more, rather than assuming it would apply to others...
Would be delighted to see African issues, of course! Thanks...
I am going to comment – at great length unfortunately – on comments. I regularly read dotCommonweal, America, and NCRonline and comment on all three. Commonweal comments seem, on average, to be mostly free of the kind of nastiness the "trolls" regularly post at NCR. This may have something to do with the kind of publications they are.
Commonweal is a "journal", appearing on a schedule. dotCommonweal is a daily blog, but it is not a news site. NCR is a news site that also employs a group of bloggers. As such, they post new stories and blogs frequently every day- Michael Sean Winters alone posts a blog or links to stories or other blogs around ten times/day. Commonweal is almost self-consciously "intellectual" and is perceived as such - not as a news site for the "average" Catholic. NCR was regularly afflicted by nasty trolls whenever an article or blog covered the topics of 1) homosexuality, 2) the role of women, particularly discussions of women's ordination, 3)"traditional" v. contemporary liturgy, music etc. The first two topics generated the most heat - and the nastiest comments were often written by posters who choose Latin pseudonyms for some reason. Because of the volume of articles/blogs that appear every day on NCR, the heat was often very high on many threads. There are some who suspect that comments about NCR articles written by some "conservative" Catholic bloggers such as Fr. Z encourage extremists to go to NCRonline to comment on articles. I have only looked at Fr. Z's blog a couple of times - enough to know that I am not interested in what he has to say. I do know that he regularly refers to NCR by derogatory terms - National Catholic Fishwrap is only the most well-known of several he uses against NCR.
It seems likely that very few of those who make destructive comments at sites like NCR are interested in the in-depth think pieces that Commonweal is known for. You scare them off. These are not simply news stories about another outrageous act by a clueless bishop, or about another case of sexual abuse, but articles that seek to get into complex issues at some depth. This can be intimidating at times, even on the blog. Many of those of us who read Commonweal are not educated in philosophy and theology to the same degree as are many of the bloggers and even many of those who comment (such as Ann Olivier). When the comments in a thread rely heavily on high level academic knowledge and understanding of several generations of philosophers and theologians, we "ordinary" folk often fear to betray our ignorance by commenting. The "trolls" would be so far out of their depth that they wouldn't even try. Others may not wish to cross word swords with those who seem likely to be able to "out-write" them on some topics - and in general - Commonweal bloggers and commenters seem fairly consistently on the "liberal" side in both church discussions and political and/or economic discussions. I am an economist (focus on international), and am often far more "conservative" in my take on selected political issues than are most here - seeing complexities, ambiguities, and trade-offs that seem to be off the radar of most who write here. Cost-benefit analysis is never mentioned.
It does not seem that Commonweal needs to worry about the problems facing NCR right now. From some of the discussion here by editors/bloggers, it seems there may be more concern about attracting comments than about shutting them off. Page hits are important to attract advertisers (legit ones!) and good comment threads help to attract hits. I started turning to blogs and comment threads when I became discouraged in my "real" life with the lack of interest by "real" people in issues that deeply concern me, often to the point of "great angst" (the church's treatment of women, for example, and its failure to hold bishops accountable when they protect priests who abuse). Most Catholics I know are content if they like their parish and their priest and don't worry a whole lot about what the church teaches about women or even much about the universal church - not only is the Congo off their radar, the next parish is of little concern unless a new priest comes who tramples over their parish and they have to go parish shopping. I like to read both articles and the comments for insights that often have never occurred to me.
Another issue for readers who don't comment is this. Sometimes it's hard to be the lone voice against an army of extremely well-educated, well-informed, and highly intelligent people who have a different view. For example, I have not been convinced that the climate change issue is being looked at as rationally as it should be - especially from the economics point of view. However, I did not comment on that thread because I have in the past experienced a "tsunami" (sorry) of attacks because of my views on climate change. I was reluctant to write my comments/questions on the "real presence" thread a couple of months back, but finally did. And I did appreciate the positive and mostly constructive nature of the comments of those who wished to "instruct" me properly - including Fr. K. Even though the issue was not then, and is still not resolved for me personally, I was glad that I spoke up as many of the comments encouraged me to consider ideas that I had not considered before.
Sites like Commonweal, America and NCR offer thought-provoking articles, news, and discussions that are hard to find in the non-virtual world these days among "ordinary" Catholics. I guess that's pretty sad. Plus, Abe R posts online and I wouldn't miss his comments for the world!
I totally agree with NCR's decision to temporarily shut down comments. The vitriol had gotten ridiculous within the last month or so, with plenty of scatology and homophobia thrown in for bad measure, and I do mean scatology.
I refuse to read "Fr." Z, but someone who does told me that they are gloating over having shut down the NCR site comments. On of the specific commenters to that effect had been a frequent naysayer @ NCR. If there is a concerted effort to spam a site's comments, particularly on the weekend (when NCR evidently had no monitoring capability) or using misspelled words what are missed by the auto censor feature of Disquis, then it is nigh unto impossible to deal with that short of what NCR did.
The tenor of articles at dotC vs NCR is very different, attracting a different breed of commenter. The NCR commenting capability lends itself to shotgun/scattergun posting and responding. dotC seems to attract readers and posters who are willing to give thought to what they say. I used to, but rarely do anymore ... that is why my commenting here has become sporadic at best. It has to do with the esoteric nature of some of the topics or the fact that dead horses seem to come back in slightly different disguises and it's all be said before.
Or maybe not.
Anne C - *gasp* I never knew we were such soul mates :-) Please do comment more.
I refuse to read "Fr." Z, but someone who does told me that they are gloating over having shut down the NCR site comments.
So much for one, holy church, eh?
I do find that a forum like dotCommonweal provides food for spiritual reflection, sometimes even extending to an examination of conscience not least in trying to assess the way I conduct myself in interchanges. This is a virtual community, but the members are real people with real feelings and real dignity to which they're entitled. (And the world is a lot smaller than some of us think! We never know who you may meet at a conference or a class or a ball game.)
That s/b "one" of the commenters ....
PUHLEEEEEEEZ introduce a self-edit feature. Pretty PUHLEEEEEEEEEEEZ.
One more comment - on the use of real names and email. Full disclosure on a public website is not always a good idea, especially for those who have an uncommon name. Having email show to all invites all kinds of problems, from commercial spam to harrassment. I was advised a few years ago by a friend to not use my real name - at least not the name that is best known (that I had been using). He had been using his real name on a Catholic website, commenting on the "liberal" or "progressive" side of issues. He became the target of harrassment, but, more frighteningly, of a stalker, who even managed to find his home address and phone # and would call him to verbally harrass him. Unfortunately, most who google their own name will discover that there are more than two dozen sites that provide as much information as they can about almost everyone - some for free (address, phone #, age, relatives, social media presence, and sometimes even resume information). On one site, I found a photo of myself (warning to LinkedIn and Facebook users), and on another an arial view of my home, along with the address. It is difficult to get off these sites, and impossible for a few of them, such as Radaris that directs you to a daunting list of public sites where they gather their information to create listings, asking that you remove your information from those sites. They refuse to remove your "listing". They also sell information that is not provided for free - they do criminal checks, financial information checks, etc. I have little concern that NSA will waste a lot of time listening to my calls to my husband asking him to stop at the store, and find these private sellers of personal information to be far more frightening.
I do use my real name here - at least a real name - but in the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that nobody who knows me very well calls me Anne.
Agree, Jim McCrae about beating dead horses.
America sometimes has new and different topics.
I just posted a comment there: http://americamagazine.org/content/good-word/light-glittering-stars#comm...
Jeremy and Rita, there was an article at The Tablet blog a few weeks ago that was quite interesting. Perhaps others saw it, or if not, would be interested in reading it. It is not about the political situation facing Catholics and christians in Africa and elsewhere, but about the tension between euro-centric Catholicism and African (and other third world) Catholicism.
I found Dominic Preziosi's comment at 12:36 pm today quite good and am glad that others have also liked it and exprressed similar views. I don't know what it takes to be a good moderator in these situations, but I do hope that the "permissive" moderating wew have seen on this site is maintained. The few annoyers, and I'm sure I have sometimes been an annoyer, cangenerally be put up with or ignored without a great deal of trouble.
I am not especially wide-ranging on the internet, but of those blogs I do visit regularly, I think dotCommonweal has the most civilized and thoughtful comments. Even viewpoints that I disagree with, sometimes strongly, I find worth reading because they are usually well expressed and exhibit a grasp of the subject under discussion, or aspects of it, that may easily exceed my own. When very forceful language is used, it addresses other people's arguments and evidence, not their character, appearance, or personal habits. I am in the company of grown-ups.
As a result, very little moderation seems to be needed. A gentle reminder now and then, rarely a bludgeon or ax.
We have a stable of reliably frequent commenters. Many are knowledgeable and thoughtful; some are particularly incisive and direct.
Thank you Dominic! Seriously, I did not realize, until Rita mentioned it, you were moderating the blog. I like the approach you are taking.
While I agree it would be nice to have more people comment, I am reminded of something Rush Limbaugh once noted. (If you are still reading) he said that it's easy to discuss topics that will flood the phone lines, but those same topics do not generate a large number of listeners, and that's what's most important. So while more commenters are certainly welcome, I think the more relevant metric is what type of blog gets more page views, from more people. I'm curious to know how dotCommonweal fairs in that regard. I gather, pretty well, but…
Let's face it, we have a serious issue we need to deal with. When I first started commenting here, there were several fellow conservatives who commented regularly. Now, they are pretty much all gone. I miss them, and dotCommonweal should miss them more. I'm pretty much the last conservative standing. What happens should I fall?
I can't help but think that others might have commented on what I wrote if the discussion hadn't moved in such a different direction.
I'm sure that must be very frustrating, but would you ever say at a cocktail party, "No, no, no, sorry, but what this conversation is about is…"?
It seems to me that there are usually only two reasons to comment on a blog post—either to add something of significance or to disagree. If it is really good post, there are probably not all that many people who can add something of significance. Saying something like, "What a beautiful reflection!" is not adding something of significance, nor is, "I am so glad you wrote that, since is about time we real Catholics spoke out to defend Holy Mother the Church!" So I think it is quite natural for comments to tend toward the negative, although then those might be balanced out by other commenters who defend the original blog post. As a commenter rather than an original poster, I expect people who comment on my comments to disagree with me. So I think contention is to be expected and welcomed.
I think I have mentioned this before, but back in the earliest days of online forums, I belonged to Prodigy, which had "bulletin boards" for just about every topic you could imagine, and I spent most of my time on the Roman Catholic Board. There were often rather heated discussions, and periodically someone would lament how sad it was that people quarreled so. One day, someone in all seriousness said, "If you think things are bad here, you should go over and read the Pet Care Board!" (I never bothered to look at it, but apparently it is not just sex, politics, and religion that bring out people's vicious streak.)
Mirror of Justice, which I used to read pretty faithfully, has eliminated comments, and I have largely stopped reading it. Not being a lawyer, it was always a bit over my head, but the comments often helped clarify the issues, so they served a useful purpose that (if there are many other people like me) may have attracted readers.
I have been spending a great deal of my time commenting over at Strange Notions, which is a forum for Catholics "dialogue" with atheists, and the great thing for me is that I defend the Catholics when the atheists attack and the atheists when the Catholics attack, so I get to disagree with everyone! But over the years I have spent lots and lots of time here on dotCommonweal, and I would say this is the one place where I have actually learned the most, and a lot of it has been from fellow commenters. In that respect, and for a number of other reasons, dotCommonweal really is, I think, the best forum of its kind.
Welcome to Dominic Preziosi. And why does preziosi (or prezioso) sound so familiar? The only Italian words I know are from the opera, and the only thing I can find on Spotify is "Cesare, a me son troppo preziosi i momenti" from that immortal opera Catone in Utica by Giovanni Battista Ferrandini. (Is it a coincidence that this is in a thread by Rita Ferrandini?)
A thread by Rita Ferrandini??
Guess again, David Nickol!!
Dominic's surname reminds me of the line from the hymn Pange Lingua:
sanguinisque pretiosi
quem in mundi pretium
But I may be mispronouncing the name; Dominic will have to enlighten us. :)
Anne C. --
Please do comment more. So what if people disagree. We learn. Plus, if I had one criticism that I had to make about Commonweal, i'd say that it doesn't pay enough attention to economic questions. Now, with Pope Francis stirring up the economic pea patch, your economic comments would be especially valuable.
The aim of many troll commentators is to silence people, especially people on the left. The trolls have succeeded.
It has occurred to me that one of the reasons there are few malicious comments on the Commonweal blog site has to do with the fact that the reply button does not operate. It makes it is hard to maintain escalating negativity when a commenter is not directly and immediately responding to another commenter. Just a thought. (Of course it may be that Commonweal readers are just nicer, more civil people.)
By the way at first when I read the headline here "Comments Closed" I thought that Commonweal was closing comments.
Re: repetitive post topics and comment conversations being rehashed over and over again. I don't think it's a problem to have multiple posts on a topic, particularly when the topic is important. There were four or five separate posts from different posters on Home Depot's Ken Langone's complaint. I don't have an issue with that, as each post examined a different facet of the issue, and I think most of us agree that this is an important topic. Eduardo has posted several times on teachers being fired from Catholic schools after their same sex marriages have become known. Again, each post has been on a different instance or a different facet of one of the instances, and it's safe to assume that he believes this is an important issue. Some issues don't just come and go; they develop over a long time line, sometimes many years, and I think it's good to keep apace of those developments. Grant has been following Archbishop Nienstedt with periodic posts - he posts when there is a development in the story.
Granted, the conversations in the comments on the same sex marriage/Catholic teacher issue have been recycled (mea culpa, mea culpa ...), and we commenters probably can do a better job of restraining ourselves from sending in a comment that expresses a view that we've expressed before.
I think that shutting down the comment section(s) on NCR is wrong-headed for all the same reasons that we here in the US extend the protections of the First Amendment to even the most odious speech.
Why? Because that is how we help protect the individual liberty of everyone. The answer is not censorship of repugnant speech. The real solution is MORE speech, not less.
It may be the cost of doing business in the public square these days, but publications like NCR have to find the resources to police their blogs exercising the best principles of journalism and public discourse.
Call me a "conspiralist" but I would venture that it is more than likely that all the recent "malicious, abusive and vile" comments on NCR has really been a concerted cyber attack by dark forces that insist on a fasicist Catholicism. I don't think that it is a coincidence that the volume of the invective comes just at a time when there is a new moderate voice coming from the papacy. We may be witnessing the right-wing, corporatist push-back to our Jesuit pope who has put forward a rigorous critique of unbridled capitalism - the real evil afoot in the world, not abortion or homosexuality.
Catholics need to have public discussions and debate about the future of the church especially since many, if not most, of the hierarchy's pastoral leadership is compromised or nonexistent.
I love the comments section at Commonweal and have commented occasionally. Eliciting new comments or new perspectives (some have noted conservative commenters are thin on the ground here) can be difficult, some suggestions:
a) The blog post should ask for types of comments, commenters. E.g.: "How would commenters resolve this issue?" This set of comments is a response to such a question and very well focused. Or, "What do our conservative readers think about this topic?"
b) Limited posts, or limited time: C-SPAN has a mandated interval between call-ins on their programs (90 days? I can't remember). Such a limit might be good at Commonweal, probably not 90 days, but once a month? Limited time would be that posts on a topic would only be open for 24 hours or so, that might focus people.
c) Letters not comments: A well crafted letter is a gem, some posts might benefit by saying "No comments, but tune in in one week (5 days? 48 hours) where I will publish the best letters I have received in response to this post, send letters via e-mail to this address."
Jim Jenkins, I agree that more free speech is better than less free speech, but it would be cruel and inhuman to ask someone to read all the comments that come in now that NCR has gone to Disqus.
It's too bad the haters managed to shut down the comments. I would like to have agreed with Michael Sean Winters's remark this morning about Charles Krauthammer:
I'm pretty much the last conservative standing. What happens should I fall?
Folks, let's all give brave Mark a rousing ovation for his efforts as conservative maverick:
Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "conservative"?
Abe—Thanks, but I'm not sure you understood the thrust of my comment. What happens to me is irrelevant. The question is, "What kind of blog do the editors want?" I assume the goal is something more than an echo chamber.
Margaret—I don't understand your question, can you explain?
Conservative? Well, there are conservatives and conservatives. There's Ross Douthat and there's Glenn Beck. The former espouses conservative ideas and principles, and offers cogent reasons for them. The latters presses conservative ideas with a punch to the nose. Douthat deserves a reading.
There are conservatives here at dotCommonweal, not necessarily about everything but about issues they see as central to their theological, political, or cultural views. I won't name names lest they be harrassed.
And there are liberals and liberals!
I think you draw the mistaken conclusion that because certain commenters sometimes express views that are to the right of your views, they are conservative.
Do you really think that "outing" conservatives here at dotCommonweal exposes them to harassment? What does that say about those who frequent this blog?
Now you're dealing in stereotypes about my views and what is to the right of them.
"Do you really think that "outing" conservatives here at dotCommonweal exposes them to harassment?" Joke!
Well, I don't see any stereotypes being used, but at least now I get the joke! It does raise the question though. If you have conservatives on staff there (not just people who have conservative views on certain issues), wouldn't that be apparent to everyone from reading their threads and commentary? If you'd have to "out" them, it defeats the purpose, no?
It's a bit like needing to tell people to laugh when you think you've just told a joke. ;-)
The New York Times used to have the best comments sections. Readers would "like" and editors would "pick" comments. An editors pick was very positive reinforcement. They were excellent judges. Something deep inside had to click in your writing for it to be chosen. And someone had to receive and appreciate that message; cute stuff didn't make it. It was like a mini writing class. But the reading/teaching took too much editor time. They may still do some of this. But they used to a lot of it.
About repetition -- Sometimes it's a good idea, e.g., if there are new people on the blog who have obviously never heard of your side, or if someone asks you a question, you might have to repeat something you said before. And sometimes issues develop and old ideas become relevant again.
What we need is an old fashioned internet "chat room" -- where there are no texts to comment on, and the relevant topics were whatever the group might be interested in. But that kind of thing takes monitoring too.
For example, I have not been convinced that the climate change issue is being looked at as rationally as it should be - especially from the economics point of view. However, I did not comment on that thread because I have in the past experienced a "tsunami" (sorry) of attacks because of my views on climate change.
I wish you did. On that thread we've focused almost exclusively on the physics and climatology, not at all on the economics.
"The aim of many troll commentators is to silence people, especially people on the left. The trolls have succeeded."
This is especially true of the topics of gayness and querying of witch hunt thinking on sexuality in general. The trolls discovered that the easiest way to skew debate on these topics was to project theories about the sexual proclivities of contributors, and on gay issues to multiply scatological references ad nauseam, as happened at NCR (as well as on right wing Catholic sites, with the blessing of the blog hosts).
What should be done is simply to demand that people give their real names and real email addresses.
This is especially true of the topics of gayness and querying of witch hunt thinking on sexuality in general. The trolls discovered that the easiest way to skew debate on these topics was to project theories about the sexual proclivities of contributors, and on gay issues to multiply scatological references ad nauseam, as happened at NCR (as well as on right wing Catholic sites, with the blessing of the blog hosts). What should be done is simply to demand that people give their real names and real email addresses.
I've read that conservatives who contributed financially a few years ago to the proposition in California that prohibited gay marriage (since overturned) were subjected to organized harassment by pro-gay-marriage groups, when the donors' names were made public in accordance with transparency laws.
I've read, too, that persons who contribute in some way to building abortion clnics, e.g. the construction general contractor, have been picketed in front of their homes by anti-abortion groups. I would consider that a form of harassment as well.
It seems that there are many venues, both actual and virtual, in which organized ideological groups of any and all stripes can attack their enemies. What rules of civil engagement should prevail? I know that I would feel freer to speak up and assert my views if I don't need to worry much about facing personal attacks, nastygrams to my boss, phone calls on my personal phone, and all the other harassing tactics used to silence and bully people in the public square. In my opinion, these considerations justify a nom de plume. Sometimes the stakes aren't trivial.
I agree, Jim Pauwels, that dogmatic liberals are dab hands at harassment as well. To tar all opponents of gay marriage as bigots, and to diagnose people as closeted self-hating gays, are tactics unworthy of civilized debate, and damaging to the causes in which they are used.
I think those who resort to pseudonymity are not contributing to creating a culture of open discussion and are leaving the brave minority who give their real names more exposed to the nasty bullying you mention.
I do think it would help to require commenters to be subscribers even without publishing addresses.
I think an important distinction between say the Chicago Tribune and the groups NCR, Commonweal and Rorate Caeli is that these latter have religious contexts. So in that regard, nasty comments can act as an anti-witness against the faith that the journal was founded to represent.
And don't forget, one of the tools of the internet commenting brigade is the Poe--who pretends to be more religious than thou and in Catholic circles this usually involves someone representing themselves as more pious than, well, any of the Piuses. The idea is to state something outlandish from the alleged perspecive of this super religoius person and this either results in a derail of the conversation or just creating an antiwitness to the faith that makes it highly unattractive.


text:
In ANT. Override properties. Optional Execution in Single Target I noticed this at the top of the answer:
If you find this tip useful, and use it, please give credit in your code to Canova, email <email address>
The user posted his email address where indicated above.
Should this content be removed from the answer, should the answer be flagged for moderator attention, or should it be left as is?

subset: commoncrawl


text: BLUE MOON BEADS Royal Boheme. Exotic and spirited this is a sophisticated collection of jewelry making essentials. Natural stones; woven accents and rich metals reflect the global and exotic influences throughout this collection. Choose from a luxurious assortment of pendants; colorful beads; connectors and unusual stones and charms to create glamorous eccentric accessories that will be uniquely you! This package contains six sets of clasps. Shape; size and finish varies by design. Imported.


text:
SUNRISE, Fla. – Florida Panthers Executive VP/General Manager Dale Tallon announced today that the club has recalled F Quinton Howden from the San Antonio Rampage (AHL).
Howden, 21, earns his second recall of the season. Howden made his NHL debut Jan. 26 against Philadelphia notching one shot on goal and 9:29 TOI for the Panthers. Howden has played 57 games in his first professional season for San Antonio recording 30 points (13-17-30) with 24 PIMs.
The Oakbank, Manitoba native was selected by Florida in the first round (25th overall) of the 2010 NHL Entry Draft.
Florida visits the Carolina Hurricanes tonight at 7 p.m. The game can be seen live on FOX Sports Florida and heard on Sports Radio 560 WQAM.


text:
WEIRTON - For almost a decade, James Keller lived in the shadow of an "invisible bully," an undiagnosed medical condition that left him so dizzy and disoriented he stumbled into walls. Other times, he would experience seizures and blackouts that left doctors mystified. He worried about losing control during a seizure or falling and injuring himself or others.
"I was 22 when I started getting numbness in my hands and face," said Keller. "Everyone thought maybe I had vertigo. After about six months (of symptoms), I passed out for the first time."
Before it was all said and done, seizures, followed by blackouts or extreme fatigue, would plague Keller as many as four times a day. The grogginess following the seizures was so extreme, Keller had difficulty sitting upright.
"My head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds," he said. "And it was happening more and more."
Initially diagnosed with vertigo, the medications meant to treat him exacerbated his condition. He was referred to a psychologist, receiving a new and different diagnosis: an unspecified mental illness. Along with the new diagnosis, he received another set of medications that were supposed to treat his illness, but made him feel even dizzier and off-balance.
Keller began using a cane in an attempt to help his balance, because his dizziness was so extreme it was difficult to walk. The cane would be his constant companion for four years. Although he used a cane, Keller appeared outwardly healthy, and acquaintances began to speculate he was a hypochondriac or faking illness for attention.
"Everyone thought I was playing," he said. "They called me a faker. I had the cane, and, at family functions, at work, everyone would smile at you, but they would whisper behind your back. People just couldn't see that I had a problem. I called it the invisible bully - you just didn't know when it was going to come up and punch you in the face. I had to fight so hard just to be normal. I knew what they thought. People would look me in the face and smile, but I knew, when I walked away, they were calling me a liar and a faker. No one believed me, and my fear and anger just grew."
Keller even found understanding hard to find in his own family. He described a grocery shopping trip with his sister during which he had a seizure.
"It was snowing," he remembered. "We were getting along great, and I was helping her put groceries in the trunk. Then I woke up in an ambulance. I had had a seizure. That's when she realized what was going on with me, the severity of it."
Keller began withdrawing, suffering from depression and self-imposed isolation, wondering if he would ever discover what was wrong with him. He struggled to get through each day and continue working, although he frequently experienced dizzy spells and seizures at work. Worried about Keller's safety, his father encouraged him to apply for Social Security disability benefits, but he clung to the normality of work.
"My boss would let me go back into another room, and they would let me lie down and rest for a while, sleep it off," he said, noting he would would sometimes be at work for 80 hours or more, trying to get a 40-hour week in. "I had to fake it to make it."
As his condition worsened, his ability to work a full week eroded. Then, he had a seizure and fell into a co-worker, injuring him.
"The company couldn't keep me around anymore - I was a liability," he said. "It was one of the saddest days of my life. I had always said I wouldn't let this stop me, and then it cost me my job. I looked at my father and said, 'I guess I'm going to have to sign up now.' That was the end of my employment. It was a very difficult day, a low day."
He relied on the emotional support of his father and stepmother, Larry Keller and Tawney Keller.
"I had my father. He was one person who understood and cared. He took me to doctor's appointments, and he told me I had to be prepared for people - he said, 'you don't look like you're sick, and people are talking, so you have to have a thick skin,'" said Keller. "We were at an appointment, and the doctor told me this condition was going to end my life, and I just sat there. I was at the point where I didn't care. As far as I was concerned, I just wanted it over with."
At that point, Keller said his fear, frustration, anger and depression made him "miserable to be around. I didn't understand myself. I was scared. Every day, I got up, 'am I going to fall into traffic today?'"
He turned to self-medicating through alcohol.
"I was drinking heavily," he said. "I felt it didn't change the way I saw the world, because it was 24 hours a day of the same dizziness, same imbalance. It was never worse than what I had already."
His marriage dissolved under the pressures of his condition and alcohol abuse, and Keller turned to music to express what he was going through.
"I knew I couldn't continue to lash out at people," he said. "I couldn't put myself and my family in that situation because I was upset because I couldn't get people to understand."
A long-time music lover, Keller began writing songs about his frustration, depression and fear. He began performing as a singer, and his involvement in music has evolved into the band Descendsion.
"It was about dealing with this, about answering questions and making people see the real me," said Keller. "When I'm singing on stage, they have to listen to me. It was something to grab a hold of - it was a lifeline."
After another warning by his doctors his condition could be fatal, a conversation with his father about how he might be remembered made him realize he wanted to be remembered as someone who helped others.
"I thought, 'if this takes me today, what will other people remember?' It wasn't just a piece of advice, it became a way of life," he said. "I did a lot of waking up that day. I searched for God in a way I never had before. I realized everything happens for a reason. I had to go through the things I did so I could stand on the stage I am on. I had to learn to reject hate and to open my heart, learn how to love others regardless of what they did. There was a moment where I had to ask the question, 'where will you go? Heaven or hell?' And the road I was on, I was going to hell. Asking where God had been during this whole business and realizing he had been with me the entire time - if he hadn't been with me, I wouldn't be here."
He began to believe he could make a difference through music, and started working with those suffering from drug addiction and local drug abuse awareness and support groups with Dare to Prevent.
"A lot of people have it worse, and there are things I can do to stand together and help them deal with it," he said.
Almost as if his spiritual epiphany triggered a medical one, Keller was diagnosed with epilepsy after a brain-imaging test, eight years after his first seizure. Although he was still experiencing seizures and dizziness, Keller finally had the diagnosis for which he had been searching. However, he hesitated to speak about it openly. During performances, he frequently wore shades - not because it was part of his "look," but because flashing lights could trigger a seizure.
His neurologist recommended a pacemaker-like device for the brain, Vagus Nerve Stimulation Therapy, which would help decrease the frequency and intensity of his seizures. When Keller first learned of VNS, he was on the fence - the device required major surgery, but his father and his girlfriend, Litizia Pulice, encouraged him to go through with it.
"She came into my life a few years ago, and she gives me a lot of good advice," he said. "I asked her - one day we were just watching a movie - and I asked her about it, said I didn't know. She said 'I think you should do it,' and started crying. She didn't want anything to happen to me. I was risking everything, but I said, 'I'm doing this and we will deal with the consequences.'"
Nine years after first experiencing a seizure, Keller went through the surgery on March 8, 2011. During the surgery, a 1-ounce device was implanted in the left side of his chest, and a small wire runs under his skin and is attached to a nerve in his neck. The device delivers intermittently-pulsed signals to the vagus nerve, which then activates various areas of the brain. Using an external adjustment system, his doctors program the stimulation duration, frequency and intensity. Treatment is automatically delivered at regular intervals all day, every day.
The frequency of his seizures have decreased to approximately three times a week, and, when he feels a seizure coming on, he can use a magnet device to give himself an immediate extra dose of stimulation, stopping a seizure or reducing its intensity. Instead of hours of dehabilitating disorientation, he now can think clearly after only 10 or 15 minutes.
Despite an expected lengthy recovery, within three weeks, Keller was opening for the Bullet Boys at Hard Rock Cafe in Pittsburgh. He experiences hoarseness following stimulation, which concerns him as a performer, but he said the benefits outweigh the side effects.
Keller has discarded his cane.
"I feel like a new person," he said. "It has been a blessing."
He now wants to reach out to those with epilepsy and share his story in the hopes that others dealing with similar symptoms will recognize themselves and possibly be diagnosed quickly.
"If you're dealing with epilepsy - that invisible bully, the seizures - get to a neurologist and talk about VNS therapy, because it will change your life, and can even save it," he said.
"I'm taking a chance doing this. People have used my health against me. They've called me 'seizure boy' or 'brain damaged.' It hurts, but I'm stronger than those people who think I'm weak. I'm strong enough to reach to those people who are like me, but maybe feel like they aren't strong enough. I realized there are people who might be going through what I went through, and it's about finding those people.
"For the first time, I'm coming out and talking about how bad it was and how good it can be. It has changed my life. People need to know there are things they can do. You can live life and love life. Right now, I have the quality of life I've always wanted.
"If you're dealing with seizures, and you don't feel like anyone will believe you, look me up. I care. I will believe you."
He continues to reach out to the community, and since his surgery, he has a renewed commitment to volunteer service.
"Before, someone would give an idea, and I would run with it, but I didn't do the leg work," he said. "Now I can do it myself."
He recently became involved with Buddy Walk and said he plans to attend and participate in the Oct. 5 event.
"Those people are awesome," he said.
Keller and Descendsion will be the headline act at the "Heroes and Angels" benefit concert he is planning to fund raise for those affected by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. The concert will be held at 7 p.m. Jan. 12 at Krazy 'Bout Sportz on Weir Avenue. It will include several local acts and a prize drawing.
"We have to make as much money as possible to send to these families," he said. "They've got a long road ahead of them. One hundred percent - every penny raised - is going to Connecticut."
No longer worried about being struck low by a seizure, Keller said the sky is the limit for his ambitions, which include continued volunteer service and performing all over the world.
"I see myself performing all over the world," he said. "I see myself using the gifts God gave me to help other people. My pipe dream is to tour the world. It might be a pipe dream, but where I'm standing now - there was a time when everyone said this was a pipe dream, and now it is my reality."
(Wallace-Minger can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.com.)


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5 Huge Movies That Stole Their Plot from Other Hit Films
Hollywood is notorious for remaking popular films in its never-ending quest for money. However, there are a finite number of stories that can possibly be told, and after a century of moviemaking, they're bound to start repeating themselves completely by accident. As we've previously discussed, this happens way more often than you'd think, in bizarrely unexpected ways.
#5. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Is The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Warner Bros.
The 19th James Bond movie and the third Batman movie (or seventh, or ninth, depending on when you start counting) share more than the fact that they're both about handsome British actors grabbing people by the shoulders and shouting at them.
Sure, there's the obvious fact that both are about a suave, attractive action hero who owns an arsenal of expensive gadgets, likes to say his own name, and must overcome his physical limitations so that he can stop a terrorist kingpin from setting off a nuke in a major city, but that's lots of movies -- it's when you go scene by scene that you realize The Dark Knight Rises is The World Is Not Enough as told with rubber costumes.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
Behind that mask, Bane is making the exact same face as the other three.
Both films open with a prologue that features a midair action sequence in which the villain's henchmen willingly sacrifice themselves to rescue their master.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
Then we cut to a scene where the hero's elderly British caretaker moodily reminds the hero that he's getting too old for the hero business.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
"I'm getting too old for this shite."
After that, there's a scene in a poorly lit doctor's office wherein a doctor points at some X-rays to inform the hero that his body is falling apart after years of leaping off buildings and punching supervillains into submission, which triggers a somber midlife identity crisis.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
They both also sex the shit out of their physician.
The hero then meets a beautiful no-nonsense brunette businesswoman with a vaguely defined European accent. Nudity immediately commences.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
But suddenly, another beautiful no-nonsense brunette woman appears. She doesn't serve any purpose to the story except to step in as the hero's replacement love interest after the other woman is disqualified from this position for reasons that will soon become clear.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
The face of a man who just heard Denise Richards deliver dialogue.
Meanwhile, the villain from the opening action scene reappears -- a powerful, bald terrorist leader who talks funny and is impervious to pain. The hero is forced to once again don his hero shoes to deal with this destructive madman and pays a visit to his personal quartermaster, who describes to the audience all of the gadgets that will eventually be used in the film.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
Luckily, The Dark Knight Rises was able to condense two old white men into Morgan Freeman.
The hero pursues the villain to his secret underground lair for a one-on-one showdown -- Batman races around the streets of Gotham in a rocket-powered motorcycle, and Bond races around the streets of London in a rocket-powered ... um, boat. Jesus, that movie is stupid.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
How stupid? This stupid.
Anyway, the villain is able to exploit the hero's failing body in order to gain the upper hand, defeating the hero and stealing a nuclear bomb in the process.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
"Don't you take that nuclear bomb! Don't you do it!"
Physically and morally crippled, the hero has to fight even harder to regain his strength and confront the bald terrorist again, only to discover that the bald terrorist is merely a hired goon working for the true villain -- the no-nonsense, vaguely European businesswoman he had sex with earlier! She subdues the hero and forces him to sit through a detailed monologue about how she plans to carry on her father's legacy, which somehow involves blanketing an entire city in a cloud of nuclear murder.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
"But ... we made sex!"
The hero miraculously escapes, there is another chase scene in which the bad guys crash and die in their own getaway vehicle, and the bomb is detonated safely out of harm's way. In the confusion, the hero absconds with the emergency replacement girlfriend who was clumsily introduced in the film's second act and retreats to a secret vacation spot to be spied on by his elderly British caretaker.
Warner Bros., Eon Productions/MGM
Because callously faked death boning is the best kind of boning there is.
#4. I, Robot (2004) Is Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
20th Century Fox
Even though I, Robot is an action/sci-fi Will Smith explosion-fest and Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a comedy starring popular cartoon characters from the past century, both are more or less the same movie if you use the words "robot" and "toon" interchangeably. One stars a wisecracking street-smart detective who is caught up in a murder mystery that thrusts him unwillingly into a world of cartoon characters and contemporary brand recognition. The other is Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
20th Century Fox, Walt Disney
They also feature a weird emphasis on shoes.
Both movies center on a cynical detective who harbors a deep-seated prejudice against a local community of sentient special effects because he blames them for a past tragedy in his life.
20th Century Fox, Walt Disney
For Hoskins, his brother's death. For Smith, Wild Wild West.
When a lovable member of this community is suspected of murdering a human being, the hard-boiled, disillusioned detective initially believes the toon/robot is guilty, because that's how racism works. He begins his investigation by interviewing a slimy CEO in a scene that involves him drinking liquor from a tiny cup while wearing a period-appropriate hat.
20th Century Fox, Walt Disney
"Keep 'em coming. I've got to pretend to be happy Shia LaBeouf survives the last act."
Then, at the insistence of an alluring female sidekick, the detective begrudgingly accepts that the toon/robot is innocent and agrees to solve the mystery. He learns that the victim left behind a note no one can understand (a cryptic dream hidden in the memory of a robot, and a mysterious "blank" piece of paper) that, we find out later, holds the key to a convoluted scheme:
20th Century Fox, Walt Disney
The detective then quickly finds himself in a high-speed chase behind the wheel of a car that drives itself, a feature he considers extremely annoying rather than life-changing and incredible. The pursuit takes him directly into the heart of the community he so despises -- in Roger Rabbit, it's Toontown, whereas in I, Robot, it's future Detroit (where there is an astonishing lack of RoboCop).
20th Century Fox, Walt Disney
You can tell it's an alternate future because citizens have jobs.
Here, the detective finally cracks the case -- the real killer is a bombastically evil toon/robot who has been masquerading as a paragon of the human justice system in order to enact some diabolical scheme.
20th Century Fox, Walt Disney
They shot Christopher Lloyd in the face with a cannon loaded with cocaine to achieve the eye effect.
After defeating waves of henchmen, the hero dispatches the villain by exposing it to a magical substance that exists solely for the purpose of the villain's destruction, in an ending that curiously validates and reinforces the detective's bigotry -- the reviled community of metahumans was responsible for both his personal anguish and the murder at the center of the story all along. It just wasn't the specific lovable metahuman who was initially accused of the crime. So the moral of the story is, if you're harboring a deep sense of mistrust and resentment for an entire community, chances are your suspicions are absolutely correct.
#3. Thor (2011) Is The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Marvel Studios
In a pop adaptation of a famous mythological story, the relationship between two princes becomes strained when their kingly father pits them against each other for his attention. After a monumental cock-up, the favored brother goes into exile among an alien culture, where he falls in love with a beautiful woman. Because fate is as cruel as it is predictable, he is eventually forced to protect his adopted people from the wrath of his heartbroken, embittered brother.
Clearly, that's the plot of Thor, but you might be surprised to learn that it is also the exact same story told in 1998's The Prince of Egypt (and, to a lesser degree, the Bible).
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
"If only there were some closer religious text we could have based Thor on ..."
Both movies begin with a cataclysmic race war and quickly shift focus to two young, mischievous princes who enjoy recklessly goofing off in ways that cause violent, expensive damage to their father's kingdom. Nevertheless, one brother is clearly the king's favorite, and his jealous, more level-headed sibling constantly shoulders the blame for his brother's bullshit.
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
This doesn't even factor in the fabulous hair envy.
The two princes grow up, at which point one of the brothers discovers that he's actually adopted -- he was born to his father's cultural enemies, and the royal family took pity on him as a baby and raised him as their own, because for some reason no one foresaw that becoming a problem later on.
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
Pictured: Becoming a problem later on.
The hero (the favored brother) makes a hubris-laden mistake that gets him exiled from the kingdom. Outside the gates of his homeland, he meets a beautiful woman and a kindly old man. Through a series of fish-out-of-water hijinks, he learns to stop thinking like an inverted asshole and understand the plight of the common people.
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
"This whole time I've been figuratively fucking others, when I could have been literally fucking you. Thank you."
Along the way, the hero takes possession of a blunt object that can do fucking magic.
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
The hammer, Mjolnir, and the staff, Chuck.
When he returns home, he learns that his father is dead/comatose, and in his absence, his less-favored brother has risen to the throne. Also, his brother has become a total shithead, driven by an irrational desire to prove his worth to a father who is no longer in any position to care.
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
"How is your headdress so white with that much crap is between your ears?"
The hero tries to reconcile with his brother, but only on the condition that his brother not murder all of his newfound friends. Unfortunately, his brother tells him to go jog down the fucking street with that nonsense, and a kingdom-demolishing battle of wills ensues.
Marvel Studios, DreamWorks Animation
And as usual with Viking/Middle Eastern fisticuffs, the dude with the beard prevails.
The hero is finally able to deliver a spirit-crushing haymaker that shatters his brother's resolve, and he gives up. Granted, in Thor it involves a shame speech from their newly awakened father, whereas in The Prince of Egypt it involves the wholesale murder of thousands of children. But the end result is the same -- the hero is free to protect his people, and his brother is forever a dick.


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A balanced prime of order n is a prime number that is equal to the arithmetic mean of the nearest n primes above and below.
For example, 5 is a balanced prime in order 1 because it is the average of the prime before it (3) and the prime after it (7).
There is a highest order a prime could be balanced in: the number of primes that are less than it. The question of whether 5, the 3rd prime, is balanced in order 3 is undefined. So the kth prime could be said to be maximally balanced if it's balanced in order k-1; i.e. if you take all the primes less than a prime p, and that many primes greater than it, and average them, you get p again.
The first 500 primes are each less than the average of the primes surrounding them, and the difference tends to increase, but it doesn't strictly increase. So my guess would be that no maximally balanced prime exists, but I doubt there's a quick proof. Am I wrong?


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Dear all.
You may well have noticed that we have recently had a reorganise of the Football Manager Live forums.
Essentially this change was to seperate the discussion from current managers away from the General Questions area. This was done as we felt that questions from people new to the game were being swamped by the many threads from our active managers. We feel it's important that new people have their own area where they can ask questions about Football Manager Live and get more information about the game without feeling intimidated by the in depth discussion between active managers.
We've also added the Which Gameworld Should I Join? forum as a specific area for current managers to be able to talk about their gameworld (and why the should join it!) to new subsribers.
We're in the process of digging through the General Questions forum and moving the threads into the appropriate new section. Please be patient with us in the meantime.
Please note, if you are a current subscriber you will need to make sure you are logged into these forums using the same SEGA Pass details as your subscription in order to see the private subscriber areas.
The Football Manager Live Team


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Welcome to the NYU community, and congratulations to the freshman class of 2020 as well as new transfer and visiting students for 2016!
To keep you and your parents prepared and on track for a smooth arrival at NYU New York, we've created Next Stop NYU. The information on these pages provides you with what you need to know and the steps you need to take to prepare for your arrival on campus.
You can also expect to receive separate communications this summer from your school about a host of items, including academic advisement and course registration.
For those students beginning their studies at one of our global academic centers or admitted into the Fall in New York program, please refer to the bottom of the Next Stop NYU homepage for links to more detailed information about your campus outside of New York.
I hope these communications help ease your transition to NYU and turn any anxiety you may feel about beginning your studies at NYU into pure anticipation and excitement. Note that we will be hosting a number of summer New Student Send-Off Events and may be visiting a city near you. We'd love for you to sign up and attend.
I wish you and your family a terrific summer and look forward to greeting you on campus in late August!


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Jenkins: Yes, Let's 'Bail In' Depositors
One cheer for the Cyprus solution to banks that are 'too big to fail.'
Politicians today face many challenges that are unrewarding to tackle. No wonder many prefer to fulminate about too big to fail. Too big to fail, or TBTF, is a problem about which it is safe to fulminate, since neither politicians nor the public understand anything about it, and even less what to do about it.
Hence Sen. Carl Levin and others in Congress tirelessly flogging a trivial J.P. Morgan JPM -0.20 % "whale" scandal. Hence the bizarre Eric Holder, our attorney general, suggesting in congressional testimony that he went easy on criminal prosecution of too-big-to-fail banks—and instead of being pilloried for his dereliction, being applauded for providing a new opportunity to deplore too-big-to-fail banks.
Of course, Mr. Holder was engaged in a form of fig leavery. In truth, big companies of any kind are seldom prosecuted. It has nothing to do with TBTF. Since the Arthur Andersen fiasco, it simply hasn't been politically viable to risk destroying a large business, putting thousands out of work, to win a criminal conviction that a court later would likely throw out.
In any case, TBTF hardly stops Mr. Holder from bringing criminal charges against individual bankers. But the deterrent there is the same—judges and juries simply haven't been supportive of attempts to stretch criminal law to cover greedy or foolish or unpopular behavior by business people.
In fact, it would be useful to understand all the things the too-big-to-fail problem is not.
TBTF doesn't prevent the government from seizing even very large financial institutions, throwing out managements, wiping out shareholders: It did so in the case of Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Washington Mutual WMIH -0.41 % and others.
TBTF isn't somehow a special problem in a general financial crisis. In a general crisis, it doesn't matter whether banks are big or small, government isn't going to let them fail for want of liquidity. Indeed, it would be idiotic to do so. In the last crisis, taxpayers made a nice business out of relieving a bank panic that arose, circularly, from fear that taxpayers would not act to relieve a bank panic.
So what's the real TBTF problem? It resides in the government-provided incentives for banks to get inefficiently big in the first place. Put simply, in the absence of such incentives, the risk-averse funding that banks thrive on wouldn't be available to allow banks to create sprawling credit portfolios impossible for regulators or investors to assess.
Let it be said that there is no cheaper form of grace today than engaging in populist tirades against the big banks. That's why so many privileged Wall Streeters practice the art loudly. But if you sense between the lines a certain attachment of big government to big banks, which have only gotten bigger since the financial crisis, you aren't wrong. Modern governments, as long as they're assuming the risks of the financial system, find it convenient to have those risks concentrated in a few very large, very handy institutions.
A lean, clean solution, if anyone were really interested, would be to require banks to hold Treasury paper against their insured deposits. Disturbed would be the certainty of uninsured creditors that they would be bailed out to minimize the cost of bailing out insured depositors. Yes, the implications would be profound. Checking-account customers might have to begin paying for the services they consume rather than being a hidden beneficiary of the rents from deposit insurance. This is a feature not a bug.
Those who prefer chimerical solutions like higher capital requirements maintain that the business of banks would survive forcing banks to rely more on equity than debt to finance their activities. If so, then why assume equity markets wouldn't throw up new business models to finance small businesses and credit-worthy consumers if government-insured deposits were no longer available at all to underwrite such risks?
Everyone keeps saying a safer financial system would rely more on equity, less on debt. No more expeditious way exists than by reforming deposit insurance.
Which brings us to the crisis du jour. From afar, it would be easy to underestimate how thoroughly depositors in Spain and Italy understand that they are inside the magic circle of "core Europe" and have nothing to fear from the Cyprus precedent, in which insured bank depositors might be asked partly to pay for their own bailout. Call it an astute cynicism about which euro countries are worth saving and which aren't. Europe-wide bank runs aren't in the offing.
Still, Europeans are living dangerously. The time to worry about moral hazard is between financial crises, when policy makers have an opportunity to change the incentives of the financial system. No solution at all is teaching the markets to rely on government guarantees and then yanking those guarantees away in a crisis.
Unfortunately, the warning is relevant to the United States. Dodd-Frank not only didn't fix too big to fail. As time may show, the law may also have made it harder to respond rationally to the next financial crisis.


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ScanAid™ Scanner Service Kit- Help yourself and save
ScanAid™ is a factory-authorized consumables kit complete with instructions and cleaning supplies and can be purchased from your reseller or at www.buyfcpa.com. The ScanAid™ kit provides handy replacements for consumables that wear naturally during normal use. And it serves as an indispensable preventative maintenance kit that helps improve performance, reduce service costs, and keep your scanner running at peak performance.