Not so one Dec. 25 entry, in which Arnold Zwicky traces the divergent sources of a clever line by Paul Krugman (writing on politics: "No, Virginia, at this point there is no sanity clause.").
The entry itself is brief, and the comments section is abruptly truncated by Zwicky after a commenter went off-topic, attempting to move the discussion from language to politics.
Zwicky writes, in his terminal comment, writes:
I've had it repeatedly explained to me that when you open a posting to comments, the comments section then "belongs to" the commenters (who are free to take up any topic they want), not to you. I reject this idea, but hardly anyone seems to agree with me.
Well, I certainly agree with him, as do many other bloggers who moderate the comments on their sites. Unfortunately, Zwicky has decided that to obviate such a hijacking in the future, he simply won't allow any comments at all.
I do hope Zwicky reconsiders this drastic measure. It's a shame the rest of us should miss the lively discussions Language Log usually inspires just because one crank realized there's a bigger audience for his political views there than at his own blog.
My decision to cut off comments on this posting was instigated by this particular comment, but it follows in a long line of similar comments. Against my better judgment, I was convinced a while back to allow some comments, but I view this as a failed experiment and have now gone back to my (and our) previous practice.
ReplyDeleteThe alternative is to delete all such attempts to hijack Language Log. When I do this, I'm accused of censorship, as if everyone had a right to post whatever they want on Language Log (when there are now huge numbers of blogs around).
I will probably soon stop posting to Language Log, even with comments off. It's just too much grief.