As someone who works in the media, I was interested in how Twitter was used in your case to galvanise visitors into commenting on your site. It’s the first time I’ve seen that.

I never edit comments I receive unless they are purely offensive to read and contain no reading value at all or contain excessive swearing. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me at all – who wants a mutual admiration society? how boring! I like differing points of view and there have been times when I have had my outlook changed for the better by seeing an issue from someone else’s perspective. I also don’t belittle a person or their comment, hosting a blog is like hosting a party…don’t insult your guests and let them have their say. I have seen some very redneck sites where bullying tactics very much reign and one time a blogger distributed my email to others and I received some very childish and abusive missives. I think being discriminating about your reading on the WWW is as important as how you would be in a library or bookshop. Leave the rubbish to those who like it.

Debating an issue or arguing a point – both have their place in blogging and I have noticed that there are people out there who cannot manage to do either without quickly resorting to name-calling, which denotes total lack of thought and no creativity whatsoever. Funny though – not one of those people from WA who responded to my post addressed any of the points I raised, because none of them were personally affected by them. One question I would like to raise is this: how does one prove they are NOT racist…? and should you even try…?

Yeah. I’m with you on what you said. I think it’s okay to disagree and have a polite debate. It’s not okay to be rude and nasty.

lol. I totally misread your line about me. I thought you were saying that you’re against arguing on blogs, but I’m all for it. Now I get you though. Yeah. You’re VERY argumentative on my blog. What’s the deal? I can’t say anything without you disagreeing with me!!!!!!

I’m joking…of course.

I think disagreements can bring about interesting discussion. You just have to have people who can disagree without name-calling and/or an attitude of anyone-who-disagrees-with-me-is-stupid.

I had a REALLY bad experience on a blog I used to frequent. I politely disagreed with a blogger (well actually their adult daughter wrote the post…but I didn’t realize it until later). They were very nasty in their response. And then it escalated into very abusive language….not just from the blogger and her daughter, but also their blogging friends. It was very psychology stressful. Because of it, I’ve become very weary of the whole blogging world, and read much less blogs then I used to. What’s that saying? Once bitten…twice shy.

I WAS lucky in that the attacks happened on other people’s blogs, and not my own. Eventually, I had the good sense to just stop going to those blogs. I could “make it go away” by simply not reading anymore. I really feel for people who are attacked on their own blog.

It didn’t offend anyone in Australia and nobody was talking about the ad until it went on YouTube and attracted negative comments from the US. KFC rightly pointed out it wasn’t intended for an American audience. Shows we live in a global village, I guess.

The other issue is what Wendy wrote about. There have been a number of attacks on Indians in Australia over the past few months, including a recent homicide. There’s no clear evidence they are racially motivated. The areas where they have occurred in Sydney and Melbourne are notoriously dangerous.

When I heard about the Jackson 5 bit my first thoughts were, “what were they thinking?” and “how did they let that get on the air?” I quickly realized the sketch might not have the same social impact in Oz.

I was pretty sure the KFC in Australia knew what they were doing when they ran the commercial in question. If the commercial were offensive down under, they would have been offending the folks they were trying to market chicken too (if they were following American stereotypes)… and what would be the sense of that? As it is, I assume they’re trying to market chicken to everyone (and, with that in mind, I have some of their grilled chicken a couple of times a month).