comments
gregladen | October 2, 2013Popular Science, one of the longest running and, well, popular, magazines that deals with science has a website. Last Tuesday, on-line editor Suzanne LaBarre announced that Popular Science would no longer have comment sections on most of its pages. The reason sited was that "Comments can be bad for science." She noted:
A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another…
esiegel | September 23, 2012"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." -Eleanor Roosevelt
I've always been a big fan of personal freedom, which includes the freedom to speak your mind, say what you think, ask questions, be wrong, and learn. This is, after all, how we've all improved ourselves over our lives, as none of us were born knowing all that we've managed to acquire over our lifetimes.
And I've never had to have an official comment policy for all the years I've been blogging; the most I've ever…
stoat | February 25, 2012Continuing in from Comments elsewhere which has faded into the dust of past ages.
Timmy elsewhere but really on If the MWP Was Global What Does That Tell Us About Climate Change Now? wherein Timmy is clueless about climate science.
> From which the takeaway point is that perhaps climate sensitivity is lower than currently thought
You realise you sound like Ritchie, talking about stuff that you really haven't got a clue about, don't you?
It is the other way round.
I used to be Snow White
(in which Willis Eschenbach fails to read a paper by Curry)
> You say "Curry doesn't claim a relation…
sastyk | February 16, 2012Hi Folks - I've gotten (rightly) a number of emailed complaints about the number of comments that are disappearing, and more questions about whether I am censoring comments, or moderating them.
Other than a few occasions for egregious attacks on other posters or sucking up my time until I had no other choice, I don't censor comments. The reason your comments are disappearing and being marked as held for approval is because of Science Blogs - there are a number of technical problems with my blog that SB has basically not been able to fix (and some of them affect other blogs) - the idea is…
sastyk | November 28, 2011So I've been offline a lot the last few weeks - as you know we had 10 kids in our house for a couple of days the week before Thanksgiving, and I was out of town until yesterday. While a few posts have gone up, I've spent absolutely no time on anything other than absolute necessities online.
So it was something of a shock to me to find in my comments thread a bunch of accusations that I'd been removing comments.due to my disagreement with them. This frankly pissed me off, since I absolutely do not censor or remove comments routinely - or generally at all. Despite a general tendency of…
stoat | September 5, 2011I'm going to intermittently keep track of the comments I make on other blogs. I'll spare you the totally trivial ones, but I don't guarantee this to be especially interesting. One point of doing this will be to track the ones that "disappear" on various sites (no names for now) that I've found don't post anything that might frighten the horses.
I move this up to the top every now and again by fudging the date.
Since this is at the top, I can use it for spam-of-the-week. This weeks spam is: the Boston Marathon.
2011/09/06
Editor's Apologetic Resignation Blows Gaping Hole in Over-Hyped Media…
grrlscientist | July 18, 2010My commenters really make my day. Because I am such a crappy commenter, I really appreciate that about you. There have been many times in my life when my commenters have been the only reason I've continued writing this blog, and there has been an indecent number of times when one or more of my commenters said something that made me decide that it was worthwhile to just stay alive at all.
Every morning, the first thing I do (even before making coffee!) is read your comments. But my fondness for you and your comments is more than just idle words from me: for example, as a measure of how much I…
razib | March 17, 2010A week ago I observed that commenting was being transformed with the spread of Disqus and Echo. The Big Money has now introduced Echo:
The comments themselves are also more interactive. Any of your postings can be shared with your friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, or any of your connections on the other supported services. You can also reply to fellow commenters, tell them you like their posts, or flag any inappropriate or spam messages that you see. All commenters have their own profiles, which you can find by clicking on their profile names and viewing their details. There you'll…
razib | March 8, 2010I'm starting to see Disqus and Echo all over the web. Anyone else notice this? I wasn't happy when I had to move Gene Expression Classic off Haloscan, so the whole "death of comments" fad isn't something I'm a fan of. But it seems like Facebook's creation of a successful private web is now driving the Facebookification of the public web. The main issue I have with all this revolution of the "discussion" is that in my experience as a blogger most "discussion" is retarded and most discussants are barely sentient.
razib | February 15, 2010This comment by Lassi Hippeläinen deserves notice:
Sorry if I sound pedantic - I worked many years as a system architect in computer secutiry - but this argument will not go anywhere, unless its basic terminology is clear. More specifically, there are two concepts that are getting mixed up all the time: anonymity and pseudonymity.
Pseudonyms are stable, used by the same person(s) all the time. They have Internet credibility, even if the real name is not publicly known. Therefore even pseudonymous writers tend to behave civilly. "Anonymous" bloggers are in fact pseudonymous.
Anonyms are…
stoat | February 2, 2010Klimazwiebel is on my reader list, but I don't usually bother with the comments. It looks a bit like the septics are disappointed with him. And he with them: And, damn it, give your names, when making strong statements. When you have an opinion, then you should have also a name. Still, there are some good comments over there (Mike Hulme was there, though he had little to say when I looked).
pontiff | May 27, 2009One of the more interesting "problems" in Science 2.0 is the lack of commenting on online articles. In particular some journals now allow one to post comments about papers published in the journal. As this friendfeed conversation asks:Why people do not comment online articles? What is wrong with the online commenting system[s]? I think this is one of the central issues in Science 2.0.
Or as Carl Zimmer commented on comments appearing at PLOS One a few years back:What I find striking, however, is how quiet it is over at PLOS One. Check out a few for yourself. My search turned up a lot of…
purepedantry | January 22, 2008kevin had this to say on my post about cosmologists speculating that floating brains could appear in empty space:
A good scientific principle: if you theory yields results that are patently ridiculous...
I disagree with the way you wrote this. "patently rediculous" according to what standard? The creationists would say that us evolving from monkeys is "patently rediculous". And I'd say that quantum mechanics is too -- it is an affront to common sense.
So drop that first clause:
A good scientific principle: if your theory yields results that are in clear contradiction with the observable…
purepedantry | January 15, 2008In response my book review of Russell Korobkin's Stem Cell Century, John Thacker responded:
The sad fact of the matter is that Korobkin may have identified the moral premise underlying Bush Administration policy generally, not just for stem cell research. A similar moral premise seems to be at work to justify CIA rendition.
Hmm, does that mean that it was also a moral premise underlying Clinton Administration policy, since the Clinton Administration also performed CIA rendition?
More generally, the philosophical principle that one need not "refuse to benefit from the fruits of bad acts…
purepedantry | January 7, 2008In my post ranting about the Iowa caucuses, I unintentionally set off an argument about whether "I could care less" is fine or whether you should say "I couldn't care less."
vavatch had this to say:
There's nothing wrong with "could care less". Just imagine it being said in a sarcastic fashion, it makes perfect sense. Language changes and evolves, there's no point getting angry about it being supposedly "incorrect" even though in this case it isn't remotely incorrect.
...
The original post should have "could care less" restored and not give in so easily to priggish prescriptivist bullies!
To…
purepedantry | December 23, 2007Gregory had this to say about the post on why you sometimes feel like you are falling when you are going to sleep:
there is a spiritual explanation for this, it is the moment when awareness stops identifying with the physical mind/body, and falls into the subtle body, on its way to complete disassociation with any of the bodies, what we call deep sleep..
in the world, many cultures know about these bodies, have for thousands of years... in the backward west though, with our addiction to the religion of science, we think we are discovering things...
i reckon science wil,l discover the subtle…