Literally just now as I was looking to see if there were new comments (at 4:40pm CT), Elizabeth Moon deleted all 521 comments to her idiotic "Citizenship" post and turned off commenting.
Post is still there though, which is SUPER brave of her.
I'm very shocked. I don't know her, but she always seemed like a thoughtful person who would pay attention to thoughtful dissent. I thought most of the comments arguing with her were very respectful.
You missed that she had edited the post at the end to say, "NOTE. Time to move the crowd outside and shut the door. All comments will be deleted, the slag recycled for another time, and no further comments made on this post. Whatever's been said has been said, and answered, and resaid, and reanswered."
Forgive me my dissent, but after 500+ comments back and forth, that sort of reaction seems borne out of a most particular mixture of exhaustion and frustration.
I will! It demonstrates a fear of the reaction and a resulting desire to control the debate without allowing any contrary voice to remain.
Had she removed the whole thing or just locked all further comments, I could have respected her choice (though still not her original post). In the first instance, she's giving up the whole thing as a bad job; in the second, she's demonstrating her frustration/exhaustion but allowing the reaction her words caused to stand as a record. Leaving up her own controversial post while deleting all the reactions *and* tagging it with a little, "oh, you tiresome people" note was condescending at best -- but in a way that is too cowardly to accept dissent.
When an Islamic group decided to build a memorial center at/near the site of the 9/11 attack, they should have been able to predict that this would upset a lot of people.
Gosh. Perhaps she should have been able to predict that her words would have upset a lot of people.
Deleting all 500+ comments is the nuclear option. Had she just not had the energy (or courage, if you like) to go on with so much dissent, she could have just stopped new comments.
Did anyone, perhaps, archive them before she deleted them? I did that with John C. Wright's homophobic claptrap a while back; nothing should disappear into the ether.
Fortunately for me, I reposted my own comment here. I think part of me knew she'd delete at least some comments; I'm very disappointed she deleted them all.
I'd never encountered her before in a way to make an impression aside from looking at some of her books (I may have read one of her co-authored ones from several years back but I'm not sure). And the first part of the post does ago along thoughtfully and uncontroversially (to me), and then there's the sudden hard right into, "And NOW about my bigotry!"
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jennawaterford
Comments
Oh, well!
I repeat my anger.
Wow. Just wow.
I was saving up to buy her latest books. No more. And the ones I have are going in the trash. I am that angry and disappointed.
Had she removed the whole thing or just locked all further comments, I could have respected her choice (though still not her original post). In the first instance, she's giving up the whole thing as a bad job; in the second, she's demonstrating her frustration/exhaustion but allowing the reaction her words caused to stand as a record. Leaving up her own controversial post while deleting all the reactions *and* tagging it with a little, "oh, you tiresome people" note was condescending at best -- but in a way that is too cowardly to accept dissent.
Gosh. Perhaps she should have been able to predict that her words would have upset a lot of people.
Deleting all 500+ comments is the nuclear option. Had she just not had the energy (or courage, if you like) to go on with so much dissent, she could have just stopped new comments.
GEEZ.