April 12, 2005

Question for Readers on Comment Banning

More and more of my comment threads are degenerating into name calling.

Don't make me come down out of the ivory tower and put my foot up your asses!

Anyway, I rarely ban any one from making comments. But should I?

On the one hand, I like to be challenged. When you start banning people you weed out a potential pool of those who will be the most critical, and therefore those that are most willing to point out a flaw in your arguements.

On the other hand, sometimes these disagreements piss people off. Then name calling begins. And then it gets pretty nasty. I'm afraid many of our long-time readers have stopped commenting because they see this degeneration in dialogue.

So, what do you think? Should I just start banning people? Should we lay out some ground rules and then only ban those who break them? Any suggestions?

By Rusty Shackleford, Ph.D. at 03:53 PM | |