Organisational leaders send an open letter to secular community

The open letter calling for more civility in online interaction can be found on CFI’s website (and doubtless on other sites). Signatories include some impressive organisational leaders (singling out any in particular would be invidious). I don’t wish to comment in detail, but of course I deplore the incivility (and worse) that has hurt many individuals and damaged the atheist, secularist, and skeptic movements. This has been a theme of mine for a long time.

Note that the signatories do not merely call for more civility from others. They say they “pledge to make our best efforts toward improving the tone and substance of online discussions.” In itself that seems like a good thing, so we’ll now see what action they take to fulfil that pledge.

As always, this particular blog is committed to encouraging reasonable, civil, charitable discussion. I expect commenters here to respect that, which they usually do. Moderation is light, but I do take steps to try to keep discussion from devolving into flame wars, vilification, dogpiling, etc. Accordingly, it will be business as usual here.