Lucky Seven: Or How to Carry On an Internet Conversation

Seven is a lucky number; it's a perfect number--the number of man + the number of the divine. Thing 7 is pretty special too. Here is where we have the opportunity to teach our students the dying art of written conversation, including the skill of being tactful and constructive, even in our criticism, as opposed to hateful and destructive.

My students and I joke during writing workshop days about how to positively peer edit a draft. Comments like "good job" or "best draft I ever read" do no one any favors; the writer loses out on having a new set of eyes discover a mistake he may have made, and the editor loses out on the benefit of enhancing her own writing by learning to help others. And in a multi-grade classroom, nothing is more frightening to an incoming freshman to have an upper class student tell her she writes like a third-grader. I use that example because it happened, and it took months for me to coax that student into writing again.

Commenting works much this way. I loved the advice given by CoolCat about Darth Commentor. When I waited tables for a living, people would come in to eat for the sheer pleasure, I believe, of harassing their waiter. Some people are just not happy, and who better to take it out on than a waiter who can say nothing. Of course, these days with ethics where they are, I think more waiters are spitting in coffees than when I was waiting. And no, I never spit in anyone's coffee (I was more of a visine / beer gal), but I know someone who did, and the woman deserved it. Maybe commenting is the new outlet for those angry people, and here they don't even have to drive anywhere or shell out bucks for a meal. And no one gets spit on.

Also I bring back the hate mail link from last post. The comments, including the actual hate mail, are so telling in and of themselves. The grammatical issues, the misspellings, the left out words--these things alone nearly negate the argument trying to be made. The instantaneous puking out of venom rarely leads to a positive or constructive debate over ideas, but then fanatics and naturally angry people usually don't want to debate, do they.

On the other hand, the constant back patting, or as Blakester put it so eloquently in one of her comments, the "self-massaging" smug attitude taken by those in support can also negate the argument in the midst of being so self-congratulatory.

All of these moments in commenting become "teachable" moments in both rhetoric and mechanics. Perhaps, as Rhonda pointed out in another post, blogging could be used as a place to work on writing skills instead of just a social moment. The problem then becomes keeping up with all those blogs and making sure kids aren't abusing them.

I'm having trouble keeping up with my own reader! But this is something I want to think about more because I sense the possibilities, and they could be good . . .