A quick review of my comment policy:
WordPress, the software I use, provides a comment-moderation feature that blocks all incoming comments until they are approved by me. I’ve never switched it on; I’ve been fortunate, over the decades, never to have felt the need. After 6,766 posts, and 28,888 comments, I’ve only ever removed a couple of dozen.
That said, this is a personal website, and I am its absolute despot, ruling entirely by whim. I am under no obligation to provide publication to anyone.
Oscar Wilde once said: “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” I have no problem with commenters who present contrary opinions, or who seek to correct me on some point of fact; indeed I welcome them, and have even had my opinions changed by them on several occasions. But if you are vulgar, or abusive, or excessively long-winded, or incivil, or present yourself in some other way that makes engaging with you unpleasant, and more trouble than it’s worth — or if it’s obvious that you’re just here to be a blowhard on a soapbox, and that no amount of conversation with you will offer the slightest chance of any give-and-take — then I will show you the door.
All I ask, really, is this: be charming. Don’t be tedious.
2 Comments
Boorish commenters sometimes soil the threads at the Orthosphere. They are most often atheists of the tiresome sort, although religious cranks have done their share of soiling. As you say, tediousness is the essence of the objectionable commenter, although the perfect cocktail of objectionable commenting is two parts tediousness, one part sententiousness, and a generous dash of ill-mannered sarcasm.
Comments are a construct of the white male patriarchy.
They will be redistributed to those pages who have none in the spirit of egalitarian equity.
Vorwarts!