As of today, Sitemeter credits this site with 381 average daily visits. Not that this is anything to brag about, but it is considerably in excess of what I expected given the topics I discuss. I am grateful to the readership. But with the rise in numbers comes a desire on my part to improve the site. Yes I know, I could write better posts and I could improve my clunky graphics. But I only have so much time, energy, and talent.
But one thing I can do is improve the level of debate that goes on here. It already is at a fairly high level thanks to some outstanding commenters that I have managed to attract and to whom I am very grateful. If I name some of them, some others who are also very good may feel slighted. They know who they are. Some of them disagree with me thoroughly on certain fundamental points, and it's a good induction that they always will. But they are civil and intelligent and their challenges -- whether or not I can adequately answer them --are welcomed since they force me to clarify and develop my ideas. Equally important is that they share with me certain substantive and procedural assumptions without which fruitful discussion is impossible. In a word, constructive disagreement is possible only against the backdrop of agreement, a topic to be explored in a subsequent post.
So the level of debate is already fairly high. But it can be improved. Toward that end, I intend to enforce, and enforce retroactively albeit with some exceptions, a policy that I have been somewhat lax in enforcing. This is my Comments Policy stated on my right sidebar. It has been there since I moved MP to Powerblogs due (among other reasons) to my being pestered by certain disorderly blogospheric elements over at the old weblog. It disallows comments from people who comment anonymously or pseudonymously. Therefore,
1. Don't apply to comment at this site unless you provide your real name and display your real name.
2. Don't apply to comment at this site unless you have a web presence that allows me to verify who you are and what you are like, or unless you introduce yourself via e-mail, or unless you have already established your bona fides with me.
Some other important points that I deem nonnegotiable and self-evident:
3. Leaving comments is a privilege, not a right. The site administrator is under no obligation to accept comments at all, let alone from any particular person. Nor is he under any obligation to let stand any comment he deems of low quality. And to underscore the obvious: nothing in the nature of a weblog requires that it accept comments from readers.
4. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or editing or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate. To make the latter point perfectly clear: I am under no sort of obligation to provide anyone with a forum.
5. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic. The operative word here is civil. If you don't value civility, or don't know what it is, then you need to go elsewhere.
6. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.
7. As mentioned above, constructive diagreement is possible only among people who share a number of key substantive and procedural assumptions. In my experience, most liberals (in the current acceptation of the term) and leftists do not share enough of my assumptions to warrant discussions with them, at least not on social and political matters. There is no common ground from which to proceed; hence no progress is made. The comments of such people are therefore useless to me. I don't learn anything from them. And it is quite clear that they don't learn anything from me. So there is simply no point in interacting with them.
In my laxity and liberality I have allowed some liberals and leftists to comment here. That was a mistake made against my better judgment. I ask these people to go elsewhere. The blogosphere is deep and wide and there is a place for everyone.
