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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
“Leading the discussion”
Will Carroll:
Leading The Discussion by Will Carroll
In the last day, BP has posted two articles — one a quick Unfiltered post about Mark McGwire and his steroid confessions, another a longer statistical look at aging curves by an outside writer — that have had long, involved discussion threads. Call them “comments” if you want, but to me, it’s a discussion and even sometimes an argument thread. A couple years ago when Dave Pease first started proposing the addition of comments to BP, I was probably the loudest voice against. I didn’t think we could have substantive discussions because of what I saw taking place across most of the internet. I was wrong.
The fact that BP subscribers are almost by definition substantive people helps. The fact that we limit discussion to subscribers helps. But mostly, it’s just good discussion. At times, it gets a bit screechy and there’s a few people who are so regularly disruptive that I would have kicked them off the playground a long time ago if it were just up to me. But by and large, it’s been awesome. Whether it’s a debate about steroids or a respected writer/thinker like J.C. Bradbury, I’d love it if BP became the pulpit for discussion again. So, while I don’t make decisions on this (or anything), I want to personally invite *anyone* who thinks they have a high quality idea that needs a bigger audience to bring it up. I’m not saying BP will publish anything and everything, but I hope that we’ll have more guests in the coming months. And a lot more good discussion.