The Man on the Door.

Posted by Pointman on August 11, 2017 · 28 Comments 

The rules for commenting here are blindingly simple and I don’t think particularly demanding. You don’t have to agree with anything I’ve written nor with anything another commenter has contributed to the discussion under the article, but whatever you wish to say has to conform to three basic rules.

It must be polite, it must be lucid and it must be honest. If it’s also expressed in a witty way, that’s a big plus point. I’m not militant about every comment having to be relevant to the article except when someone is persistently trying to hijack the blog for their own obsessive purpose.

Those are exactly the same rules of behaviour you’d expect if you were having a face to face discussion with a group of friends about some topic that was of mutual interest to you all. It’s a conversation conforming to the usual social norms. If a stranger turns up and after horning his way into the conversation, is offensive, aggressive, irrational and making up facts to support whatever inane line of argument they’re pushing, pretty soon some sort of argument will break out.

That analogy is fairly close except that in a blog context the stranger has to get past the equivalent of door security at a private club to join the conversation. That would be me, and that’s what I’d like to talk about in this piece.

A doorman’s job involves making quick accurate judgements about people turning up and wanting to gain entrance. If they’re too drunk, drugged up, crazy, over aggressive or look like the type who’re just out for a fight – they don’t get through the door. Over and above the rules, the management still always reserves the right to refuse entry.

The decision I make to let someone in or not is guided by similar principles, also their debut comment judged against the usual rules, a few checks I run on all strangers and what my gut instinct is telling me about the newcomer.

Sometimes the odd person gets in who perhaps shouldn’t have and while I expect a certain amount of high spirits, once it crosses the line, they get chucked out after a few warnings to cool it. This blog is about expressing my sometimes controversial viewpoints and will therefore attract contributors with the same slightly off the reservation views, all of which needs a light touch on the moderation front or it’d stifle real debate. That’s really what moderating a blog comes down to.

I enjoy writing a good piece. I enjoy interacting with the commenters on it who very often fill out the piece with insights I hadn’t considered. I do not enjoy moderating, whether that’s at the door or inside the blog. Fortunately, I rarely have to do it inside.

I find it irksome at times, but it’s a necessary responsibility if you run a blog. All too often I’ve seen fascinating discussions under a blog piece derailed completely by one anti-social troll who’s getting some sort of cathartic release acting out from behind the anonymity of the internet. I’ve tracked down a few of them and contrary to the popular view they’re rarely some pimply faced, cheese-dick kid glued to a computer screen 24/7 in their Mum’s basement.

Mostly, they’re boringly ordinary individuals without a real social life but with some huge lack of self-esteem problems. Acting like an obnoxious child to for once get the attention of the grownups is usually the name of the game. Nondescript nobody by day, masked scourge of the blogosphere by night. Living a pathetic double life of quiet desperation doesn’t even begin to describe them.

When I was in the climate wars, the occasional paid troll would try and sneak in but they were really easy to spot. Some were committed to saving the world, most just did it for the money they were paid. If I got a sense that was the type of person I was dealing with, it was a moment’s work to google their comment and finding it appear all over the internet under different names, since they all operated to the same script they’d been given.

Some were sneaking in to do their social justice warrior thing and I’d have some fun finding out who they really were before giving them the bum’s rush out the door. Some were really nasty pieces of work persistently banging on the door and I’d occasionally burn them so badly, they never came back. Some I never let in, but I indulged my wicked sense of humour on them.

I’m aware of the argument that keeping one or two trolls as house pets livens things up and pumps up the hits as well, but setting up Pointy’s was my way of getting out of the combat blog arena, which I was both partial to but also recognised its downsides. I’m not paid for anything, even hits, so that’s not a consideration.

To continue the private club analogy, I wanted to put together somewhere that had a good floor show, subdued music that didn’t drown out conversation and served decent food and drink while you had an interesting chat with friends. I’d had enough of the drinking pits full of lumbering cavemen having a go at each other with broken bottles. If that’s more to your taste, there’s lots of places out there like that.

Retaining your sense of humour when dealing with rude, irrational or dishonest people helps in a number of ways, not least because the slightly slimy feeling you get off some of them doesn’t stick to you beyond the few minutes of necessary contact with them. All three of those things have one thing in common and that’s self-indulgence, which is the one character flaw I’ve never had any time for.

As a deterrent, I usually leave the objectionable comments hanging up on the barbed wire of moderation for a month or more. They’ve wasted my time, I waste theirs in return by making them keep checking back to see if their must-read missive has finally cleared the moderation silo. It never will.

At the end of the month, I clear out all the pending comments. The straight fails go into the trash can but the really obnoxious ones are got rid of by marking them as spam. The thinking here is that if enough people mark their comment efforts as spam, which they actually are, their future efforts will automatically be routed to oblivion in the spam bin rather than someone’s moderation queue.

I thought it’d be interesting to share with you some of this month’s failed debut comments before I consign them to the toxic waste subterranean homesick blues region that constitutes the spam bin. They’re the best of a bad bunch, some of which would make the lewd graffiti on the walls of a public toilet blanche.

I wrote an article on the deep state and because it didn’t endorse what is a very popular conspiracy theory and it also had some rather frank thoughts about the politics of colour, it attracted a bumper crop of nutters from right across the lunacy/political spectrum. Mostly they were enraged (I do seem to have that effect on some people) which makes it easy to spot them and dump whatever they’re saying straight out of the moderation queue and into the spam bin.

Somebody whose first name was Ken appeared to be particularly incandescent, to the point that he fired in three comments for moderation inside ten minutes.

His first attempt at a comment was in reply to Rapscallion, one of the regulars here, and managed to break most of the rules at one go. As usual, it was submitted with a fictitious email address which always means they’ll never get in. While I’ve no problem with contributors quite prudently taking the precaution of cloaking their true IP address, a real email account I do insist on.

So you ask a loaded question you already have the answer to, don’t put it in any kind of global context or for that matter are probably able to, and then smack yourself on the back for being so clever. Surely someone so smart will one day realize what an utter douchebag he looks like… perhaps not.

His second attempt was in reply to something PhilJourdan, another regular, had written and if anything is even angrier. He does remind me of a character in a children’s book I used to read to our kids when they were very young – Angry Arthur, who as the book went on got progressively more angry, first wrecking his room, then his house, his street, his town and finally he burned down the whole world.

So the industrial revolution didn’t bring about a rich class… just a ruling class? And by definition if there are 1%’s, doesn’t that put everyone else in a different financial strata all the way down to the poor? Trump spent 70 years waiting to be this great emancipator? It’s great that you’re able to twist facts to make Trump anything more than a spoiled child grasping at every dollar and ounce of power he can get his hands on. I imagine your cavalier attitude towards reality fuels your belief that you actually put forth intelligent comments. Good luck with that.

Angry Arthur’s third attempt to get in was aimed at me. I’m definitely getting the impression of an embittered old man used to shouting at people around him who years ago decided he wasn’t worth the trouble and left him to his own solitary devices. All a bit sad really, but he made his own life choices and I see no reason to indulge what I suspect is his sole remaining delight in life, which is to spread his own particular brand of misery all over everybody else.

He’s a failed type and nothing more, and a rather unpleasant one at that.

It’s amazing what pseudo-intellectuals will buy so long as it caters to their preformed opinions. Despite being devoid of actual facts (and the few in here twisted to support your myopic viewpoint) a real masters class on BS. I particularly like how Trump… a man gifted with a crown and millions by daddy… is now somehow a hero looking to take down the “ruling class” for the poor after spending 70 years forming fake charities to steal from them. And Obama… who’s didn’t have the advantages of a Trump birth… is the `house nigga’ raking in 350,000 per speech. I guess when a white guy craps on the poor it’s capitalism. Next time you write an opinion piece don’t waste anyone’s time… here I edited this dreck for you – `Trump good. Democrats and Republican dark state – bad. So I believe.’

The next lot of choice ones were attempts to comment on a popular piece enjoying a revival that I’d written some years back on why solar power had turned out to be a massive waste of investment. The emphasis of the piece was purely financial, an undiscovered country from whose bourn no Greenie has ever returned because all they know about money is other people give it to them after they’ve plucked it down from the money tree, so the poor dears were pretty much at a loss on how exactly to tear the piece down.

Being that solar is a shibboleth of the true believer in renewable energy, which is taken to be free energy in what passes for their mind, they had to try, so I was besieged by an army of zombie believers in that holy grail who attempted to storm the battlements of Schloss Pointystein.

What follows is a very small selection of their very best efforts, and that’s not saying a lot. In the old days before we won the climate wars and then Trump was elected which put the final kibosh on the lot of it, the Greenie trolls we battled were rock hard, bloody panzer grenadier trolls, but this wave were pure ladyboys who smelled faintly of mothballs that’d fallen out of their great grandmother’s pantaloons.

The following comment is a good example of somebody who’s not actually read the piece and therefore doesn’t address the significant points raised in it. They’re an all too familiar internet type who profess great belief in a variety of causes but are either too lazy to read past the first paragraph of an article or are prevented from doing so because of having the attention span of a buzzing gnat.

Instead, they go off on an authoritative sounding rant on something tangential they might even know something about but is basically irrelevant to the main thrust of the article.

By subsuming the reader in what could even be credible information, it’s supposed to somehow invalidate the article. Well, my poor man’s Iago, come back when you’ve developed the stamina to actually read a whole article, and if you’ve something relevant to say afterwards that isn’t so sly, I may possibly allow you in, though I’m inclined to doubt it.

I’ve no interest in comments from skimmers, middling or otherwise.

I’ve only been able to do a middling skim so far. Some good points, but seems rather more negative than needs be.

Just one “data point”. -> Panels built to applicable standards WILL last 20+ years – quite possibly 30. Panels built with corner cutting – as certainly happens – may die much sooner. Sub-standard EVA can die in well under 10 years, glass ideally needs scavengers to combat oxidation products, backsheet MUST be good quality to limit (never prevent ) water ingress, … . Properly built panels are sold with insurance underwritten warranties from companies that will support them across the full lifetime – even long after the actual manufacturers are gone. Installation to relevant codes are good enough to last the certified period if done to spec and properly inspected. [[I have an about 40 year old early BP Glass/EVA//Silicon/EVA/… panel that is still “staggering along” – output is well down but still functional !].
ie YES you can certainly get panels that die in under 10 years – but properly built and installed ones should and will largely be running at 25 years +.

This is a perfect example of a drivel comment and a dishonest one as well. A whole 200 jobs in an entire state? My God, that’ll really boost the count of fabled green jobs and at the same time really put a dent in the unemployment numbers. Note the suspiciously rounded number of 200, not 197 or 204, but 200 exactly (ie a fib made up on the spot). Into the liar’s bin you go Pinocchio.

200 people in my state are currently employed in solar, happily where they had no jobs before.

You do get the odd comment in that momentarily nonpluses you. This person is either making deliberately false assertions (ie lying their head off) or are totally delusional about solar power. Fastest growing industry? What? Employs more people than all of the fossil fuels industry put together? What? Less expensive than fossil fuels? WTF?

Which planet is this person living on?

On a little investigation, I found they had a teensy weensy little business interest in solar. They run an investors club which specialises in giving out share advice on you’ll never guess what type of company. No junk, no propaganda, no PR and no liars. Pump and dump elsewhere.

Actually, the Sun is just Rising on Solar Power…attrition and company failures are common in all industries as the result of poor business plans, poor management, out of control overhead and pricing that is not competitive. Only the Strong Survive.

Solar is the fastest growing industry in the USA… Currently employs
more than gas, coal, natural gas and nuclear combined and less expensive than all of them.

My company is 31 years old, AAA+ rated b the BBB and have just expanded our market to 15 additional states, plus Puerto Rico.

Manners as they say, maketh the man, so when you learneth some, tryeth again Sunshine. Until then it’s Foxtrot Oscar.

Such garbage. Those companies are going out of business because they’re not competitive.

Not letting totally delusional comments through the door is an act of mercy, though whether that’s for the benefit of the originator rather than the readers here is a moot point. This comment really does remind me in a curious way of some sort of weird flip side of Benjamin Franklin’s remark about one of the tragedies of life being the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.

This person is hanging on to patently discredited theories as tenaciously as a baby does to their dummy, sucking on it furiously for comfort lest the brutal facts of reality rip it out of their mouth. In a sense more relevant to this blog, people like this are not persuadable people, which is the demographic I waste no effort on, so their involvement here would be pointless for both of us.

The golden goose solar industry was actually created by shady businessmen, rather than killed by them. It crashed for its own purely market economic reasons, but explaining that to this innocent would take a lot of diagram drawing, defining of terms and too large an amount of patience in dealing with a child with their thumb determinedly stuck in their gob who actually doesn’t want to learn a few facts or God forbid think for themselves.

The studies were correct. The predictions were too. Your average accountant and your shady businessman ate the revenues and ran the company aground, before it could learn to float.

This next diminutive comment I had to read several times in an attempt to understand what it meant, and still I came out by the same door as in I went. A lot of it depends on where you’d put those funny things called commas, which he’s obviously never heard of. Does he think a falling market sector is a sign of its good health? The more times you read it, the more possible meanings can be adduced from it. The clarity of expression is simply appalling.

A fusty old teacher once lectured me with a wagging finger that if you can’t express yourself clearly, it’s because what’s between your ears has no clarity either. If that’s true, this bozo has wisps of a good old-fashioned London pea-souper fog wafting out of both ears.

If global warming was so bad and all those supposed scientists say so crap why is this market failing??????????????????????????????????

And in return, I won’t waste a single second of my readers’ time publishing your comment. I like the rude comments because they’re a nice quick moderate decision. No agonising at all.

Pointman is so far off base on solar it is not worth any more time than the 27 seconds it took me to write this text. Correction 34 seconds.

Yet another doomsday merchant still firmly stuck in the glory days of the pre-Copenhagen era and therefore a totally vacuous comment, as one would expect of a child of those times. It’s like those group conversations you’re in where one person interjects a remark and out of common politeness you listen, but after a few more interruptions you can’t help but become irritated by them because you realise they’re simply making an occasional meaningless noise just to remain in the conversation.

Nowadays, nobody sane over the age of twelve and three-quarters gives a flying fart about global warming bringing on a thermogeddon and the end of the world. This person really needs to move on and get a life.

So,what is the alternative? A few billion dollars subsidies is noth8ng compared to what our future will be without clean energy.

This type of comment is a very common one. It’s full of urban legends being presented as facts, all of which have already been shot out of the sky by skeptics several years ago. It’s very old ground covered in the wreckage of false facts that hit the deck, crashed and burned, so I see no reason to fight again old battles we’ve already won.

Let them do it somewhere else which has an interest in retro debates that were settled years ago. I’m sure it’d raise some return fire if I let it in, but frankly, I can’t be arsed putting a true believer in the comment by comment moderation approval loop. I’ve got nicer things to do with my time than spend hours riding shotgun on an endless stream of comments needing moderation. Another one who really needs to move on.

“Never in the history of the world, has such an amount of money been wasted, without any trace of financial oversight or accountability.” Except for the banking industry, after the GFC who received trillions and the Arms industry which receives trillions and the nuclear industry which has never rehabilitated any site of the contamination caused ever or ever provided any longterm secure safe disposal of their waste, apart from storing it at taxpayers expense for future generations to sort out. Or the fossil fuel industries which have received billions every year in actual subsidies and billions more in undeclared subsidies from being allowed to pollute air and water on a global scale to the extent that it threatens the very existence of humanity.

I could keep going because a month’s worth of debut comments here does throw up a lot of efforts from assorted deranged individuals that would no doubt provide a clinical psychologist with years of fascinating creatures to study. The pathology of one or two of them I come across in a year is actually quite concerning.

Despite the impression you might have gained after reading the above, you really don’t have to be some kind of elite Level 7 blog commenter to get in here, normal and sane is more than enough to get you through the door.

Also, there’s a good side to being the doorman. A new commenter turns up at the door of Chez Pointy and you think I like the cut of his jib or her well-turned ankle. They’ve got that certain pizazz about them and look like they’ll be intriguing people to get to know. You let them into the melee of talking and laughing, the clink of glasses and once in a while some serious bopping on the tiny dance floor. Your efforts keeping the riffraff out were a part of creating that ambience.

Sometimes, it’s a fine thing to be on the door.

©Pointman

Related articles by Pointman:

Moderating, trolls, soup ladles and Ethics.

The Joy of Moderation.

The scorning of William Connolly.

How to hunt somebody down on the internet – part 1.

How to hunt somebody down on the internet – part 2.

Click for a list of other articles.

Filed under Article · Tagged with Humour, Moderating, Trolls