An experiment in commenting

I will try turning on the comments for a few days to see how people behave.  pl 

Comments

[Cy]

Thank you, sir.

Time moves on relentlessly. Perhaps you can trust someone to moderate potential comments?

No insult intended. (Recently lost my first and best teacher of Spanish to the passage of years.)

[FkDahl]

I am grateful for the opportunity to comment but will say nothing more until I have something worthwhile to add to the correspondance on this site.

[Master Slacker]

Thank you. I don't say much but it's nice to hear what others of similar mind think.

[turcopolier]

Cy
Go to hell.

[EEngineer]

The Borg will send it's minions to disrupt any public forum that attempts to shine a light on it's doings. Some form of moderation will be required...

[Martin Oline]

Thank you. I miss the comments of our British friends.

[Account Deleted]

Hello from Typepad!

[J]

Colonel,

Thank you for opening up your comments section once again. While the write-ups by the authors are the meat and potatoes, the comments sections provides the desert and garnishing to the write-ups in question. Again, thanks.

Now to a current item, seems that Sen. Blackburn's (R-TN) latching on like a badger/wolverine to former NSC LTC Vindman testimonies against POTUS, has gotten the ire of both OSD Esper and Asst. OSD Norquist both of them are crying foul and vowing to 'protect' Vindman.

Didn't Vindman 'volunteer' his testimony, or was it 'drafted' by Schiff and crew? I've slept since then.

So to the question was/is Sen. Blackburn out of line, or was/is she right to tear to shreds Vindman?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/25/politics/pentagon-retaliation-vindman-marsha-blackburn-tweet/index.html

Once again, thank you for opening up the comments sections.

[turcopolier]

Marilyn

It seems the problem is resolved.

[Barbara Ann]

Very pleased to see comments again open. I hope contributors will in future be respectful of one another's views and not allow the intelligent and respectful discussion that has characterized SST over the years to degenerate into ad hominem. Commenting on a moderated blog is a rare privilege and must be treated as such.

I see that one currently has to repeatedly click a 'Show more comments' button in order to view all comments, is that by design Colonel? This appears to be true on old/archived posts also.

[Artemesia]

Thank Zeus!

I've been dying to comment on my Dad's '47 DeSoto -- yellow with a black top, big and heavy as a tank, stick shift. I learned to drive in that machine, drove it to high school graduation, dropped off friends who rode with me but could not find a place to park. Missed graduation, but I loved being in that car.

Dad kept it in the backyard for years, entertaining fantasy of restoring it. Neighbor kids who thought of my parents as their grandparents used to play in the car. They beat the heck out of the interior, which greatly disappointed Dad.

Ended up having the car towed away after Mom and Dad died, but I still have the DESOTO logo and hood ornament -- fully 18" long, Lucite ?? on chrome, "Flying Goddess."

(Thanks for re-considering comments. Articles in the interim have been very informative -- Larry Johnson, Harper, others are genuine assets. I hope your trust is not betrayed.)

Those were the days.

[Haralambos]

Thank you, Col. Lang, for re-opening this feature. I appreciate the information and perspectives that open my eyes wider.

[different clue]

I had resigned myself to the fact of comments being gone for real and gone for good this time. I am thankful and hopeful to see them being tried experimentally to see how it goes.

If a certain percent of commenters become again unhelpful, I wonder whether banning the unhelpful commenters in order to retain the helpful commenters in a retained comments section would be considered. I of course would imagine myself to be among the retained, but if I were to be among the banned under such an approach; that would be the price I pay in order to perhaps see the comments function itself keep continuing.

If indeed it becomes decided that the comments section will be retained, might it be possible to restore the former " show all comments" functionality including the " "commenter Y replied to commenter X" feature from before? If not, then not.

[Pollychrome]

THANKS, Colonel. I comment rarely, but value others' views and always look forward to your views of theirs.

[J]

The China coronavirus smacks of a bioweapons research that got out of control on the Chinese PLA.

[turcopolier]

Elora Danan

It took you less than 24 hours to say that the US launched a bioweapon in China. I posted this as evidence of why moderating comments by enemies of the US sucks. BTW your English is too good in this one for your girlie disguise.

[Patrick Armstrong]

Glad to hear it. The comments are one of the best things about the site: intelligent, thoughtful, knowledgeable people for the most part.

[J]

Chinese biological espionage has both ou U.S. and Canada concerned

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/30/chinese-biological-espionage-in-boston-the-latest-in-beijings-ip-theft-campaign-experts/

Chinese researchers and students escorted out of a Canadian lab

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/lab-researcher-rcmp-national-microbiology-lab-1.5212851

[Dungroanin]

As a couple year lurker on your very excellent site with unique and timely writings I believe that the comments as moderated and published at your pleasure are a vital conduit of opinion and sit well with the right of freedom of speech, that is one of the best social democratic concepts created in human civilisations.

I am based in the UK and will hope to preserve my reticience to comment here as I found it unnecessary, because most opinions I would have presented were always adequately enough represented by someone of your regulars.

I am self fashioned as DunGroanin in forums because I stopped being a supporter of the Guardian 'newspaper' in the UK after 35 years because it became a state mouthpiece. It was affectionately know as the Grauniad because of it's regular typesetting spelling error. Now it is just a Groaning msm ragsheet.
They stopped my comments about their turn to the Borg side (a great invention of yours) on their 'comment is free' board without reason!
Hence I decided to start acting and stop groaning. A 'Dun' being an allusion of a prefix given by a retiree to their retirement bungalow normally followed by their previous profession (it supposedly has a Scottish feel - though I am not).

Whatever my opinion on American geopolitics, which affects me or American internal politics, which I can do nothing about or possible misunderstandings on what social democracy really is - I thank you for your often courageous and informative site. Long may it persevere. I quote it often at other sites.

On which note I shall depart with just one question on a subject that was being covered here, but of which I have not heard anything about for nearly two months - What has happened to the Durham investigation?

[CK]

Good to see commenting return. Thank you.

[Andrei Martyanov]

The Borg will send it's minions to disrupt any public forum that attempts to shine a light on it's doings.

Especially when those minions are of all people... Hungarian communists who attacked my blog the moment I posted about Greta Thunberg needing urgent psychiatric help and the theory of anthropogenic global warming was called what it is--a BS. Man, did I have a comment section filled with Hungarian Communists, LOL. I am not kidding. But yes, they will send minions be those Hungarian communists or Swedish multi-genderists, or Hasbara, or you name it.

[different clue]

Andrei Martyanov,

I have just now realized you have a blog. I have just barely begun to read it.

I gather that signing up to comment requires either Discus which I learned to dislike during its short-term period of experimental use here . . . or two Social Media outlets which I don't exist on. Or GoogleSpy which also I don't like.

Oh well . . . picky picky picky I guess.

[different clue]

I am glad to see a lot of comments again be visible without having to click to increase for every next comment, one by one by one.

I notice that the " X wrote in response to Y " functionality is still not restored. And I wonder if that is in itself an experiment to see if the absence of that functionality results in lower and slower buildup of backbite and bicker than the direct ability of commenters to respond to eachother may well have led to.