About Comments
A reader wrote today that he misses the comments because the commenters have become his friends. I get that. But let me tell you something about his friends & mine.
They often forget they're writing in a public forum and write instead as if they've had three glasses of wine & are arguing with relatives at Thanksgiving dinner. They sometimes write things that are hurtful to other readers, occasionally taking direct hits at specific commenters. They make up stuff to “bolster” their arguments with phony “facts.” If I ask them to cut it out, some do. Others refuse: one “friend” – who happens to live in my home state and has a habit of suing individuals and public agencies for the fun of it – threatened to sue me when I deleted an outrageous comment he wrote, one that repeated something I told him he could not write on this site (because the writing of it is illegal). His “case” against me was laughable, but it would have been a pain in the ass & an expense for me to have to defend.
I don't pre-screen comments because (a) I find pre-screening sort of imperious; (b) few commenters here need careful minding anyway; and (b) pre-screening inhibits the exchange of ideas by imposing what should be an unnecessary time lag. But I saw the error of my theory this week when one commenter wrote something that could have endangered another and it was at least an hour before I read and removed the offending comment.
So, yes, I'll start up the Comments sections again in a day or two. But I do ask that commenters become their own editors. Before clicking the “Submit Comment” button, please do at least a quick re-read in which you try to see your work through your readers' eyes. It's fine to be offensive, but try a little harder to offend only public figures – or me – and do so in terms that are reasonably defensible.
-- Sister Mary Elephant