I fully share Eugene’s thoughts about civility in comments. Up to now, I’ve had a very hands-off approach to comments in response to my posts and have allowed the maximum time (5 days) for responses.
But I’ve noticed the comments in response to SSM posts have been especially repetitive, inflammatory, and personal in nature. There have also simply been too many of them. All of this discourages people with useful and original things to say from entering the discussion or from continuing to contribute when they do. SSM is an issue about which people on both sides have especially strong views and emotions, but there should be a forum for civil debate about it. I’ve thought about altogether closing my SSM posts to comments, but I’m not yet ready to do that. There have been some really good comments on both sides and I would not want to lose that.
So instead I’ve decided to do the following on SSM posts: (1) Limit comments to no more than 2 days (frankly, most of the useful things are usually said in the first 20-50 comments anyway); (2) more aggressively delete offensive, inflammatory, and personally abusive posts; and (3) ban commenters who repeatedly violate the civility requirement.
I hope this will make for a more constructive debate.
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