"Which ultimately does more good — an article or monograph that is read by 20 or 30 people in a very narrow field..."

"... or a blog post on a topic of interest to many (such as grading standards or tenure requirements) that is read by 200,000?"

What if the post spurs hundreds of comments, is debated publicly in faculty lounges and classrooms, and gets picked up by newspapers and Web sites across the country—in other words, it helps to shape the national debate over some hot-button issue? What is it worth then?

These are 2 extremes, with the emphasis on numbers. Blog posts can also get lost in the endless flood of new words onto the internet. What is the value of any of these writings? The thing about a blog post is that you've got pressure to write clearly and to get it out quickly. Some material fits that form well and some does not.

Form and function. Think about it.

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Threats of rape and murder over replacing Charles Darwin on the £10 note with Jane Austen.

The NYT describes "a countercampaign of online harassment.... against several high-profile women." What was the "campaign" corresponding to the countercampaign, who were these "high-profile" women, and how high-profile were the threateners? 

Caroline Criado-Perez, a blogger and co-founder of the Web site The Women’s Room, began her campaign months ago when she realized that soon there might be no women — except Queen Elizabeth II, of course — left on British bank notes. The issue seemed urgent: in April, the Bank of England had announced that the only woman currently featured among five historical figures, the social reformer Elizabeth Fry, would be replaced by Winston Churchill, indisputably male. Surely, Ms. Criado-Perez argued, there were enough women of note in British history to find at least one more?

Nice to hear that bloggers are "high-profile." When do bloggers get pictured on bank notes? And why wasn't the Queen enough? This seems like a pretty lame feminist issue. By comparison, we women of the United States have never gotten a picture of one of our kind on the paper money. They keep putting one of us on a dollar coin...



... and then acting disappointed when no one wants to use it. Get rid of the damned dollar bill! George Washington is on the quarter, the favorite coin. All those already minted dollar coins would circulate like mad if you pushed Washington back to 1 not 2. And don't tell me Lincoln has 2, so Washington should have 2. We're not talking about testicles. We're talking about representation on money. Get rid of the penny and the dollar, push the 2 rivals for best President back to single representation, and it will free Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea to circulate through the pockets and vending machines of America. Release the women from that vault!

There. I — a female blogger — have started my campaign. Let's see if I can hit the high-profile heights of Caroline Criado-Perez.

So who are the nefarious attackers? They were nobodies:

“I’m going to pistol whip you over and over until you lose consciousness,” one Twitter user warned Ms. Criado-Perez, threatening to “then burn ur flesh.”...

Two men, ages 21 and 25, have been arrested so far in connection with the harassment. Scotland Yard’s electronic-crime unit is investigating the Twitter attacks involving mostly anonymous Internet users, so-called trolls.

It's idiotic to threaten anyone on line, even if you think the target can't possibly believe an attack is in the offing. You'd think the hardcore fans of Charles Darwin would be more evolved.

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"With no notice, the man stepped forward, grabbed the headband off of Dexter's head and threw it to the bottom of our shopping cart."

"He then cuffed Dexter around the side of his head (not hard, but that is not the point) and said with a big laugh, 'You'll thank me later, little man!'"

At the same time as I stepped forward, Dexter grabbed his head where the man had smacked him and threw his other hand forward, stomping his foot and shouting, "NO!" I got between my son and this man and said very firmly, "If you touch my son again, I will cut your damn hands off."

The guy snarled at me, looked at Dexter with disgust and said, "Your son is a f*cking fa***t." He then started sauntering out, but not before he threw over his shoulder, "He'll get shot for it one day."

That spiraled out of control quickly!

The things that happen to HuffPo mombloggers when they happen to go to WalMart with their 2-year-old sons wearing mommy's pink lace flower headband.

Here's the blogger Katie Vyktoriah's description of the horrible homophobe who was, I take it, monitoring WalMart shoppers for insufficiently instilling gender norms in toddlers:

The man was overly large with a bushy beard and a camouflage shirt with the arms cut off. He had tattered shorts and lace-up work boots with no laces. I could smell the fug of cigarette smoke surrounding him, and there was a definite pong of beer on him.

Smoking and shorts. And overly large. When are men overly large? Don't they know when they are taking up too much space? A camouflage shirt with the arms cut off... talk about the right to "bare" arms. And the "pong of beer"... Pong?



Pong, meaning "A strong smell, usually unpleasant; a stink" is a Britishism. OED examples:

1925 E. Fraser & J. Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words 226 Pong, a stink.
1936 F. Clune Roaming round Darling xxiv. 257 Avoid the smell of camel. They were complete with permanent, pyramid, and perfume, commonly called pong....
1991 D. Coupland Generation X i. i. 4 Smelling the cinnamon nighttime pong of snapdragons and efficient whiffs of swimming pool chlorine.

There's a blast from the past. Not the old Atari game (whoever forgot that?) but "Generation X." Remember when everyone was reading "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture"? I'd buy that right now and blog it for its poignant, pungent, pong-ent, obsolescences, but it's not available in Kindle? Not in Kindle! Oh! How the times pass! How the cutting edge dulls!

But, what say you? There's a lumbering, overly large man in shorts, a jack-booted thug with no shoelaces, and he's come to snatch the pink headband off your little boy. Threaten him with hand amputation, that might bridge the culture gap. Or, since he's a stinking smoker, a beer drinker, it might incite him to splutter out some warning about future bullying that will be so badly worded that in print it's good enough to make the HuffPo crowd gasp: Oh, noooooo! Homophobia rages... at WalMart. That's why I NEVER go there. That guy is always there, in his over-largeness, blocking the aisles, shuffling around, graceless... and laceless.

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Feminist blogger suspects that the AP meant to say "this smoking slut totally had it coming."

You may remember this story from yesterday, which I blogged here, about the NYC ad executive who leaned against her balcony railing in a way that made her date say "You know, you shouldn't do that." She said "I do it all the time," and then the railing collapsed, and she fell 17 stories and died. When should a death make the news and why? I know why I chose to blog that one: It was such a striking reminder of the way death might come at any time, and one's confidence that death won't come because it hasn't come yet — I do it all the time — is a delusion we live by and might die by.

I'm not afraid to lie down at night and sleep — I actively seek the loss of consciousness on those occasions — because I always wake up in the morning. That's happened every time so far anyway. And yet, every day, there are — lying in beds all over the world — dead bodies of human beings who surrendered consciousness to sleep the night before, assuming it would work out the same way it did all those other times.

How many will get AP stories written? None, unless they happen to be famous. The railing giving way is dramatic, especially because it happened to someone we can see did not expect it, who had that youthful sense of invulnerability, and the fall came from a great height, the death was instant, and there was an onlooker to make the experience come alive for us vicariously.

Like any blog, a feminist blog must feed on the available news stories or die of starvation, but a feminist blog is committed to chewing things into a bolus of feminism. So here's the Slate's XXfactor blog, and the determination has been made that the falling woman story is bloggable, which has to mean that it's fodder for feminism. Extracting 4 facts from the opening 2 paragraphs of the AP story, L.V. Anderson writes that the "implication" is that "this smoking slut totally had it coming."

A reader is left with the distinct impression that if [Jennifer] Rosoff hadn’t invited her date inside, hadn’t gone outside to smoke a cigarette, and hadn’t defied the advice of the wise and logical man she was with, she would still be alive. According to the AP story’s subtext, the problem wasn’t that Rosoff’s balcony railing was shoddy and unsafe—it was that Rosoff defied gender norms by being unmarried at 35, by being sexually liberal, and by insisting on making her own decisions instead of deferring to men’s logic.

Defied gender norms! Oh, come on.

You may accuse me of overreacting...

Anderson knew readers would call bullshit, but what's she supposed to do? Her assignment is to find feminist fodder and chew it up into a bolus of feminism, something we're supposed to swallow. She switches to I know this sounds like bullshit mode because she knows it sounds like bullshit.

... but the minor details that journalists choose to include or exclude from their reporting are one of many subtle ways that oppressive gender norms are perpetuated. 

Is that straight out of her notes from a Women's Studies class? This platitude is the platform for many a feminist blog. Scan stories for minor details relating to gender, then highlight them, and make grandiose statements about the perpetuation of oppression. When the evidence is flimsy, lubricate the bolus with the notion of the subtlety of the oppression. It might be swallowable.

Do I think the AP reporter assigned to this piece (incidentally, a woman) intended to undermine the reader’s sympathy for Rosoff and suggest she was asking for it? Of course not. But the fact that totally irrelevant details about Rosoff’s love life and cigarette habit made it into the lede and nut graf of an ostensibly unbiased news article—and that no editor stopped to ask, “Hmm, why is this information here?”—just goes to show how deeply ingrained sexist attitudes can be, even among professionals who pride themselves on their objectivity.

Bloggers don't have editors. A blogger has to self-edit. And Anderson is sort of self-editing here by imagining the readers' skepticism. But she counts on us accepting that the details are "totally irrelevant" and therefore only evince sexism. And that just goes to show how deeply ingrained the belief in deeply ingrained sexist attitudes can be. The railing against which Anderson has leaned so heavily — which feminist blogging calls upon her to do all the time — gives way. It's so shoddily constructed that any alternative explanation for the inclusion of the details pulls out the railing and sends Anderson tumbling.

And here the details create a vivid picture of a young woman in the midst of life who isn't thinking at all about death, and death suddenly takes her. She's on a first date, she's having a smoke, she's enjoying her luxurious abode looking out on the big city, she's openly dismissive of the man's fear of death, and she's inviting that man into her style of being truly alive, and that's when she dies. It's a stunning story of life and death. Yes, there's some "victim-blaming" here, but that's not necessarily a feminist problem. That cuts straight to everyone's fear of death: Would I have leaned on the railing? Have I ever leaned on railings at great heights? I don't want to die, so not leaning on railings must go on my How not to die checklist as I go forward in my life which, thus far, has not included my dying, and yet, somewhere, up ahead, there's that railing that's going to give way for me, and I too will plunge, headlong into the eternal unknown. 

I laugh out loud when I see that Anderson chides reporters for not "scanning one’s writing for traces of chauvinism," which, she says, "requires a little time and humility," but is "not exactly hard." Instead of seeing how she might take the time and have the humility to scan her own writing for traces of bullshit about chauvinism, she offers her idea of how AP should have put its opening paragraphs. Even though she admits that her version is much duller — "less salacious" — she's pleased that "it conveys the fact that Rosoff’s death was a tragic accident, not an instance of cosmic justice."

If you don't want the theme of cosmic justice, don't use the word "tragic." As we human beings tell each other stories — in theater or in the news — we experience depth of feeling when the details seem to tie together and have meaning. Why do we read about things like this at all? Anderson meant to say that her version of the story is better because it conveys the fact that Rosoff’s death was a random accident, which makes it a worse story. It's more of a police report, or notes for the tort litigation against the owner of the apartment building.

But Slate's feminist blog isn't about random accidents and building design defects. It is committed to getting us excited about the subtle perpetuation of the oppression of women. Ironically, Anderson herself fully intends to do what it is the feminist blog's mission to do: Take the stories of the day and retell them in terms of cosmic justice.

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"As a frequent (daily) reader of your blog, I have observed that your postings have taken a darker tone since you closed the comments section."

"As to causes and effects, I have no idea whether you closed the comments because of some other area of your life or the disappointment of closing of the comments (and the reasons therefor) caused the apparent darkness. Whatever the case may be, I hope that you are well."

Emails a reader, interestingly. I'm not seeing any life changes, aside from the anosmia for which I had an MRI of my head, which has the side effect of causing me to feel unusually assured that there's nothing wrong with my brain. I feel fine, and Meade and I are very happy as we approach our 4th anniversary on Saturday. But your question got me thinking — as I was out biking today — and I worked out a 3-part answer. Each of the 3 parts has 2 subparts. Any combination of the subparts may be causing what you see as darkness.

1. It just looks different.

a. The absence of comments has pushed me to go a little further in revealing my thoughts, since I'm not throwing it over to the commenters. When I do this, you are less able to think what you want to think about me, which might be that I'm only saying bland, nice things, but I never was.

b. The comments, especially the comments at the top, closest to my writing, were often breezy wisecracks or social byplay, and these undermined my seriousness and blunted my edge. Without that cream and sugar, the black coffee is bitter.

2. It's a shift in the news out there, and I'm blogging about different things.

a. Last month we were talking about Supreme Court cases, and this month it's been the racial and sexual matters in the Zimmerman trial and the long shadow of the World Wide Weiner.

b. Before the gay marriage case was decided, I engaged in a lot of conciliatory interplay with people who were saying some pretty harsh things, which I did not respond to in kind, but after the case was decided, we needed to move on.

3. The loss of comments really did affect my mood.

a. I saw some hurtful hostility before I gave up. You can't see all the things that Meade and I deleted, so you don't know what happened, and the moderation function was broken at the time. After I shut off the comments, I had to deal with email and writing on other sites, and I saw some people whom I had valued as guests griping about what I did to them, showing little appreciation for what I had given for 9 years.

b. I really do miss the comments — or, that is, my idea of what the comments were. 

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"TV reporter fired for ‘tell-all’ blog about going bra-less on air."

Headlines The Daily News, but I think these 2 items were the real problem:

6. I'm frightened of old people and I refuse to do stories involving them or the places they reside....

9. If you ramble and I deem you unnecessary for my story, I'll stop recording but let you think otherwise.

That and the fact that after they told her to take the post down and she did, she re-posted it, saying "No Apologies" and "momentarily misguided about who I am and what I stand for." Items #6 and #9, above, undercut her ability to do ordinary, professional reporting. The re-posting and the self-publicizing reflect a decision to leverage a different kind of writing career, and we'll see what happens with that.

She's Shea Allen, and she's too cheeky for Huntsville, Alabama.

I had to decide whether to make a tag for her name, and I decided not to, so that's my bet on what happens with this.

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Travel bloggers organizing travel bloggers to leverage travel blogging for travel.

It's not just the old problem of how to monetize your blog. It's the special travel blogger's problem of needing to pay for the raw material for your writing, and these people can barely talk about the problem of writing well (or usefully) about things they've been given free in anticipation of good publicity.

You have to get deeply into this NYT article to get to the really complicated commerce that made me write the post title above:

In order to make a go of it, some [travel bloggers have] contractual partnerships with outfitters like G Adventures, which created Wanderers in Residence in 2010. The program currently includes five bloggers, who lead tours, do speaking engagements and write blog posts for the company (the bloggers are compensated monthly)...

A different sort of outlet is IAmbassador, which [a travel blogger] started in 2011. The program...  organizes bloggers and pitches campaigns to tourism boards. There are now about 40 bloggers participating in the resulting sponsored trips, Mr. Jenkins said; he has also formed partnerships with travel blogging networks in Germany and Brazil.

I'm not a travel buff and I don't care about travel blogs or other travel writing, but I understand the appeal of real life activities with other bloggers and the desire to have good travel companions, and why shouldn't some bloggers make money organizing trips? It's just another form of packaged vacation, but part of the organizer's clout is some sort of offer of good press. Once the freebie is acquired, do the bloggers feel compelled to be nice? I'd be inclined to be the blogger who calls bullshit on the other bloggers on my tour who effused too much. Maybe I'd get banned (as a troll).

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The return of a reader who had stayed away because it "became apparent that your blog had been held hostage by repetitive, inane, banal and ad hominem comments."

Here's some interesting email:

I have been a very long time reader and admirer. I just learned yesterday via Instapundit that you closed comments.

Congratulations!

Years ago I felt that your intelligent and witty blog commentariat added to the Althouse Blog. Recently I came to realize that the comment community was distracting from and spoiling your blog. I became a non reader. It wasn't easy to break my Althouse habit but it became apparent that your blog had been held hostage by repetitive, inane, banal and ad hominem comments. Forgive me.... but a "circle jerk." Yes, I know I didn't have to click on comments but it was so easy to do.....! A mistake every time. I now feel free from that time wasting temptation. Thank you.

I am thrilled you have elected to go 'commando'... comment free.

I am putting Althouse back near the top of my Favorites. I want to thank you for years of intelligent, interesting and provocative posts.

I can only hope that Instapundit isn't destroyed in the same fashion.

First, I don't think Instapundit will have the same experience. He has different software and PJ Media staff to do the work that I (and Meade) did by hand. And I think my style of blogging (and engaging with commenters) fomented a wild atmosphere that attracted and enabled some crazies and haters (along with some great and creative commenters). One commenter over at Instapundit — telling him not to link to me — complained that my opinions were "based on feelings and personal perceptions." I'm happy to own that. I want to bring that to my writing, and at the same time, I realize it's part of what made the comments evolve the way they did over the 9 years that the blog was also an open house party.

Second, I know some of those who were shut out feel angry and aggrieved, and I can see (for they write about me elsewhere) that some of them are eager to see the "traffic" to this blog plummet. But I did think I was losing readers who were letting my commenters affect how they saw me.  And this email reinforces that belief. I accept losing readers who were coming here for the comments, but it's interesting to think of gaining readers who may have shunned this place because of the commenters who made it feel toxic. I'd long had the problem of commenters making my site look "right-wing." I'm a political moderate. I didn't mind comments that contrasted with what I said. But in the last months of comments, the toxicity came from commenters who meant to poison this blog to death.

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"Ann - love you, Meade, the blog, the dogs, bikes, travel, food, photos, etc., etc."

"Veeerrry long time daily reader, long time lawyer too, first time emailer. Don't care comments or not.  I really must remember better to follow the Amazon portal. This is the song.  Lyrics.  Video."



ADDED: That was email from Gary in Colorado.

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The Executioner PRO Fly Swat Wasp Bug Mosquito Swatter Zapper.

Is this a sport? Is it wrong?

Of all the things bought at Amazon through the Althouse Amazon Portal yesterday, that's the one that caught my eye... and kind of scared me.

Remember: When you swat at the wasp, you must kill him.

And: Thanks to all who do their shopping through the Althouse Amazon Portal. It feels like a vote of confidence in this blog and inspires me ever onward, swatting (if not executing) all manner of insectoid foolishness found on the web.

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Why I pay to get through the paywall at the NYT but not the Washington Post.

I'm looking for material to link to from this blog, and if I link to the NYT, my readers can click through to the article without hitting the paywall. That doesn't happen at the Washington Post, so I don't want to spend time reading there. Before WaPo put up the paywall, I had not subscribed to the NYT. I had migrated over to the Washington Post to find material that wasn't obstructed. But when the Post put up the paywall that blocks readers arriving at specific pages through links, it sent me back to the NYT, where I subscribed.

It's one thing to have a paywall, quite another to have a link-deflecting paywall.

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"I have been giving your new no-comments policy a lot of thought since it was implemented."

Emails a long-time reader:

Like most people, I don't respond well to change, and when I found that my favorite online haunt was no longer the nouveau salon that I had come to love, I was taken aback.

The problem for me, first, is that so many of your posts literally invite comments. You write, presenting an event or a situation, and then you comment, and then you question.  You write to provoke thought, and I love that about your blog. But now that comments are turned off, I am much less inclined to take the time to think, because there is no place for me to respond. I still read every post, but I don't think about them as much.

Second, I miss the opportunity to say thank you for posts like one today with Meade giving advice about the mower. I know, I can send an email, but I think it's nice to be appreciative (and appreciated) publicly, and email is private.

My experience of Althouse blog is sadly diminished.

I still read every post, but I don't think about them as much. Here's something to think about, even though you won't think as much. Why don't you think as much? In the old days, when you read books — imagine the greatest books you ever read — did you say to yourself This is all very thought provoking, but unless I can immediately jot down the thoughts it provokes in me, in a place where the author and other readers can see it, I'm really not inclined to pursue those thoughts?

There is a place for your thoughts. It's really the only place for your thoughts: Your head. Do you think What's the point of that, thoughts just in my head, not immediately strewn under the writings of the author who made me think of something just now?

Human connection is valuable, but why must it come — why is it considered better — in the form of immediate expression in response to whatever provoked a thought? I understand the love of spontaneous interaction (and I maintained the "nouveau salon" for 9 years). But there are other time-lines to relationships. There is slowness and gestation. There is the thought as it exists in the purely intimate space of your own head. There is turning to your own writing, in your own place (not the author's). And there is finding another human being to talk to... perhaps about a blog post you read somewhere this morning.

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Some people don't quite get the polls I put up around here.

Here's recent, typical criticism, aimed at the poll called "Althouse without comments." The aggrieved emailer writes:

I wanted to point out that you chose the options for the attitudes we might have towards your new policy. Exactly two of those choices implied that the new policy was detrimental, and both of those choices were framed in terms of emotionally negative or dismissive attitudes. You did not, for example, provide a choice like "I loved reading and writing comments, I will miss them, and I don't see how the blog can be the same without them." You gave us "I am aggrieved and grudging" and "the blog is nothing to me." You then pointed out that the only people who objected to the change were negative soreheads, and good riddance. OK, have it your way.

The sentence that begins "You then pointed out" is (badly) paraphrasing what I wrote here.

I wrote back:

The polls are a form of expression for me. No one has to take them, and I make no claim that they are anything but a kind of poem that I've written that you're allowed to play with.

Do you see how Althouse thinks of her polls?
	Yes, like everything at Althouse, they're dishonest and all about her.
	Yes, the individual lines, like this one, are as lines in a poem.
	Yes, she thinks she's an artist and has no insight into whether her work is crap.
	No, because there's really no "thinking" to speak of.
	No, because I'm preoccupied with what I think and Althouse won't talk about that.
	No, because if the lines don't rhyme, I haven't got time.
pollcode.com free polls

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Instapundit opens up comments in a "grand experiment."

He writes:

I’ve opened ‘em up before — and, for that matter, Ann Althouse did it once when I was away, to much excitement — but this new system should be much better. 

The system is part of "the new rollout of tech at PJ Media will allow one sign-in to work across the whole site," so you've got to join their system to be able to comment. And they will be able to manage you in ways that I was not able to manage my commenters (some of whom really were trying to destroy my blog and waste all our time).

Someone at Instapundit named Stoutcat says:

Where Althouse closes a door, Reynolds opens a window! This is an excellent idea, and I'm anticipating much enjoyment and eddification from reading your commenters, who are, no doubt, as far above Althouse's commenters, as hers were above the general horde.

Instapundit responds:

Yeah, Althouse's apparent joy at being comment-free gives me pause. But there' s no connection -- this has been in the works for months as part of PJ's single sign-on thing.

As for "Althouse's apparent joy at being comment-free," if that's what he's seeing, that is in fact only appearance. The loss has been very painful, because I believed the comments gave the place a lot of energy. But some unknown proportion of the commenters were people with ill will, who wanted destruction, and deleting even the ones we knew about had become literally a full-time job. But I wasn't in some big old system with lots of tech people. I've kept independent, with the simplicity of the people's platform, Blogger, which won't let me exclude people. I could only delete, which was a technique that my most aggressive antagonists used against me (and against all the other commenters who'd contributed so much over the years).

That really hurt, but I'm an optimist, and — like a blog — I live in the present and move forward, so I find the good in whatever the situation is, continually making choices about how to keep things as good as possible, and the day came when the balance of good and bad in the comments experience tipped so severely that I couldn't maintain the sunny denial needed to put up with everything. Since then, I've felt the loss, and part of the loss is seeing exiled commenters talking about me elsewhere on the web, forgetting/ignoring the problem that made me close the comments — as if I would shut off the comments because people attacked my writings! — and saying such nasty things about me that I could get depressed brooding about the real proportion of good faith to bad faith commenters.

But I've got to resist traipsing down that detour as I continue on the road of blogging, where I've found so much joy in the past and hope to find more, doing things in this newly simplified style. Meanwhile, Instapundit gets fancier, as PJ Media makes its play to become a social media enterprise. That's the road I've diverged from. I can't be your social media website.

I've redefined my task as something I can do alone, not that I'm alone. I've got Meade — the commenter I married — walking with me every step of the way. I've got all the joy I can handle, and maybe it is joy at being comment-free. I'm a less is more kind of person. My own version of that slogan is: Better than nothing is a high standard. I do notice and take joy in the negatives that I'm free of. That's called freedom, and comment-free is a kind of freedom.

ADDED: I said it back in 2004:

Why do you blog? > To live freely in writing.

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"With this kind of work it is not push, push, push; you need to relax... you have to massage the stone rather than push it."

Said Jacob Arndt, one of 2 men doing the stone carving restoration work on the University Club building here in Madison. Arndt has been working alongside Gayal Oglesbay since last fall.

“I really rarely find someone who carves stone,” Oglesbay said. “A lot of people will putz around or use machinery, but people who carve it originally with hammers and chisels and use math and come up with the exact product are hard to find.”

There are 50 to 90 stone carvers in the United States, according to Walter Arnold, treasurer and past president of the national Stone Carvers Guild, who says the number depends on what standard you apply: "if you limit to those good enough by 1913 standards to have held down a job in a good shop back then, the current numbers are significantly lower."

***

I'm making a new tag for this, artisans. I almost went with one of my old tags: art, sculpture, architecture, careers. Those are all almost there, but they are off in a way that amplifies the very problem the article is talking about. I also have a tag I'm not making a tag for this, but I could make a second new tag I am making a new tag for this. Having made the new tag, I wish I could go back and add it to all the old posts where it could have been used. I'd like to be able to see what has come up over the years, discussing the highly skilled work of those who produce beautiful things but do not think of themselves as artists. Or perhaps some of these people do think of themselves as artists (and maybe some painters and sculptors don't like to think of themselves as artists). I'd be interested in pulling together all that old material. If only I'd had better blogging craftsmanship.

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Althouse without comments.

Take the poll.

ADDED: The poll is radically unscientific. Those who have stopped reading because the comments are gone should not be here to take the poll. Everyone choosing the last option — "Without the comments, this blog means nothing to me" — is confessing to lying. Those 265 voters (out of 2,071 total) might be expressing anger or lobbying for the return of the comments. Telling me what I write doesn't matter except as a jumping off platform for commenters doesn't work as an argument, directed at me, to bring back comments.

I needed help dealing with the overwhelming proliferation of commenters who intended to ruin the blog — that is, commenters who thought of my work as nothing, or, really, worse than nothing, and hoped to achieve their goal of getting me to nothing.

The 345 people who voted to say that they "feel aggrieved" and see what I did as "wrong" also fail to speak appealingly to me. They are perhaps wrapped up in their own experience and unwilling to see what I went through. They might like the endless party restarted, but their lack of interest in what it's been like for me shows why the party had to end, abruptly on one terrible night, and why I've got to go forward solo.

Those who voted in the bottom 2 categories — more than the ones who voted in the top categories, the supportive answers — reinforce me in my decision to go it alone here.

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Althouse without comments.

Althouse without comments.
	The comments are gone? I didn't notice.
	Comments or no comments, I read the posts, which were always the main thing here.
	I used to spend a lot of time in the comments, but it's fine without comments.
	It's a rough transition, but I'm still reading and will see how it goes.
	Cutting off comments was wrong, I feel aggrieved, and I'll read here only grudgingly.
	Without the comments, this blog means nothing to me.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: How is it possible that anyone can pick the last option? A conundrum!

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"Each post you make seems to invite conversation, yet allowing none, creates a constipation of thought."

Emails a reader who — when the comments were on — commented under the pseudonym Salamandyr. I'm blogging this because I think poop is funny. And because I've already used the tag "excrement" once this morning, quoting Greil Marcus's famous question — reviewing Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait" — "What is this shit?"

So Salamandyr's saying "Turning off comments was a dreadful mistake that I hope you'll reconsider."

[Y]our writing style invites comments.  Each post you make seems to invite conversation, yet allowing none, creates a constipation of thought.  

Yeah, that was the problem. Too much pooping in the comments! Why would your complaining about constipation convince me to reopen? This is Althouse, not Shithouse. But some people didn't seem to notice, didn't care, or had their own delusions of redesigning the place.

Previously, even if I choose not to type out my comments, the ability to, invites me to think about what you wrote, to consider it in more detail, to create a dialogue with your post.  This oftentimes made your post all the more memorable.  

And the difference now is what? That when you think the thoughts the post prompts, the fact that you could put it in writing, next to my writing, and now you can't, impedes a mental process that never emerged in writing anyway? To stick with your metaphor, if it's constipation, you've got constipation in both situations, and what's bothering you is that there's no toilet available.

Then what the commenters wrote in response to your post, made it even more memorable.  Every comment reinforced what your writing [sic], made it that much more prominent.  

That's where you are wrong — wrong in a way that crucial is to me, as I explained right here. If you take the trouble to read that, tell me — or tell your constipated brain — whether you saw or took the trouble to look for the 15 topics and whether you think there's the slightest chance that if the comments had been open, the commenters would have explored them and, if some did, whether the writing about the 15 topics would outweigh the writing about how Bob Dylan's voice is bad and I write about Bob Dylan too much. See why I'm not feeling "reinforced"?

I might spend an hour reading your post, reading the comments, thinking about how they relate to your post, whether they successfully rebut your point, support it, or were irrelevant....

Now, that sounds constipated. It's dangerous to sit on the pot that long. Don't you know that's what killed Elvis?

If you choose not to re-open comments, I'm sure your writing will change, become more declarative, less inviting....

You're sure? Why are you sure? Do you need to deposit your answer to those questions to benefit from thinking about them?

Whatever you choose, I'll probably still read you.  You are smart, educated, and have interesting opinions.  But without comments, I find myself visiting your site less often during the day, and spending less time there when I do, and spending less time considering your posts.  

Good! Keep it moving. It's much healthier.

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"Actually, I'm finding that, when I click over [to] the other site where your commenters have migrated, the things they have to say aren't really very interesting..."

"... (and I never did understand what the name-calling directed towards 'Inga' was all about), and when I think back, the comment sections were something of a trap -- I'd hope to have, or read, some interesting dialog about the topic, but it never really happened very much. The 'create your own blog' approach is challenging, but imaginary readers are tough to write for.  In any case, in the same way as I seldom buy treats from the grocery store, because I have a hard time eating them in moderation (I tell the kids: if I buy the chocolate ice cream, you'll have a bowl now, and I'll eat the rest tonight after you're in bed -- so let's just go to the ice cream place instead), please keep the comments off."

That's from Jane the Actuary, who actually did start her own blog, Jane the Actuary. If you go over there and read it, will it save her from the fate of writing for "imaginary readers"? She'll still have to imagine you to write for you. From the beginning on this blog, I wrote for myself. I wrote about what I was reading and I wrote to see what I thought. It was a way of thinking. Since Meade moved in, I also write for him, often saying "New post alert" and then hearing what he thinks, often as he reads it aloud (and helps me find typos and hard-to-grasp phrases).

That reminds me of something Vladimir Nabokov said in 1966, in answer to the question "What is your greatest pleasure in writing?"

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries... The next pleasure is of reading it to your wife. She and I are my best audience, you see. I should say my main audience. After that, when the thing is published, I do imagine a number of people whom I like, whom I admire, with whom I feel close kinship. It is nice to think that those people are reading that, perhaps at this very instant. But that's about all. I don't care about the general public.

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"I understand the value of free speech zones, and I respected that, and I respected you for providing it, while at the same time not thinking that I wouldn't want to wade in there."

Another reader emails about the closing of the comments section at Althouse. Here's the full text:

I probably commented on your blog between four and six times a year, but read it daily. I bothered with reading the comments about once a week but I always faced the problem of distinguishing between the few interesting comments and the sea of slime. I understand the value of free speech zones, and I respected that, and I respected you for providing it, while at the same time not thinking that I wouldn't want to wade in there. Then what do I think of shutting down the comments?...  I'll admit that I found it kind of interesting to imagine that there was some kind of community existing underneath it all. Even besides the most obvious example, some commenters seemed to have developed real relationships with each other. But there was so little of that left, and so much ugliness. The main reason I read your blog is because the perpetual, cruel challenging of dogmas, frameworks, questions, heuristics, and assumptions which eventually has come to seem not so much cruel as a playful and even joyful kind of investigative destruction. I read Instapundit, though I know what Glenn is going to say, because I want to know what Glenn is reading. I read Jonah Goldberg, though I often know what he is going to say, because I like seeing how he'll say it, how he'll manage to drag Cosmo into it. But I read Althouse because even though I spend my professional life thinking about political philosophy it still challenges me to rethink things and keep challenging the conventional wisdom. For that, the comments don't make a difference.

Thanks!

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