Those comments were worse than useless. Very, very little information, and lots of attacks against other posters, Yu-na, and Orser.

Why are you such a cult-follower of the Hole, especially when you like to criticize Dave's ESL Cafe? It's like the Moonies criticizing the Scientologists.

extrakorea wrote:
Those comments were worse than useless. Very, very little information, and lots of attacks against other posters, Yu-na, and Orser.

I was hoping that someone would have some insight I had missed, like something from the Korean media that I am too lazy to look at right now.

Why are you such a cult-follower of the Hole, especially when you like to criticize Dave's ESL Cafe? It's like the Moonies criticizing the Scientologists.

Well, the thing is that I do think there is a lot of valuable stuff in the comments section, but you just have to wade through it to find it. I don't think the Dave's ESL comparison is apt, though, because the latter has (in my experience) a far worse noise-to-signal ratio. And at least some on Marmot's (including Marmot himself) will call out the bad behavior when it happens. Not so on Dave's (from what I've seen). When even my thick-skinned ESL-teaching ex says she can't stand Dave's ESL but likes to read Marmot's, I don't think I'm alone.

But also, I'm friends with The Marmot, and I enjoy the quality and depth of the posts he and most of his guest bloggers put up. His blog is the closest we have to a "blog of record," which makes it worth paying attention to.

That's why I follow it. I post about TMH every now and then when there's an interesting discussion, a notable comment, an egregious comment, or some horrible sideshow.

But I also follow your blog as well (and prominently positioned it in my side bar). And I wish your blog (and mine, and others like Gusts of Popular Feeling) got a steadier stream of thoughtful commenters. In fact, when you're preparing a post you think is something you'd like people to pay particular attention to, give me an email heads-up and I'll try to link to it. Not that you would get a lot more extra traffic that way, but I'd like for quality posts to get some recognition.

ExtraKorea,

I think the key is not to take the comments section at the 'Hole too seriously and I agree with Kushibo that you have to wade through a lot of crap to find intelligent comment. The rest of it, well, I just view it as low-brow entertainment. You have the expat Korea haters and the Kyopo expat haters; neither of which are much use other than a good laugh. As for Dave's, I can't comment on it since I gave up on it years ago.