Sick Sad Week: An Urgent Call to End the Coulterization of Debate at Associated Content

This will be a special edition of Sick Sad Week. Typically, the Sick Sad Week column looks at the best of the worst in the world of national news. But this week will instead focus on the sick sad goings-on here at Associated Content. Regular, long-time visitors to Associated Content have no doubt noticed that various changes in format have taken place regarding the rating system and the comment sections on articles here. Of course, Associated Content is hardly the only site on the internet where readers are allowed to express opinion and the problems this site is experiencing are being experienced around the web. It is, in many respects, a problem that is merely a symptom of a significantly larger problem.

At the risk of turning this article into one of my usual ideological screeds—something I am hoping to avoid this time around—I have come to describe this problem as the Coulterizaton of debate. (As proof of my sincere hope to try to avoid indulging in ideology, I will refrain from using my own personal anagrammatical appellation for Ms. Coulter.) Over the past few months—but with increasing intensity over the past few weeks—I as well as many other writers and readers have noticed a distinctive and unpleasant turn that the comments left on articles at Associated Content have taken. Rather than engaging in intellectual disagreement and analytical debate with the ideas and opinions being expressed, more and more comments are being left that belong more on blogs—or even on the side of walls—than on a web site devoted to providing information on literally every topic imaginable. At its best, Associated Content could become the destination of choice for people in need of a huge information database. Associated Content could become the destination of choice for those looking to read about something and then take part in intelligent and thoughtful debate with not ony the writer, but other readers. But the way things are going here, that isn’t going to happen.