I logged on this morning and saw, as the very first comment on a front-page diary, one of the most offensive comments that have ever seen, on this or any other website. I won't repeat or link to the comment, but I will say that Meteor Blades quite properly warned the poster:
Calls for assassination are forbidden. Anti-semitic remarks are forbidden. This will be your only warning
.
Now there is pending not a comment but a diary where the author criticizes Adrianna Huffington not just for her opinions, but directs against her the crudest language that one would never employ of any woman or a human being for that matter.
Markos is on teevee all the time now, trying to get done what we all want for this country. I don't want this sort of crap to embarrass him. And more personally, I don't want to see this rubbish on the site. You can call somebody a moron, or a fool, or a nitwit, all these things are true about everyone sometimes, the key of course is to avoid being a fool, moron, or twit more often than the next person. The problem as I see it is that if you write something offensive in a diary, that can't be hidden by HRs.
I come to DKOS to read Emmet's delightful 96th birthday of oldest known Kossack Charlotte Lucas. One of the most powerful things I ever read on the internet was The New Ozymandias by Occam's Hatchet And every day there are diaries and postings by hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, some of which are wise, some are foolish, some are important, some not, but all, or almost all made with good intentions.
We even have candidates blogging on this website. A measure of the success of this website is the enmity and the jealously that it's success has stirred up on the other side. We should not tolerate any damage caused to this this website and the important things it has accomplished by those who anti-semitic and misogynist material. In the case of comments, those can be hidden. In the case of diaries, those cannot. If it is technically possible, this should be changed.
UPDATE: That was a dumb idear. My confession follows:
[Otto dangles Archie out a window]
Archie: All right, all right, I apologise.
Otto: You're really sorry.
Archie: I'm really really sorry, I apologise unreservedly.
Otto: You take it back.
Archie: I do, I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.