The difference between opinion on the editorial page of the paper and opinion in the world of zero filters. Perhaps one in a million people is a flaming loon but that's over 7,000 people given the world population. Sadly a lot of them have Internet access.
So the folks who are moderate and make up the bulk of the population don't respond, and the ones who are most easily incensed do. In a newspaper the editor would get all the letters that came in as rebuttals to an opinion and print the ones that were insightful or made a reasoned argument, and they would simply throw away all of the letters from folks who were ranting. This allowed for reasoned (if heated) debate to be carried out in the opinion section of the daily paper.
Twitter doesn't 'fix' this, I don't think they see it as a problem, but a bit of moderation goes a long way toward providing a better environment.
It is an unsolved problem to date, perhaps App.net or identi.ca or some other micro-blogging service will take it on and make things better. I expect it would attract quality posts and quickly gain a solid base.
So the folks who are moderate and make up the bulk of the population don't respond, and the ones who are most easily incensed do. In a newspaper the editor would get all the letters that came in as rebuttals to an opinion and print the ones that were insightful or made a reasoned argument, and they would simply throw away all of the letters from folks who were ranting. This allowed for reasoned (if heated) debate to be carried out in the opinion section of the daily paper.
Twitter doesn't 'fix' this, I don't think they see it as a problem, but a bit of moderation goes a long way toward providing a better environment.
It is an unsolved problem to date, perhaps App.net or identi.ca or some other micro-blogging service will take it on and make things better. I expect it would attract quality posts and quickly gain a solid base.