And to go back to moderation … the one time I do feel it’s warranted is when comments refer to people by name and contain inaccurate or misleading and negative info. Ideally, I’d like to see the blog owner add something to the comment to question or correct the info (note I didn’t say delete, necessarily). However, some platforms (e.g. Blogger) don’t allow this.

I don’t know anyone on the net that much in love with themselves. :)

As for my travelling friend, I forgot to mention another purpose her blog serves. Since her family and social acquaintances comment freely on her blog and she replies, this is essentially a (cheap) way for her to stay in touch, in both the communicative and psychological sense. She makes her blog private because she doesn’t want the crazies out there viewing her journey and possibly stalking her IRL.

Which is what, in my mind, distinguishes more personal blogs from more public blogs which don’t mind and in some cases, like, attracting the crazies.

Well, it’s the crazies that keep most bloggers from posting anything truly personal on their blogs. Some people don’t even use their real names. So really, it doesn’t matter if a blog is set up to be private or not. It’s what you actually post that counts. The very popular Dooce, for instance, doesn’t have her actual residential address on her contact page. She got herself a separate mailing address for all those crazies sending her dead rats and dirty underwear. All this, after she got fired for her blog. If any blogger had good reason to go private, it would be her. But she doesn’t.

For me, setting up my blog so that it was private would actually be a hindrance in keeping touch with my family, as many of them are not very technically oriented. For a long time, my mom couldn’t even figure out why the front page of the blog kept changing … and where did that post about crocheting her hats go? If I made her have to put in a username and password just to view my site, she would never know that I was alive and posting.

As for my travelling friend, I forgot to mention another purpose her blog serves. Since her family and social acquaintances comment freely on her blog and she replies, this is essentially a (cheap) way for her to stay in touch, in both the communicative and psychological sense. She makes her blog private because she doesn’t want the crazies out there viewing her journey and possibly stalking her IRL.

Which is what, in my mind, distinguishes more personal blogs from more public blogs which don’t mind and in some cases, like, attracting the crazies.

As for moderating I actually thought the whole 600+ thread on SBTB was handled well by the site owners. It was Candy’s post which ignited it and Candy shared her opinions frankly throughout. No issues there.

I’m gonna flip between a couple of your comments.

…the narcissistic *would* and *are* drawn to the blogging medium.

That makes sense. As the medium with the fewest barriers to entry–anybody can put up a web page, blog, youtube vid, etc.—the Web attracts all kinds, and likely the largest percentage of narcissists over other forms of media.

If you’re using the term in the colloquial sense, though, we’re all narcissists because we all—regardless of who blogs a topic and who responds to it–post on the Web. Or in RL, I assume none of us is sitting in a dark corner too humble to be visible to friends and family. And, the authors! How hefty are their ovaries to believe they’ve got a story worth publishing, much less that readers should plunk done $$ to read! Even your travelling friend—thinking she’s so important that only an exclusive group of her friends are allowed to “witness” her adventures *g*? But you sanction her use because she’s sharing something with you are that you enjoy. That’s no more or less valuable a purpose than these blogs serve. The difference is in tone, degree but the value of either is no less because of that.

So I think, in the context of the topic, unless you’re talking about the actual diagnosable disorder of narcissicm, the question of ego goes nowhere, particularly considering that whatever narcissism there is certainly isn’t preventing you, me, or anyone else from voicing sometimes unbelievably rude disagreement with the blog owners. To me, that’s what’s important. Disagreement–even or maybe especially rude disagreement–wins against over-modding any day.

My essential take on “high-profile� blogger behavior is this: It is a bit disingenuous of them to cry, oh boo-hoo, woe is me, why won’t people just play nicely in my sandbox, when the very sandbox they’ve set up encourages the rugrats, who for the most part *do* play nicely, to sometimes throw sand in each other’s faces.

Agreed. This is the eternal free speech vs. censorship debate writ small. Lively, free-wheeling exchange of ideas with little intervention=sometimes things get nasty. If some don’t like the raucous and often blunt tone, well, there are other choices out there. Myself, I enjoy the diversity and wit of the exchanges. I like things put out there to wrangle and wrestle with, over preachings about the Responsibility of the Moderator. A false sense of moral superiority is more heinous to me than a perceived lack of modding.

April summed it up best: Blogging is just another medium. And it’s no more or less rife with narcissists, of whatever degree, than any other medium. People are simply social creatures with a built-in need to communicate.

I agree, blogging can indeed be like work. But for authors still struggling for some shred of name recognition–and in this overpacked genre, that ain’t no piddling task–it’s necessary. Far as I’m concerned, the best way to approach it is to have some fun with it and, most important, try to connect on some personal level with readers.

“An individual with narcissistic personality disorder exhibits extreme self-importance, inability to empathize with others and heightened sensitivity to criticism. Self-involvement and lack of empathy characterize this personality disorder.

People with narcissistic personality disorder are frequently perfectionists and need to be the center of attention, receiving affection and admiration, and controlling the situation. To get the attention he craves, he may try to create crises that return the focus to him. Like patients with antisocial personality disorder, this person places entitlement issues at the fore. He feels that the world owes him, regardless of whether he makes a contribution.”

Certainly not ALL bloggers would qualify as narcissistic but reading that definition from above, it strikes me that yes, the narcissistic *would* and *are* drawn to the blogging medium.

We worry so much that we’ve “hurt” someone or stepped on someone’s “feelings” when in fact people just can’t deal with an opposing opinion anymore.

You don’t have to hate the person. Just the opinion.

Why can’t it simply be viewed that many of them just want to share? Or to communicate with others?

I was on the net pre-Blogger days. Many of the bloggers I read didn’t even write much. They simply posted links to other sites. It was really just “web logging” as the original definition implies — where they would log the links on the web that they thought interesting. For readers, it was handy because some people had more knowledge of the web, so you were often introduced to new things.

Still others, like Jeffrey Zeldman, would blog about certain strides in web standards, about new ways to design a site, et cetera. It was mostly as a service to other web designers … because at the time, only web professionals really frequented the net, and he was considered at the forefront of the industry. When he DID starting writing about himself (I think the first time was mostly to vent), he had such reader response to it (mostly via e-mail), as well as a demand for more, that he started doing it regularly. It made him human and approachable to many of his readers.

When comments and karma ratings became a standard feature on many content management systems, bloggers realized that they could post more of what people wanted and less of what they didn’t want … because suddenly, they had feedback! They could cater better to those they served. Readers want more links to articles about Cascading StyleSheets? OK, we’ll post more of them then.

What exactly is narcissistic about that?

I’ll grant that the notion of blogging is a little different these days. Most people who start up a blog now don’t really do so to edify anyone or to share random web links. I guess many of them have discovered what blogs have been able to accomplish for its pioneers. But there are so many different reasons people blog now that you really can’t generalize it all to narcissistic behavior.

Call any one of us bloggers narcissistic on an individual basis if you like, but not the entire group of us in a generalization. It isn’t fair to many bloggers out there.

And the fact is … many of the old bloggers I used to read have actually shut off their comments after a while. As their popularity grew, they were getting far too many comments, and since their original purpose was either to vent anonymously or to publicly share a new way of designing a site, or what have you, and not to have a lively discussion, the reader response actually got in the way. And many of those who had tons and tons of traffic? They shut down after a while because they couldn’t pay for all the bandwidth. They had never intended their blogs to be anything more than what it was.

Blogging is a medium. That’s all it is. The bloggers behind them are as varied as the people you meet on the street, and their blogs typically reflect that.