A Brief Statement on New Comments Policy

I have been forced to go to comment moderation for one specific reason: too many people who have not demonstrated intellectual competence on this blog have resorted to uninformed ranting. Ranting comments from people that I am not familiar with are not published. Likewise, people who have only been posting comments for a short time, but who uniformly publish ranting and unsupportable opinions, are not published unless they are able to support their views or provide useful insights into a topic.

It is important to understand that each Al Fin posting is only part of the whole. One often needs to be familiar with previous postings, to understand the evidence supporting current postings. While it may seem unfair to expect commenters to be familiar with previous postings on a topic before they post a ranting comment, nevertheless, that is exactly what I expect.

Of course, if a comment is reasoned and well-supported by objective evidence, it will be published, regardless of the author. And if long-established readers and commenters on the blog happen to post a rant or two, well, they have paid their dues many times over. They are entitled.