Punkwolf’s commentary on the tags and the rules

Punkwolf has written a Commentary on the TS Blog Network rules:

For example, it is much easier to keep a debate between Satanists and Christians rational and civil if the link to it appears on a page with a title like “Theistic Satanist interfaith discussion,” so that those theistic Satanists who aren’t prepared to deal with Christians in a friendly manner can easily avoid it.

It’s also for those Satanists who might be prepared to deal civilly with Christians, but who realise that Christians might not be prepared to reciprocate. It would be nice if there was some way to differentiate. The separate tag for the “troll playground” is along the right idea, but a lot of “interfaith discussion” can become hostile without much warning. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any way to weed out the hostile Christians et al. except by relying on their own self-policing, just as the network relies on Satanists (and pagans and occultists) to police themselves and use their better judgement.

Actually, the system will rely on more than just self-policing, especially for people other than Satanists, Pagans, and occultists. Bloggers will be divided into five categories with different levels of access in their use of the network tags. See Sets of people eligible to use particular network tags.

On LiveJournal, one’s Friends may not consist entirely of Satanists or Pagans or what-have-you; they may not be prepared to accept the rules of the blog network. For my own LiveJournal, I intend to post some warning to my Friends that I may be using that journal at times for the blog network, and what it entails, and asking them to either play by the rules or not play at all. LiveJournal is popularly known (by those who do not use it, at least) as a den of angst and drama only slightly more mature than that found on MySpace. I don’t use MySpace, so I don’t know how it compares, and I also tend to avoid those on LiveJournal who gravitate toward melodrama and similar nonsense. Some network members who use LiveJournal may encounter difficulties in moderating comments in their journals. I’ll be interested to see how this develops.

I’ll probably be using my Google/Blogspot blog for most of my “Theistic Satanists only” posts, because Google/Blogspot blogs aren’t hooked into a larger community; hence the only way most people are likely to discover my posts there will be via the Theistic Satanism Blog Network listings. (A few people might also find them via search engines.) I’ll be using my WordPress and LiveJournal blogs mainly for interfaith stuff and also for posts to which I won’t be giving network tags at all (e.g. most of my posts on gay rights issues, I topic I’ll probably be addressing a lot both here on WordPress.com and on LiveJournal).