By Bill Siggins

I wasn't really trying to be provocative. My posting on a respected international business networking website was an attempt to seek advice and perhaps to stir a little debate.

I thought I had constructed my posting in an unemotional and objective manner. I stated a question, supported my argument with facts and personal experience and qualified my criticism with broad exemptions. I felt I was stating the obvious and I was seeking advice.

The first vindictive reply was a shocker. The issue I had raised was mostly ignored and I became the target. My motives were impugned, my abilities were mocked and my attitude was questioned.

While the majority of the nearly 200 postings were interesting and helpful, a number of them seemed motivated by spite and written with malicious ill will.

At first I fought back with humor and perhaps a little sarcasm, but the vitriol I received in return actually scarred me.

My posting asked "Why won't Chinese businesses clean up their English pollution?" Okay, maybe it was a little provocative, but in my ensuing dissertation I was careful not to criticize Chinese people or China in general.

I was expressing my frustration in trying to get some Chinese companies to take their English branding more seriously.

Most of the attackers of my post appear not to have read my preamble, and seemed unprepared to accept that a foreigner had a legitimate right to complain.

I was rudely told I didn't know anything about China. It was assumed I couldn't speak, or read or write Chinese. One writer searched my company's website and posted a typo on page 14, which somehow disqualified me from commenting on China's ubiquitous bad English. Another suggested Chinese companies didn't need to improve their English but that the rest of the world needed to learn Putonghua.

This incident reminded me of a similar incident when I commented on an article in a Canadian newspaper. The story was critical of the closure of a Chinese website, which I found to still be up and running. Other commentators immediately labelled me an agent for the Chinese government and questioned my morals and motives.

What's worse, my follow-up comment was edited and my last one didn't get past the newspaper's forum editors. Meanwhile, outrageous, McCarthy-era slander was posted with no concern for the rabid insults it contained.

These experiences have made me think about the state of discourse on the Internet, especially when it applies to international discussions.

The anonymity of the Internet has given people with latent hostilities a new and safe way to act out in an overly aggressive and mean-spirited way. I doubt the people I encountered online would have the temerity to say such things to my face.

In the West the angry commentators unleash vicious attacks against China's ideology with notions that are often very far from reality. In China the dialogue degenerates when posters question someone's right to comment because of their nationality or race.

Studies show that we gravitate to articles, websites and forums that only support ideas with which we agree, even when we know we're only getting one-sided or incomplete versions of the truth. We self-edit to support the conclusions we want to reach.

Internet search engines are funneling readers to their preferred schools of thought which only further corral people in their own space. Some media companies see this as an opportunity to target markets, but it can also be a setback to understanding a complicated world, which requires an open and available mind.

Making a passionately reasoned argument requires knowledge and skills that need to be learned.

The filters we use to acquire knowledge, view our histories, and reflect on our futures need more transparency. This is how we can broaden our outlook so we are more accepting of diversity and less likely to denigrate those who are different.

We need to debate ideas, not people. We need to better distinguish objective from subjective arguments. We need to more carefully consider facts that don't mesh with our preconceived ideas.

Of course, we can still have hearty and passionate discussions and we can feel strongly that our side is more right than the other.

When we agree to disagree, however, let's learn to be polite about it.

The author is the founder of R.D. Communications. billsiggins@ realdogcomm.cn