The irony is that you cry so much when you are censored, yet you want to censor those who are "trolls", just as they likely thought that you were "trolling". I haven't seen any of these offending comments, likely because you have deleted them because of how inconvenient those truths must be.
1. I have never been "censored." Its completely ridiculous to charge me with "crying" about something that has not happened to me and that I have never claimed has happened to me. You should be embarassed about being so spectacularly wrong about something that is so spectacularly obvious.
2. However, your characterization here is exactly the type of toxic snark that the guidelines are intended to limit and prevent.
3. I am not sure which part of this guideline was unclear to you:
Finally, do not cry “censorship” if I delete your comment. I reserve the right to trash comments that are uncivil, grandstanding on irrelevant topics, trollish in tone, or otherwise inappropriate. You have no “right” to have every comment you make published on this site.
4. Do it again, and I will delete your comments.
5. To see a post that got a commenter permanently blocked, go over to the "Last Four Years" post and to the comments. Find the one of mine that starts this way:
"Here is the final comment, in full, by the anonymous rando posting under "John Locke" that got him banned permanently from Unsafe Science:"
6. You seem to have a serious problem whereby you confuse "insults, sneers, and snark" with "truth."
I really don't care, because you don't care about your audience or their dollars, you want obedient yes men.
That you lack reflexive reasoning and really dislike cognitive dissonance, as exemplified as to how you responded to me, and your ability to recall the contents of your own writings. Not only is your blog full of complaints wrt censorship of your ideas, by the ccp or woke crowd but you personally lead research programs on the topic.
Alternatively that you are the "ends justify the means" sort of guy, whose primary purpose in life is not the pursuit of truth, but the advancement of a culture war agenda, or perhaps those agendas that pay the best as is often the case in journalism, rather than the satisfaction of the readers who might actually fund you.
Alternatively as evidenced by the research performed by you of censorship by the CCP on issues like Tiananmen Square on the TikTok platform (the theory of which was the legal justification that the DC circuit court of appeals used for banning tiktok), which is of course a topic the state department spends a ton of money producing agitpop on, in comparison to the numerous ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which I have personally I submitted forensic analysis about missile trajectories of bombed hospitals.
Civility is a lost art with many. I’d be willing to bet a not insignificant segment of the boorish clods one encounters online would be just as boorish over coffee or a beer in your kitchen.
I believe you’re doing this with the best intentions, but to avoid any suspicions of unfair comment removal or censorship, perhaps adding a link to a separate page with all removed comments could be a good idea. The main challenge would likely be implementation, as I’m not sure Substack allows this, but I thought it was an idea worth sharing to help cover all your bases.
Well, let's start with what I agree with. I love the idea of creating a reservoir of at least some of the comments that I deleted and/or got the person blocked entirely. But for very different reasons than your comment: Examples of such comments can give people a clear idea of what kind of posts will get deleted or them blocked entirely.
I do not how diligently I will maintain this, but, for now, I did start this Google Doc with two comments here that just got a guy blocked entirely. Will see how this goes, but, for now, I plan to add to it intermittently.
1. I could not care less whether people like/dislike/suspect malicious motives/think I am "unfair" in what I choose to remove. This will have zero influence on...anything I do here.
2. The confusion about "censorship" keeps coming up. Blocking someone or deleting their comments is not censorship because nothing is preventing them from posting anything they like...elsewhere. Nobody has any "right" to post here, so it is not possible to violate a right that no one has. Below is the relevant excerpt from The Guidelines:
Finally, do not cry “censorship” if I delete your comment. I reserve the right to trash comments that are uncivil, grandstanding on irrelevant topics, trollish in tone, or otherwise inappropriate. You have no “right” to have every comment you make published on this site. Newspapers do not publish every letter to the editor or submitted op-ed. Academic journals do not publish every article submitted. TV stations do not air every proposed show. Call in radio shows do not allow every caller air time. I try to use as light a hand as I can consonant with keeping an atmosphere of civility and sanity. If I delete your comments, you are free to start your own site. Denounce me for “censorship” or “hypocrisy” or whatever evil you impute to me on Substack or The Medium or whatever for “censorship” on your own site. Go for it. You have been deleted, or maybe even blocked, but you have not been “censored.”
Deletion is a form of quality control and is a far cry from censorship. Readers who are obnoxious and keep making the same argument again and again, adding nothing new, will be considered trolls and may be blocked from posting comments altogether.
The tone here should be civil discourse, which permits disagreement, including sharp ones. It does not permit sneers, insults, misanthropic attributions, and irrelevant diatribes.
I think I did a rather poor job of wording that. I’m pretty sure our views on the matter are closely aligned, as I completely agree with everything you said.
The point I wanted to make is that stupidity spreads like wildfire, and even if you have your arguments well-organized, I think it’s a good idea to protect yourself from malicious actors who are more interested in damaging your reputation than engaging in a well-intentioned, constructive, and civilized discussion.
It occurred to me that a reservoir of removed comments could act as a safeguard against that. Also, you’d probably want it to be completely automated if possible; the last thing you want is to waste time on maintenance tasks like these.
Aha. Yeah, good points. I definitely do not know how to automate it though, and I am not sure its possible, at least not yet.
HOWEVER, I am cautiously optimistic that this post (which will be linked to all future posts at the end) wil reduce the number of comments from bad actors, so perhaps I won't have that much to do after all.
In any case, thank you so much for your fantastic work. I truly appreciate people like you who risk so much in the pursuit of truth and freedom. It's frustrating to see how such a significant segment of the population has fallen prey to a regressive and illiberal ideology that encompasses everything.
👍🙂 Our little idiosyncrasies, that being one I find rather amusing.
And a bit of salt on his tail as "seasoning" for your "excellent blog site". A more substantive criticism is that he's not very knowledgeable, to say the least, about even the rudiments of statistics which I, and people like Colin Wright, find rather "problematic":
Very well thought-out and presented comment guidelines. Good to see you care enough about your channel to demand commenters demonstrate similar consideration for others in order to continue to express themselves here.
Moderation is necessary to prevent comments from becoming a wasteland. Delete comments to your heart's content. Just not mine. ;-)
In all seriousness, I wish Substack had a moderation option such that comments must be approved before they appear in the first place. That usually prevents issues from starting in the first place and is less work for the moderator in the long term.
Thank you! Relevant to all online conversations:
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/why-speech-platforms-can-never-escape-politics
As a past guilty party (hopefully reformed), I endorse these rules.
well done Lee. online spaces must be pruned from annoying free riders, or perish.
sad but true.
Well Jerry Coyne is a good place to start.
The irony is that you cry so much when you are censored, yet you want to censor those who are "trolls", just as they likely thought that you were "trolling". I haven't seen any of these offending comments, likely because you have deleted them because of how inconvenient those truths must be.
If like you I hadn't seen any of the comments that were later deleted, it'd be hard to feel informed enough to have such a strong opinion about them 🧐
Heh.
1. I have never been "censored." Its completely ridiculous to charge me with "crying" about something that has not happened to me and that I have never claimed has happened to me. You should be embarassed about being so spectacularly wrong about something that is so spectacularly obvious.
2. However, your characterization here is exactly the type of toxic snark that the guidelines are intended to limit and prevent.
3. I am not sure which part of this guideline was unclear to you:
Finally, do not cry “censorship” if I delete your comment. I reserve the right to trash comments that are uncivil, grandstanding on irrelevant topics, trollish in tone, or otherwise inappropriate. You have no “right” to have every comment you make published on this site.
4. Do it again, and I will delete your comments.
5. To see a post that got a commenter permanently blocked, go over to the "Last Four Years" post and to the comments. Find the one of mine that starts this way:
"Here is the final comment, in full, by the anonymous rando posting under "John Locke" that got him banned permanently from Unsafe Science:"
6. You seem to have a serious problem whereby you confuse "insults, sneers, and snark" with "truth."
But you do you.
I really don't care, because you don't care about your audience or their dollars, you want obedient yes men.
That you lack reflexive reasoning and really dislike cognitive dissonance, as exemplified as to how you responded to me, and your ability to recall the contents of your own writings. Not only is your blog full of complaints wrt censorship of your ideas, by the ccp or woke crowd but you personally lead research programs on the topic.
Alternatively that you are the "ends justify the means" sort of guy, whose primary purpose in life is not the pursuit of truth, but the advancement of a culture war agenda, or perhaps those agendas that pay the best as is often the case in journalism, rather than the satisfaction of the readers who might actually fund you.
Alternatively as evidenced by the research performed by you of censorship by the CCP on issues like Tiananmen Square on the TikTok platform (the theory of which was the legal justification that the DC circuit court of appeals used for banning tiktok), which is of course a topic the state department spends a ton of money producing agitpop on, in comparison to the numerous ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which I have personally I submitted forensic analysis about missile trajectories of bombed hospitals.
https://x.com/endomorphosis/status/1686757216316198912
This is how I feel about social "science" or political "science".
Civility is a lost art with many. I’d be willing to bet a not insignificant segment of the boorish clods one encounters online would be just as boorish over coffee or a beer in your kitchen.
I believe you’re doing this with the best intentions, but to avoid any suspicions of unfair comment removal or censorship, perhaps adding a link to a separate page with all removed comments could be a good idea. The main challenge would likely be implementation, as I’m not sure Substack allows this, but I thought it was an idea worth sharing to help cover all your bases.
Well, let's start with what I agree with. I love the idea of creating a reservoir of at least some of the comments that I deleted and/or got the person blocked entirely. But for very different reasons than your comment: Examples of such comments can give people a clear idea of what kind of posts will get deleted or them blocked entirely.
I do not how diligently I will maintain this, but, for now, I did start this Google Doc with two comments here that just got a guy blocked entirely. Will see how this goes, but, for now, I plan to add to it intermittently.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VRrGzfW_7adJMR2YPN5bMDXB-ovfiaUCEEl_CCjW6FU/edit?usp=sharing
Now, onto the stuff I do not agree with.
1. I could not care less whether people like/dislike/suspect malicious motives/think I am "unfair" in what I choose to remove. This will have zero influence on...anything I do here.
2. The confusion about "censorship" keeps coming up. Blocking someone or deleting their comments is not censorship because nothing is preventing them from posting anything they like...elsewhere. Nobody has any "right" to post here, so it is not possible to violate a right that no one has. Below is the relevant excerpt from The Guidelines:
Finally, do not cry “censorship” if I delete your comment. I reserve the right to trash comments that are uncivil, grandstanding on irrelevant topics, trollish in tone, or otherwise inappropriate. You have no “right” to have every comment you make published on this site. Newspapers do not publish every letter to the editor or submitted op-ed. Academic journals do not publish every article submitted. TV stations do not air every proposed show. Call in radio shows do not allow every caller air time. I try to use as light a hand as I can consonant with keeping an atmosphere of civility and sanity. If I delete your comments, you are free to start your own site. Denounce me for “censorship” or “hypocrisy” or whatever evil you impute to me on Substack or The Medium or whatever for “censorship” on your own site. Go for it. You have been deleted, or maybe even blocked, but you have not been “censored.”
Deletion is a form of quality control and is a far cry from censorship. Readers who are obnoxious and keep making the same argument again and again, adding nothing new, will be considered trolls and may be blocked from posting comments altogether.
The tone here should be civil discourse, which permits disagreement, including sharp ones. It does not permit sneers, insults, misanthropic attributions, and irrelevant diatribes.
I think I did a rather poor job of wording that. I’m pretty sure our views on the matter are closely aligned, as I completely agree with everything you said.
The point I wanted to make is that stupidity spreads like wildfire, and even if you have your arguments well-organized, I think it’s a good idea to protect yourself from malicious actors who are more interested in damaging your reputation than engaging in a well-intentioned, constructive, and civilized discussion.
It occurred to me that a reservoir of removed comments could act as a safeguard against that. Also, you’d probably want it to be completely automated if possible; the last thing you want is to waste time on maintenance tasks like these.
Aha. Yeah, good points. I definitely do not know how to automate it though, and I am not sure its possible, at least not yet.
HOWEVER, I am cautiously optimistic that this post (which will be linked to all future posts at the end) wil reduce the number of comments from bad actors, so perhaps I won't have that much to do after all.
In any case, thank you so much for your fantastic work. I truly appreciate people like you who risk so much in the pursuit of truth and freedom. It's frustrating to see how such a significant segment of the population has fallen prey to a regressive and illiberal ideology that encompasses everything.
> "... used by Jerry Coyne over at whyevolutionistrue.com, which is his excellent blog site ..."
I think he anathematizes "blog site" and insists on "website" ... 😉🙂
Well, he is more than welcome to prevent me from characterizing his blog site as a blog site if I try to comment over at ... his "web"site.
👍🙂 Our little idiosyncrasies, that being one I find rather amusing.
And a bit of salt on his tail as "seasoning" for your "excellent blog site". A more substantive criticism is that he's not very knowledgeable, to say the least, about even the rudiments of statistics which I, and people like Colin Wright, find rather "problematic":
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/02/14/a-defense-of-the-binary-in-human-sex/#comment-1810922
https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1233299010456174593
Good rules. I spotted Jerry's fine Italian hand!
Thanks. Shame it got to that point.
Very well thought-out and presented comment guidelines. Good to see you care enough about your channel to demand commenters demonstrate similar consideration for others in order to continue to express themselves here.
Moderation is necessary to prevent comments from becoming a wasteland. Delete comments to your heart's content. Just not mine. ;-)
In all seriousness, I wish Substack had a moderation option such that comments must be approved before they appear in the first place. That usually prevents issues from starting in the first place and is less work for the moderator in the long term.
I applaud your determination to stand a post to defend civil posts!
You’re right, Lee. It’s your site. Just as I am free to delete comments on my Facebook posts.