Thursday, November 8, 2012

Reminder on commenting

Anonymous comments here are of consistently lower quality than non-anonymous comments. There's a good reason for that - it's cheap talk.

There's been an uptick in anonymous commenting lately, and it seems like the same person but that's the whole problem. I don't know. Trolls can't be identified.

I try not to be too forceful on this usually, but I'm going to start deleting these comments with extreme prejudice. If it is entirely substantive, and not just substantive but substance that makes a contribution to the discussion you may make it through. But don't count on it. Please use consistent pseudonyms at the very least.

UPDATE: Just to clarify - consistent pseudonyms are absolutely fine and completely understandable. No problem whatsoever with that. Commenting as "anonymous" is the problem. If you comment here regularly (which I suspect some anonymous commenters do), I just want readers to be able to match ideas to commenters.

5 comments:

  1. I have made a deliberate choice to post anonymously. I am a philosophy PhD student, and whether or not I am correct, I have concerns regarding future employment prospects. I had similar concerns in my previous life as an NYC attorney (yes, partners in Big Law are very much "group think" types), so I hope you are not too aggressive with this policy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Consistent pseudonyms are absolutely 100% OK and entirely understandable. Sorry for the confusion.

      You are totally fine. It's the people who don't fill in a name and come up as "anonymous".

      Delete
  2. Seems to me that if you didn't like anonymous comments you'd get rid of that option. Otherwise you provide an incentive to comment anonymously (and aren't you economist types all about incentives? that's what they keep on saying on the Freakonomics podcast). Just sayin'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The blogger comment function is tough deal with for commenters. I don't want to close off that option because in most cases anonymous commenters are isolated comments that don't seem to come back and make reasonable points. Usually it's not a problem. So flexibility is nice.

      I really think you and I would both be better off if you just stopped commenting on this blog.

      Delete
  3. Sorry, but that basically no sense at all. From the outside it looks like a system you've set so you've got something automatically to gripe about if someone gets on your nerves. Weird.

    Anyway, that sounds bubbletastic I guess.

    ReplyDelete

All anonymous comments will be deleted. Consistent pseudonyms are fine.