On links, comments, and "ranting" well

​In case you missed it, check out my guest post on Heather Sunseri’sblog—Writing Around Your Idols. 

And you simply must read Jason Boyett’s supremely well-executed rant against Focus on the Family’s “Stand for Christmas” campaign, in which customers can visit the Focus on the Family Web site and rate retailers based on how “Christmas-friendly” they are.  I suppose that since it’s not an election year, Focus on the Family has decided to endorse materialism, entitlement, and rudeness instead of the usual political candidates.

Scot McKnight does an excellent job of explaining why the “Pray for Obama” bumper stickers (that refer to Psalm 109:8) abuse Scripture. And Mike Hyatt provides some helpful tips on how to increase comments on your blog.

Speaking of comments, I’m pleased to announce that we will be integrating a new comment platform into the blog next week that I think you will really like. We debated between using IntenseDebate or DISQUS, and I think we’re going to go with DISQUS. (Let me know if you have an opinion on that.) There may be a few hiccups at first, but bear with us. It will be worth it! I’ll also include a new comment policy on the site. (I’ve got a post on Calvinism waiting in the wings, so we can fully test the functionality of the comment platform!) :-)

Questions for you:

I don’t know if it’s something in the water or what, but a lot of my blogging friends have been writing so-called “rants” lately. Some are better executed than others, and some have received better responses than others.  How do you feel about online rants? What qualifies something as a rant? Can they be helpful? Harmful? How do you "rant well"?

Also, feel free to weigh in on any of the links above. (If the "Stand for Christmas" thing doesn't make you want to rant, I don't know what will!)