To Our New Visitors

A lot of new people seem to have visited this site during the last week or so, and being new, they may not know much about us. So: this is not a site on which everyone agrees. We have six posters, two (including me) liberal, one slightly right of center, and three who are to the right. What we share is a commitment to the idea that it is possible to disagree passionately, to argue with one another about what we disagree about, and yet to remain more or less civil about it.

Please do not assume that the other writers on this site share my views about the Terri Schiavo case, or that the people who usually comment on this site are all of one political persuasion. Either assumption would be wrong. And please respect our posting rules, the most important of which are:

"Be reasonably civil.

No profanity. For the record, 'hell', 'damn' and 'pissed' are not considered 'profanity' for the purposes of this rule; also for the record, the more offensive racial slurs and epithets will be deemed to 'profanity' for the purposes of this rule

Don't disrupt or destroy meaningful conversation for its own sake.

Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake."

Thanks, and welcome.

Comments

[Jackmormon]

Do you have any idea where the new posters are coming in from?

[hilzoy]

My Terri Schiavo post got a lot of play, as did von's subsequent one. I followed a few of the referrals because I was curious, and found that it was linked in all sorts of unlikely places: the online bulletin board of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a Christian site on marital relations, various gaming boards that had a 'let's take time out and argue current events' section, you name it. In addition, for a while we seemed to be one of the top answers to news searches on e.g. "Schiavo+cortex" and other delightful things.

[Jackmormon]

They were good posts. At some later point I'd be interested to see ObWi do a sitemeter retrospective, not just to see the aftermath of this uptick but also to see what has brought visitors here in the past. At your leisure and according to your interest, of course.

[Anarch]

Didn't someone mention ObWi was one of AOL's "Favorite Blogs" or something like that?

[hilzoy]

Jackmormon: here's the link to our traffic for the last month. If it doesn't work, the basics are: we were averaging a little under 2000/day on weekdays, and a little over 100/day on weekends; Monday we went to about 5,500; Tues. to about 7,500; Wed., Thurs., and Fri. between 4000 and 5000, yesterday a little under 3500.

Anarch: I think it was that von's post was on their daily 'what's up with blogs' thing.

For the record, I don't generally keep track of this stuff.

[hilzoy]

Make that: we were averaging a little over 1000/day on weekends.

[Gary Farber]

Since you're reproducing the rules, could you possibly clean them up for punctuation and grammar so they're not so damn gratingly painful to read?

"For the record, 'hell', 'damn' and 'pissed' are not considered 'profanity' for the purposes of this rule; also for the record, the more offensive racial slurs and epithets will be deemed to 'profanity' for the purposes of this rule"

Wouldn't it be nice if that sentence actually had an end? With a period? And if "deemed to 'profanity' were changed to something in English?

In the rest, if "for its own sake" were changed due to its referring to plural form? ("...simply for the sake of doing so.")

And so on? I guess if none of the posters find it embarassing to be represented by this sort of usage, the answer is "no," but....

[Happy Jack]

Just for the record, is "Bird Dog sucks, and he's ruining this site" a vilification, or merely a statement of fact?

[hilzoy]

I think it qualifies as a turn of phrase that, through constant repetition, has been deprived of all meaning, sort of like "Good morning!", or "I'm fine", which no one takes as actual statements of any kind.

(You had to ask...)

[Catsy]

On that note, I personally would've pegged it as "one right of center, two to the right, and one far right", but that's my barometer. :>

[B Alexander]

Since you're reproducing the rules, could you possibly clean them up for punctuation and grammar so they're not so damn gratingly painful to read?

Complaining about the grammar in the posting rules is a violation of posting rules!

(Or not.)

[CaseyL]

"Bird Dog sucks, and he's ruining this site" has become an in-joke among bloggers. I've seen the phrase pirated to "[Insert name here} sucks, and [s]he's ruining this site" - and the posters know the provenance and appreciate the sly tease.

Newcomers might not realize that, though.

[Gary Farber]

I'd be perfectly willing to accept responsibility for ruining this site if even one out of ten out of regular commenters here took up commenting there.

[Jackmormon]

Hilzoy, thanks for the link. You're almost up to your pre-election peak (70,000 views for October 2004) with the recent uptick, and given that March has another couple of days, you might meet it. I'm not sure you all will be pleased with that...

[Jesurgislac]

Gary: if even one out of ten out of regular commenters here took up commenting there.

My English usage isn't good enough: it would just be damn gratingly painful for you to read. And I wouldn't want that. ;-)

[Gary Farber]

"My English usage isn't good enough: it would just be damn gratingly painful for you to read. And I wouldn't want that. ;-)"

Oh, I think I could survive. And the last time I was whiny and petulant on the subject here, I was told, specifically by you, as well as others, that registering to comment was simply an impossibly hard barrier, taking the entire thirty seconds it took. So I removed any need to register, and a flood of your comments resulted!

Oh, wait.

Not that I would ever bring that up, of course. It would be wrong.

[von]

At some later point I'd be interested to see ObWi do a sitemeter retrospective, not just to see the aftermath of this uptick but also to see what has brought visitors here in the past.

I think we've had three significant ticks up: One with Katherine's series on Mahrer Arar; one that occurred during the election (and was blogosphere-wide); and one with this latest jump -- which I attribute to Hilzoy's posts of Schiavo. If you're interested, the data for the past year is here: http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=sm1ct4hulhu&report=36. (We started in March 2004.)

[von]

Sorry -- make that four jumps. The jump during Janurary 2005 was probably a result of Tacitus's hiatus/Bird Dog's arrival. We* spun off of Tacitus, and I suspect we benefited when Tacitus shut down, because some of the Tacitus regulars spent more time here. And Bird Dog has quite a following, which has really been to our benefit.

von

*Initially, "we" were Moe Lane, Katherine, and me.

[logicalheart]

About terri Schiavo......Hilzoy....I find your logic flawed, and your argument is a wrapping for your bias....which you never really bother to make clear. You say you are a bioethisist (s?).... and yet the field of 'bioethics' itself is biased. Though it claims its objectivity based almost entirely on not being from a religious orient. At the risk of being called a christian fundamentalist I say this....but who of you will state that you have no religion, and say this makes you objective and without bias.... as of course no one is without bias. I am not a christian fundamentalist nonetheless.... the closest I come is being a bleeding heart liberal :) .

In any case, my dear your argument is sophistry (and yes I am a woman too), and evades the real issues: How do you justify dehydrating and starving anyone to death, 13- 15 years after the accident and not call it killing? And why do you need to justify it if it is morally sound? Regardless of what she/terri may have said in the past....that condition is past.... and there was no current information from her that anyone would accept. If her human rights are not protected, no ones are.....your arguments become moot, and your intellect barren in the theater of world history. The poor woman was tortured to death. The courts may have, even with this twisted logic, observed the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law, the letter serves was abandoned, and common sense ignored. You don't take away someones food and water while they are still using it....and if that sets a dangerous precedent that threatens my autonomy, you still need to prove it... but don't try blinding us with the glare of an argument that is so over burdened with convolutions. Keep it simple and clear. All of your conclusions were opinion, even if they were court opinion too.

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, please move it to the right place if necessary.... and I found you guys in a google search about terri schiavo and recent/current events (in case that helps, but I spelled her name wrong :)).....Thanks for listening, and I hope you please take what I'm saying to heart. What happened to Terri Schiavo matters because it could happen to others who don't think its ok, or don't think it protects peoples right to be autonomous, that it in fact does just the opposite.....this is really important, and bioethics has, (as a area of science, or social science)a responsibility to look at everyones moral and spiritual orientation, and take it into account, when helping to determine policy.....so far this area of expertise has very seriously failed in this regard, even many of the ones who have a christian orientation (and yes it does matter). So the problem is with the premises upon which its been founded. Bioethics has become a rubber stamp for the policies, and politics, of financial expediency for medical big business. I will be gone, but unless you look into this and review your own involvement and be honest with yourselves about it, all your arguments will fail, and you may yourselves fall victim to the hell you have created.....sorry, and thanks again....

From Logical heart....