Hi,

So you remember a while back I turned off comments on my blog? Some of you have probably noticed I re-enabled them recently.

I’m really glad I did. The quality of comments on my recent political stuff has been extremely high. There’s a lot that I’ve disagreed with, but it was largely for sensible reasons on which intelligent, rational, civilized people can disagree on – often one of us was wrong, sometimes we merely disagreed on some fundamental point. That’s fine. Disagreement is healthy, and lead to good discussions.

But I just want to emphasise that: Apparently we, the internet, are capable of having reasonable and mostly polite conversations about politics, but we can’t manage to do that about programming. That’s a bit sad, don’t you think?

Anyway, I’ve decided to leave the comments on for now, but I will be adopting a stricter moderation policy. If I think your comment isn’t worth responding to – either because you clearly haven’t read the article, because your comment is unnecessarily rude or inflammatory, or even just because I think you’re clearly an idiot, I will delete it rather than responding to it.

And remember: I’ve received nearly 100 comments in the last couple of weeks, none of which I have had to moderate. If they can manage, you can too.

David

PS. I know you’re just itching to write an idiotic inflammatory comment which has misread the article in response to this. Go ahead. Get it out of your system. Last chance.

Hi there,

I see you want to write a comment on my blog. That’s awesome! It’s really great that after reading the article you have interesting and constructive feedback to deliver.

…oh, you didn’t read the article? Just the title? That’s fine I suppose. I’m sure you’ve got something useful to contribute anyway.

Not so much, huh?

Every time I get a new email saying “There’s a new comment on your blog” I wince and think “I wonder what this guy has got wrong”. Maybe some of it is my fault – there have definitely been cases where people who I believe have actually read the article have been confused as to the point – but I’ve seen enough of it on other peoples’ blogs to know that actually for the most part this is just what people on the internet are like.

I don’t care if people disagree with me if they do so reasonably. Bob knows I’m often wrong. But every time I have to deal with someone who hasn’t read the article, or who is more interested in setting up strawmen, or who will come up with an entirely new “reason” why I am wrong which contradicts all the previous ones he gave that I have just spent time refuting, I feel sad inside and become a little less likely to write articles.

So, I’m done. New posts will not have comments enabled. Old posts will have comments disabled as and when I have reason to do so. If you want to respond to my post, you can do it by one of the myriad communication and discussion mediums the internet has to offer: I’m easily available on twitter or email, and you can show the entire world how clever you are in the discussions on reddit, ycombinator or the like if it’s there.

To those of you who wrote worthwhile comments, of which there were a small but vocal minority, thanks. It was appreciated. Sorry to take this away from you.