Do I lose readers with such Stalinist attitude and is it not the case that the more comments I have, the longer my member is? Yes of course. And so? Who said I long for enlargement? I am writing for fun, to exercise writing for educated lay people, and to get constructive feedback from the one or the other insightful being that may find me this way. I did not sign up for participating in pseudo-democratic façade painting, giving the masses the feeling that they have a say, that internet somehow gives them the long awaited glorious path to some misconceived freedom instead of being the next evolutionary stratum that will enslave the sub-systems like it usually and quite inevitably happens in any by evolution emerging layer. I am not paid for stabilizing a playground where a certain part of the population may abreact their energies so the real shit can go on undisturbed. I do not fall for your silly charades, Children of the democratic doctrine of freedom without being allowed to ask “free of what?”; I delete and edit – period.
The following triggers my Troll/Pseudo-science indicator, making me write arrogant stuff like “Pseudo-science indicator lamp status: Dim Yellow / Bright Orange / Incessant Flashing of Deep Red accompanied by a Bell going RING RING RING RRRRRRRIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGADING !”:
1) Conspiracy theories [implied ones count, too, like telling us that the Einstein equivalence can be proven "wrong" by simple experiments in an elevator, as if there is some sort of conspiracy hiding this fact and suppressing the information that helps you discovering the truth (in fact, equivalence was never supposed to hold in space-time volumes as big as a real elevator)]
2) Going off on a tangent without providing the relevance of doing so
3) Unreasonably looooong comments (useful comments are short and to the point)
4) No value to me or readers (is there even one point we take home except for that the writer is witty? Especially to those super witty English language artists able to refer cunningly hidden to the latest in video gaming while cleverly misquoting Shakespeare: Oh you are so smooooth - but sorry, this blog is for an international audience; make it so that even my Chinese friends can understand it if they wanted to. Yes, there are some that follow my blog. English is not your language anymore - it is our language now!)
5) Too much basics that are just totally wrong
6) Too much stuff that does not make any sense whatsoever (not even wrong, meaningless, just using words that sound good)
7) Big name dropping (Einstein farted this but Feynman farted that)
8) Out of context citations
9) Thinly veiled threats (mostly about stuff that would have at most petty consequences: “write like this and somebody sees your blog and may not give you the slave job you are running away from for the last 20 years” (not literally, but in essence) was the yet funniest, but my blog is young, and surely worse will come)
10) Look at my official honors, titles, degrees, friends who have been on TV, but actually I am a renegade and do not care about such at all (the funniest yet is a guy who claims that the so called
H factor is “nothing” but who is also the only one who puts his H factor prominently on his profile)
11) Sock-puppetry
12) Unreadable language that tells us: “I do not even care about my own comment anyways.”
13) Any other plain trolling (passive aggressive trying to derail a discussion just to sit back and watch the masses go at each other)
14) a lot more, and so on, etc. ...
So, the next time I edit something, I will just link to this post. This should be enough to ensure that the further removal of any asking along the lines of “why don’t you at least explain to us point for point why you are such a Hitler with this poor so terribly unreasonably marginalized victim” will not come as a surprise.
You make a good point - the downside to journalism is that in the interests of being balanced and given space constraints it sometimes makes opposing viewpoints look equal. We are not hampered by the desire for faux balance. Not everyone will agree in science, of course - string model versus standard model is not getting resolved any time soon - but I certainly agree that not all things need to be respected.
As we have grown, keeping the culture in the right place is harder - we are the only 'open' communication site in science (well, there may be others, but they are tiny) and it's a worthy experiment but it doesn't mean all participants are equal. Generally, when I see Dirac mumbo-jumbo or laws of thermodynamics violated, I check out. But the best reason to allow columnists personal moderation is because everyone has different tolerances for comments. One guy who has written here I know has never read a comment, or responded to one - one columnist never allowed comments on anything she wrote. Some jump into it and let anything go. That diversity is terrific.