TypePad is very slow today, some problem with their servers being overloaded. They have temporarily disabled comments. I had a heck of a time earlier today posting, and then it duplicated the posts. Sorry if you saw Marjorie's name a lot.
I looked at Moveble Type and WordPress, and it looks do-able, but I think I will wait for a slack week. Maybe July. Spent to much time on tech stuff today.
Again, Philocrites has contributed to the Unitarian Universalist on-line community with a thoughtful post outlining his editorial policy relative to publishing comments. I found Philocrites post remarkably kind and well reasoned toward those who violate internet etiquette and standards of civil discourse.
Recently, I had to turn on the moderate comments switch on my weblog manager because of a troll, and I resent his violation of community. I also deleted his "comments" which had nothing to do with the post or conversation at hand, but rather boiler plate reiterations of long discredited accusations directed at one of our ministers and a liberal religious congregation that acted to guard its community against disruption. After deleting his comments, he accused me of censorship! Nonsense! Editorial discretion is not censorship, I am a publisher, not a government oversight agency. Publishers are responsible for the contents of their publications, including the writing of guest commentators.
Philocrites mentioned that he tries to keep his professional responsibility separate from his personal contribution as a publisher of a blog. My reasoning is a little different, I am an elected member of the Unitarian Universalist Association Executive, and as such I am very aware of the UUMA's Code of Professional Conduct and the Guidelines for Ministry. For me to tolerate trolling on my weblog would be condoning internet libeling and thus a violation of those professional standards. I promise my readers that I won't allow "commentators" to use my weblog in a way that violates professional relational standards.
I feel strongly that a Unitarian Universalist on-line community can enrich our religious movement with honest and civil dialogue on matters of importance to our faith community. But in order to do that the webloggers must honor standards of that bring credit to Unitarian Universalism.
