In many parts of the US, things are returning to normal thanks to the steep drop in coronavirus cases, which in itself is very likely due to a combination of vaccination and warmer outdoor weather. I very much hope that we can continue this process on into the fall under the threat of new variant strains, and I know that I (and many others) will be watching the statistics very closely as we get into October and November!
But there’s one little local area that is not returning to normal as quickly as I would like: the comments section of this blog. For many years now, I’ve enjoyed the generally high signal/noise ratio here. The topics that come up generally inspire either informed comment or honest curiosity, and the level of discussion has been good, especially by the standards of internet comment forums. I have lost count of the number of times people have asked me how I kept things that way, and the (honest) answer was that it was pretty self-maintaining. Not too many people come in blazing with ad hominem attacks about someone else’s opinions on mass spectrometry, cellular counterscreening assays, or the other sorts of things that have made up the bulk of the postings here.
The pandemic changed that. The readership here increased, but that’s not the main problem by itself. I’m sure that many people will drift off – or already have started drifting off – as this site stops becoming a daily stop for coronavirus news and commentary. Some will stay around, and I’m happy to have them. But – and you know where this is going – there have also been several commentators here who have for some time been abusing this site’s hospitality. I have mentioned to these people that they don’t have to be here, that starting constant wrangling arguments about vaccines, pandemic statistics, etc. in the comments section does not have to be a regular feature of their day. No one’s taken the hint. I’ve also been hoping that these folks would just go away on their own, as fewer and fewer coronavirus posts get written, but that’s not happening very smoothly, either. I will still be writing about the pandemic from time to time, naturally, which sets things off again. And even the posts that aren’t on that topic tend to get their comments sections diverted all too quickly.
So after much thought, here’s what’s going to happen. Longtime readers will know that I have kept a very light hand on the comments here over the years, but starting today I will be deleting whatever I feel are tendentious comments meant to keep the coronavirus arguments going. I’ve actually canned a good number of comments over the last few months that are full of outright misinformation, and I’m going to lower my cutoff for that stuff, too. Complaints about censorship, freedom of expression, and so on will be allowed to stay up on this post, but only this one. I’ll be deleting those as well if they show up in the comments to other posts, and after an interval the comments to this post will be closed as well. Update: my job will be easier if people refrain from responding to obvious troll comments before I can get to them.
To the people who have been abusing the system: you are of course free to have your own opinions, and you are free to express them on your own site or anywhere else that will have you, but this is a warning notice. Do what you like but don’t do it here. You are free to contribute your thoughts on other topics if you honestly have something to add or some question to ask, but any sign of attempted pandemic flaming will be deleted as quickly as I see it. Go away and tell everyone that Big Pharma muzzled you, if that makes you feel better. But in the end, you’re already going to be the last people standing after the vaccines wipe the rest of us out, right? Isn’t that enough?
I don’t like this solution much. It’s going to be a burden on my time for a while , but I don’t like it on principle, either. Even so, I think it’s worth it to try to wrench this site back to something like what it used to be, before people showed up starting pointless arguments about pandemic statistics and vaccine issues all night long, every damn night of the week. And if the only way to do that is by force, well. . .nothing else has worked. Here goes.
The post An Announcement About the Comment Section first appeared on In the Pipeline.
