No comments

Crossposted at India Uncut.

I keep getting mails from people asking why I don’t have comments enabled, and to deflect any more questions on that subject, I am posting on it. I disabled comments not because I don’t want the kind of intelligent interaction that I see on so many other sites, but because, while writing my cricket blog on Cricinfo, 23 Yards, I got flamed too often for my liking. As some of that audience also follows my other blogs, I thought that it was safer to keep comments disabled, and avoid abuse on my site. I envy those bloggers whose readers provide civil discourse – as I’d written in an earlier post, comments can make a good blog stand out – but mine is read by all kinds.

Some of the queries I have received on this subject have been aggressive ones, with one gentleman asking me: “How dare you start a blog in the public domain and not have comments? This is the public space, and all blogs should have comments.”

Well, firstly, there is no convention that "all blogs should have comments". Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan, to name two of the most widely read bloggers, don’t have comments enabled. Secondly, this blog is not public property, but my space. As Bill Vallicella writes in his pithy post on why he disabled comments: “A man's blog is his castle.” And while I would be glad to let civil people wander into this particular castle, given my past experiences, I’d rather keep that drawbridge up.

Vallicella, interestingly, did eventually enable comments. But I don’t see myself doing that anytime soon. No disrespect is meant to you by this, and you are always welcome to write to me.