Over the past few weeks I've noticed an annoying (to me) trend with blogging. Debates are often stifled and die off by the addition of new articles as oppossed to comments and replies to old articles. Being fairly new to this method of communication I had expected an initial article to spawn a deep discussion of the topic raised and various peoples feeling on this topic. I had (perhaps naively) expected a topic to go on being discussed for weeks as more and more people read the article and th...

Over the past few months on Joeuser I have seen numerous negative comments between Americans and Europeans. Most of these comments are normally thrown into the debate when one or other disagree with the policies, laws or beliefs of the other side. It led me to thinking, 'why do the US and EU debaters often end up on oppisite sides of debates', especially when they are often arguing the same general point. I came to the conclusion that effectively it's the difference between black and white ...

I've now been reading a few articles where users get responses deleted or get blacklisted. In some cases it for obvious personal attacks or filth (which I have no objections to), but in others it's because they argue a point that the author states is off-topic. What I wonder is whether there is a better way to handle these off topic replies, short of deleting them or black listing the writer. A way that handles these soon enough to stop the antagonism that arises. Let me give an example, L...

Dear Joe User, Over the past few months the level of activity on Jow User has risen very nicely. In some categories there are voer 50 articles posted a day. This is great but it also creates friction issues. It becomes obvious that some users would prefer not to see articles from other users. The solution is a user filter. If you find a particular user rubs you up the wrong way then you add their name to your personal filter list and no more articles from that person appear. Sim...