Liberty's Blog

Comments on Comments

Instapundit laments

I GOT AN EMAIL THE OTHER DAY slamming me for not having comments on my site. I get those occasionally, and they're usually nasty enough that they're self-refuting -- yeah, I really want to give you a platform, buddy. . . .
But, as Eugene Volokh noted in a discussion of this topic a while back (read it, as I agree entirely and he said it better than I could, as usual), the worst part isn't the flaming by people who don't agree with you, it's the nasty comments by people who generally agree with you.
For example, Q&O made a perfectly reasonable point about James Rubin, only to see the comments degenerate into nasty remarks about Rubin's wife, Christiane Amanpour. I don't like Amanpour, whom I regard as excessively agenda-driven, but I wouldn't want her called names like that on my blog. Which means I'd either have to edit such comments out, or live with it. I don't have the time for the former, and I'm not willing to do the latter.
Some blogs, like Daniel Drezner's or Roger Simon's seem to avoid that problem most of the time, but I think it's a scaling issue -- up to a certain level of traffic it feels like a conversation, past that it degenerates into USENET. At any rate, I'd rather blog than deal with comments.

I was concerned when I first set up comments, and Instapundant expresses thos concerns pretty well. So far, commenting has proven useful. Comments have made it clear if I make too loose with facts, or misunderstood them. Comments have cheered me on, and expressed disaproval, but mostly they have been appropriate.

posted by Liberty @ 6:02 AM