More on Comments: A Reminder of a Policy

Having recently offered tips to commenters, we realize it is timely to state afresh what is a SWNIDish policy of blogging.

To wit: this is a blog, not a forum. That is to say, we express our own opinions in the blog entries. We invite comments, but we do not respond to them except under the most exceptional of circumstances. Any discussion that ensues will be among readers of the blog, not with the blogger, who sits in his ivory tower far above the madding crowd. We write to express our own views, not to get the discussion going. Discuss if you will, but we will move on to something else.

There is a specific rationale for this policy, and it is out of respect for the very people who comment in a way that seems to plead for a response. After a few months of SWNIDishness, we came to realize that those who wanted to use the comments to argue with us were in the main simply ignoring the substance of what we had already stated. Hence, we spent our precious, SWNIDish time restating ourselves, often with an undignified but fully justified tone of impatience. And of course, those who didn't pay attention the first time didn't the second either. And so we responded again, with more undignified impatience.

This, we believed, might seem insulting to those who so comment. And since superstition is the repetition of an action expecting a different response, and since we put high stock on advice about the conservation of valuables before the canine and porcine, we decided to desist from commenting on comments except under the most exceptional of circumstances.

And as it happens, in most instances other gentle readers have taken up the challenge to offer what might be termed a SWNIDish response. This saves us precious time and saves the argumentative commenter unneeded embarrassment engendered by our SWNIDish impatience.

But there are exceptions. Certain gentle readers have by now become well known to others for their erudition and logic. Others occasionally rise to the standard. And so we will, on occasion, deign to respond to them. But only when we have loads of time, which isn't often, and the infrequency of our own recent posts would suggest.

But that's it. So don't expect to see our SWNIDish profile linked in the comments. If you do, count it a singular moment.