Joan Smith laments the 'culture of vulgar personal abuse' that has grown up in the blogosphere. In doing so, however, I think she misdiagnoses the problem:
If anyone can write, and much of what they produce is either information or complete rubbish, it's no wonder that the public is losing respect for writers who spend literally years finding the right form of words for a poem or a novel. The act of writing is being de-skilled to a point where it is no longer regarded as work...In my own view, it's not because 'anyone can write' irrespective of the standard of what they produce, not because of the democracy of the blogosphere, that a culture of abuse exists in many parts of it. It's because the various behaviours that constitute it are tolerated. They don't have to be, and it's mysterious to me why they are. In other forums of public discussion - assemblies, meetings, seminars etc - there are widely recognized norms of civility which are enforced by the chair or equivalent, and generally respected (and therefore also backed up when need be) by most of the participants. Is this a restriction of free speech? Not really. People should be free under the law to be insulting and abusive (within limits to do with libel and defamation); but this doesn't prevent those responsible for a particular 'space' of discussion from specifying some rules for the conduct of it. Anyone who doesn't like those rules can go and talk elsewhere. Just like: if you want to pour beer over each other, you find somewhere else to do it than in the home of a friend with a beer-pouring intolerance.In this pseudo-democratic universe, the novel that has just taken me nearly five years to finish has no more value than a blog that someone dashed off in 10 minutes.
People often write as if the problem of internet incivility is insoluble. It isn't. In fact, the attitude that it's insoluble simply aggravates the problem. (Via the Abloosh.)