Announcement on the comment section

The comment section is veering out of control: civilized debate is now near impossible. I have tried to discuss with some. Recently I have even cut messages from 4 people though only one has noticed so far. This by itself seems to indicate that what people are enjoying is the free for all insult mode in spite of my entreaties to do otherwise.

What to do?

First, this is my blog and this is my vision of what a comment section should be about:

1) a place to add information that I have missed, and I have on occasion incorporated such suggestions. .

2) point out factual mistakes (corrections also have been made on occasion)

3) agree or disagree with me, and if disagree explain so with at least a moderate effort to either bring new facts that I might have overlooked or faults in my logical reasoning. In other words I expect people to respect my work by doing their home work on the topic. I do spend enough time doing research and writing and I expect people to respect this

3) stimulate derivative discussions when appropriate, but discussions still related to the main idea , or at least to a previous posts.

4) breaking new events as I am blessed with informed and diligent readers.

5) and some occasional chit chat as commenters get to know each other, as much as one can get to know each other on line

In other words, very little of these things are happening lately. So it is time to set a few rules. The forbidden things first:

1) bring arguments, grudges from other forums to this one. It is OK to say "In Miguel's comments so and so said that this happened there" It is NOT OK to write "In Miguel's blog so and so called me names". I really do not care, really do not want to know what happens elsewhere. Deal with it over there, and if you think it is truly relevant write me confidentially on that respect.

2) insult other folks in the comment section. This of course does not need explanation

3) troll. This is more subjective I admit. But if some people consider that someone is trolling I will take it into consideration (and if I think it is the case I might act directly, it is my blog after all)

4) hog bandwith (writing more than 2 posts in a row). If you have that much to say, open your own blog. I will put a link to it in link section, promised! If you need more than 2 consecutive posts to expose an idea then you have a problem organizing your thoughts. I am willing to make an exception when a poster writes an obviously interesting story, a well crafted argument, and when that is not a recurrent thing. In such obvious cases it does not matter if there are 10 comment posts in a row.

People who do not respect this will have messages first erased, then get a warning if I have access to their address, and if they have no mail I will ban them outright. But I will not use the comment section to write "so and so is now banned", I will not make it public as there is no need to add further embarrassment to someone or creating a martyr for those who want to become one. If you find yourself banned you will be able to write to me and ask me why and we might work out something.

I have observed long ago that the number of comments do not bear a direct relation with the ratings of the blog. Thus there is no interest for me to have a post with 150 comments when most of those are bickering. So there is no material advantage for me to have a free for all comment section. I write for pleasure and to help and reading my comment section should also be an intellectual pleasure and able to help people.

I hope that folks will understand this and will also understand that ideas are not censored, irrelevant behavior will.

I trust this will be enough to make the comment section again a nice place for people to exchange information and opinions.