Taking Stock

In a little over three months of blogging, I've come across beautiful, brilliant, evocative writing, insightful commentary, throught-provoking essays, posts about books, places, movies that I'd long forgotten or had never heard of which the posts made me instantly want to go and get so I could relive the blogger's experience, posts about news from all over the world that I would never have made my way to if left to my own devices, and poignant posts about family, children, friends. I've come across bloggers whose writing I enjoy, whose comments I value, whose feedback is much appreciated, and whose take on an issue I've written is sometimes very different and for that reason very welcome.

Unfortunately, I've also come across ugliness.

There are always two sides to a story. There are as many opinions on an issue as the number of people who have the slightest knowledge about that issue.

That said, the only way to make any progress or to achieve desirable results is to engage in civil discourse. Making personal attacks on the messenger takes away attention not only from the issue being fought over but also from any serious consideration of ways of resolving that issue.

And, most importantly, I might add, personal attacks take away from the credibility of the person making the attacks.

For the latest example of erosion of civility in the blogosphere, and to see what our fellow bloggers are doing about it, head over to Desipundit. Kaps, Patrix and others have taken up arms over personal attacks aimed at bloggers and have aggregated all the relevant posts and comments. I don't know much about the issue that's being debated (merits of claims made by some of the new management institutes in India), but I do know that bloggers need to band together and make our voice heard against personal attacks.