As a BFA refugee, I view it as an object lesson for other progressive blogs. The trolls are running the place, and the resulting disintegration of dialogue and community has led some of our best to wonder how much longer it can hang together.
We progressive have paved the road to Trollville with good intentions. We enshrine free speech; let everyone to have her say. So while the trolls rule, a majority of BFA bloggers oppose any form of troll control, no matter how minimal (there is a significant minority).
Maybe they should oppose. I'd rather we let a few freepers bleat and blather than see us impose an orthodoxy of opinion.
But I question whether that's the issue. I question whether what most BFA bloggers routinely tolerate in the name of free speech is speech at all.
Admittedly it takes the form of speech. The free-speech-anything-goes bloggers tell us that everything will be fine if we just ignore the trolls. They continue to tell us even though a cursory examination of the blog on almost any thread attests that only a few are able to do that.
What I objected to at BFA was conduct, not speech. I think conduct can and should be regulated in the name of civil discourse. Do we want to inhabit a community dominated by people who act like rethug talk-show hosts?
The politics of most BFA bloggers in essence is an objection to letting a small group of bullies run everything and hog it all to themselves. But the same bloggers show endless tolerance for this exact conduct by trolls, and they will sometimes turn with surprising ferocity on those who differ.
Troll conduct demonstrates that opinion is incidental. Trolls do not engage in any genuine dialogue. What they seem to want instead is some sort of payoff. The immediate payoff lies in baiting the other bloggers and enjoying the reaction. The long-term payoff lies in degrading and generally weakening the blog itself.
Thus our trolls engage in repeated personal attacks and name-calling on bloggers who disagree. They disparage minorities and rate women,using statements that in the workplace would justify a sexual harassment complaint. One famous BFA troll recently asked a female blogger if she would organize a "wet t-shirt contest." Another once called me a douchebag. (No, it wasn't a joke).
OK, you're a progressive and you're hosting one of your wine-and-cheese soirees. A rude boor crashed it. He acts pretty much like the SUV driver with the flag decal who cuts you off. He boasts and postures endlessly. He taunts people with name-calling. He tries to grope the women and pick fights with the men. I wonder if it would actually take us tolerant, humane, decent progressives any longer than anyone else to throw the sick bastard out.
Yet BFA's trolls continue to engage with impunity in just this conduct, and BFA lets them do it because they wrap their conduct in a cocoon of "speech."
It won't change at BFA soon, although we've been promised an "ignore button" (whatever that is)in the fall. It's too bad. Whatever shortcomings BFA had, it was more than a blog. It used to be a community. Right now the community is barely hanging together. As for the blog, it's pretty much of a laughingstock.