Mean-O-Meter

In the wake of the midterm elections, I have noticed a disturbing increase in the meanness-level of political blog debates.

Now, most people are pretty civil when discussing politics. This makes me happy and restores my faith in the thought that perhaps religion and politics are not off-limit topics in friendly, socially uplifting conversation.

But back to the meanness-- I've seen some pretty intense name calling. Personal attacks. Extreme defensiveness. Passionate lashing out. I have also noticed that some of these mean blogs and blog responses are from people who are typically tactless. I have to wonder if they're as tactless in real life? Or if the anonymity of the internet gives them a safe place in which to vent without feeling like they're hurting "real" people.

Hmmm. I think that sort of irresponsibility is unnacceptable.

Skywalker and I were discussing this the other night, and he came up with a brilliant idea-- the Mean-O-Meter. This would be a program where people could rate the quality and nature of one another's comments. The information from these ratings would be computed by the program and consequently, each blogger would earn a distinctive mark that would set him apart according to his typical rating.

And get this-- the most brilliant part-- those who have been rated as mean-- their font size would decrease. So the more mean ratings they'd get, the smaller their typeface would become until-- voila. They're just writing gibberish that we can't bother to read 'cuz we don't want to break out our trusty magnifying glass.

What do you think?