After the comments at the close of the Dead Philosophers' Carnival, some discussion has ensued regarding how appropriate the attitude was, and how appropriate it was (or not) to actually express it. Since I'm now acting unilaterally from my co-editor, I've posted this under my own login.
Two discussions of this (amongst other things) can be found at Jared's Sportive Thoughts and Annie's Anniemiz
I had no intention of portraying the editorial team as infallible, but philosophy is a cause that I willingly confess to being passionate about.
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2 comments:
I would like to thank those who have contributed to the discussion thus far.
The discussion has drawn to my attention the fact that there are a range of disciplinary techniques at work in the blogosphere. Most obviously, we attempted to impose an order and structure on a corpus of information, and that attempt has been contested, dissented against. There is possibly something here, for those inclined to pursue such things, on the relationship between the mass production of information that occurs on the internet, and the way that that information is being catalogued and classified …
I would also like to observe that a little controversy can be a good thing.
Whether appropriate or inappropriate what real harm did the comments made about some but not all of the submissions do?
Surely, if blogging is meant to be harmless, and if the fact that a person is writing on a blog means that it isn't meant to be taken seriously, then surely anyone with that attitude shouldn't really care about anyone else's opinion about what they publish?
It seems to me that in regards to the proliferation of information on the information highway rather then helplessly accepting that this will produce large amounts of pointless content to the point of defending the principle that 'anything goes', maybe there is a greater need for criticism? Not that I'd expect that this would reduce the sheer amount nonsense however, it simply doesn't follow that the existence of rubbish implies an acceptance of living at the dump?
Of course, this still begs the question of criticism vs snark? Yet is this a question not so much about the giving of criticism as it is about the way it was given? Maybe the editor should have been more polite? Or maybe, sometimes, it is better to call a spade a spade?
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