A call to action

This year is the 50^th anniversary of Arlo Guthrie’s song-cum-rap “Alice’s Restaurant“. In the song, Guthrie tells the story about how an arrest for littering made him ineligible for the draft. Toward the end, he calls for draft resistance movement based on his experience. As far as I know, it didn’t go anywhere despite the wide popularity of the song.

Undaunted,  I’d like to call for a movement here.

How many times have we seen this dynamic play out in photography fora on the Internet?

• Poster A asserts something as a fact.
• Poster B says that poster A is mistaken.
• A discussion ensues, whose length may vary between brief and seemingly interminable.
• Poster B proves his point with evidence.
• Poster A is never heard from again, at least in that thread.

Today I saw the following comment on DPR: “You are actually correct, my apologies.” DPR has a “like” feature. I clicked the button.

Civility is thin on the ground in Internet discussion. One small way to counter that situation might be for Internet users to go out of their way to validate those people who admit error. In discussion fora for there is no “like” button, a “+1” post might be in order.

Let’s help that turns out to be more successful than Arlo’s attempt at a movement.