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Meanderings-01
10 March 2005
Another thought...
Many forums become sites of great confrontation as posters line up on sides of contentious issues: politics (especially American - unusual given the remarkable sameness of the two parties), religion, abortion, evolution, social and human rights, vegetarianism, the IQ of SUV drivers… blogs are more controllable in the sense one can simply disable comments.
Of course they’re easier to control - the flow of content is all one way! That reduces the often angry interchanges, but might be frustrating to readers accustomed to reacting in cyber-rage.
But then...
The blog owner has an almost omnipotent ability to pontificate without facing conflicting views, challenges or criticism. Freedom of speech? Not in the digital realm of Ian! Here only Emperor Ian can have his say… a bit Popish, eh?
Et cetera...
There are far too many bloggers out there whose command of the English language is too limited or stunted to be given such power. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between common homonyms (or worse, doesn’t know what that word means!) should not be allowed to post a blog!
The Internet is not seeing language evolve as much as devolve into electronic graffiti.
Each blogging package should come with encoding that can be unlocked only if the user can pass a basic test in grammar and spelling. Something like this:
Many forums become sites of great confrontation as posters line up on sides of contentious issues: politics (especially American - unusual given the remarkable sameness of the two parties), religion, abortion, evolution, social and human rights, vegetarianism, the IQ of SUV drivers… blogs are more controllable in the sense one can simply disable comments.
Of course they’re easier to control - the flow of content is all one way! That reduces the often angry interchanges, but might be frustrating to readers accustomed to reacting in cyber-rage.
But then...
The blog owner has an almost omnipotent ability to pontificate without facing conflicting views, challenges or criticism. Freedom of speech? Not in the digital realm of Ian! Here only Emperor Ian can have his say… a bit Popish, eh?
Et cetera...
There are far too many bloggers out there whose command of the English language is too limited or stunted to be given such power. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between common homonyms (or worse, doesn’t know what that word means!) should not be allowed to post a blog!
The Internet is not seeing language evolve as much as devolve into electronic graffiti.
Each blogging package should come with encoding that can be unlocked only if the user can pass a basic test in grammar and spelling. Something like this:
- Can’t distinguish between compare to and compare with? Your and you're? There and their?
Take remedial English courses before you try again! - Spell words like lite, nite, e-z, cleen, cuz, and thnx?
Buy a dictionary and try again… (marketing executives will obviously have to make many, many attempts to get this one right!). - Have you used any of these: Seperate? CD's? Your's? Benifit? Independant? Everyone has their reason?... it's value?
Stop surfing for fun and start using the Net to educate yourself. Look up sites that offer basic help with English grammar, spelling and usage, like this one: Common Errors in English. - Messages all written in lowercase or UPPERCASE?
Take a computer course on the basic use of the keyboard.
