The Online Photographer

I reckon I've moderated something within shouting distance of 330,000 comments in my nearly 20 years as a blogger online. I'm sure I haven't seen everything, but I've seen most things. Commenters self-select, but they also respond to the culture of a site—if you're consistent about what you want and reward, what you encourage and what you don't, you'll get the commenters you deserve. As you know, the commenters here are one of the best things about the site.

The Commentariat, though, is a subset of the readership, not the whole readership. And people in my position shouldn't confuse the two. People who comment anywhere (discounting the 2% who just love their own poop, as my friend Phil used to say) tend to be those who feel secure discussing the subject at a useful level.

There are two ways I think that claim can be objectively verified. One is that when I bring up a separate and different topic, we will hear from some commenters we never hear from otherwise, who know a lot about that subject. So if I bring up, say, nursing, or mountain biking, people with expertise or experience with those things will join the conversation—they know more about it than I know about it, and they know they do. The other proof is, how do you yourself feel when you drop in on a forum about something you know very little about? I don't know ab0ut you, but if I go to a forum for car mechanics, or one about finance, or one about learning Italian, I tend to shut the heck up. The reason is that I'm pretty certain I have nothing meaningful to contribute.   

Telltale
A sign that people are insecure about their own standing, in my opinion, is what I call "the kicker." A kicker is when someone has made their point and corrected another person they think is wrong, but then they have to ram their point home with a gratuitous insult at the end. Here's an example from a random year-old reddit thread (kicker in red): 

OP: With inexpensive Chinese EV's banned in the US, I wonder if people will buy them in Mexico and bring them into the US?

1st responder: Not gonna happen. You can’t import non-US market cars that are less than 25 years old. The process to make them US market compliant is not someone an individual or even a small company can do successfully.

2nd responder: I live 2 hours from Mexican border and see Mexican license plates everyday.

1st responder: Mexican citizens can temporarily drive their Mexican registered cars in the US for 90 days. That has absolutely nothing to the with the OP’s suggestion of a US resident buying a car in Mexico and bringing it back permanently. How you failed to understand the difference between these two things is completely beyond me.

Really? Completely beyond him? Funny, because I can easily understand how the 2nd responder thought his observation might be relevant. And actually, 1st responder is wrong: Mexicans can drive a Mexican-registered and -plated car here for up to one year, as long as they have a valid Mexican driver's license and insurance that comes up to U.S. standards. But note that kicker. In effect, "How can you be so ignorant as to argue with me?"

So watch for kickers—your own or other peoples'. It could be a sign that an overly positive writer is actually unsure of him- or herself. Why add the kicker if your argument is strong enough alone?

Bogus links
Anyone can fall for a bogus link*. I'm not playing holier-than-thou here, nor am I suggesting that any specific individual is to blame for "falling" for wrong information—actually, back in '22, when I wrote a couple of articles for a national magazine, the fact checker did so. She challenged something I wrote on a subject I'm so thoroughly versed in that I knew right away where she had gotten her information—she had fallen for a tendentious website that was spreading a false narrative, and she got there by just Googling the question. I knew all about the person who wrote the site she found, a known fraud. (And she wasn't wrong to ask me to defend myself.)

But most things aren't so easy. When people include links in comments here, it's generally a big headache. If I'm being conscientious, I have to check out the link before publishing it. Sometimes, I don't know enough to evaluate the veracity of the link without doing more research. And I have limited time for such things. For that reason, sometimes I'll just remove links from comments.

And sometimes, I learn later that I should have removed a link. The other day, I published a commenter's link to a site that claimed that the "electromagnetic fields" associated with electric vehicles can have deleterious health effects on people, especially people with heart disease or pacemakers. Turns out that's not true, and the author of the site that was linked is a known fraud. But I had to hear from someone with deep knowledge of the issue before taking down the link. 

I'm sure I've made mistakes like this...well, let's just be kind to me and say "not infrequently." But with 330,000 comments to vet, even over 20 years, we can't get everything right. Not everything I say is correct, either. My biggest advantage there is that I'm always willing to be corrected. If I make a mistake, I don't have such a big ego that I won't admit it. Of course, I'm also secure enough to argue the point if I still think I'm right.

One of the huge benefits of writing a site like this one is that almost no matter what I write about, I'm surely just about to learn a lot more about it...from you. 

Mike

*Although I'm always surprised when I do. I fell for this when it was broadcast—I went around for three days afterwards telling people about the astonishing thing Demi Moore did despite being pregnant. Why that one? I honestly don't know. I try to remember those instances where I fell for things that are obviously tricks, though—it keeps me humble. 

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