As noted, the comment section to the post in question is not closed permanently. It was closed temporarily, and it was closed temporarily shortly after your comment because I was authoring my “moderator comment” at the same time you wrote your comment.

Hopefully, more appropriate discussion may continue when comment section for that post is reopened.

I am generally going to make a point of not giving clarification, but as I’ve written here and there (on Marmot’s) on the subject, untangling long off topic tit-for-tat arguments and games of who-called-who-what-first is just too much work to do unpaid and it probably not possible anyway, and furthermore it is expected that there will be collateral damage. That is, people who do nothing but contribute to healthy discussion will also fall victim to moderation actions, and if I/we take action like this from time to time it is going to be because of overall tone, not because of a single individual or comment, because that would be simple: we’d just delete. We’re sorry (really) but for now the social atmosphere is more important than individual justice, so please don’t take anything personally. Hopefully when we open the thread again you will have already set things in the right direction.

I’m not going to protest either way, I just would like some clarification so I can better know how much to say in comments, and where it needs to be turned into it’s own post on my own blog.

PP

Thank you for your concerns and ideas. I’ve given this a little thought. And while I wouldn’t mind corresponding with _you_, I think I need to make a policy of not pussing myself in a position where I (and other future moderators) are asked to defend decisions or face “why me and not him” types of questions, because I’d feel bad for not responding and people might be offended when they don’t get answers.

One way to keep oneself out of that kind of trouble is to be avoid being contactable by email. It would be nice and maybe even helpful for people to be able to “flag” inappropriate comments but opening up a user hotline is not the answer, since I already lead several lives already. However, I’m going to be posting an email address anyway: guessthispart@fastmail.jp. I use this _only_ to log in to MSN Messenger and don’t check the inbox. As a matter of fact I think I have it set so all mail is rejected.

I use this address to let people get a piece of me online, in realtime, as if to stop me for a minute in the hallway. I use this email address for the same purpose at another forum (one about frame design for mamachari, if you can believe that) and it has served me well by making sure that conversations either happen or they don’t, and there are not piles “work” left for me that I would never get to.

Even if you get 100% of UN Secratary Generals interested it only increase the readership by 1. Meanwhile the existing readership….

no, you cunts asked for it…

eat it up