Ordinary Gweilo

4 responses to “Panic tank?”

1. 

   dave

   Dec 14, 2006

   I was going to say that he’s descended into self-parody, but its better than his usual writing. Perhaps it’s safer to say that he’s ascending into self parody.
   I must take issue with your “blog with no comments” tag though. If he indeed had no comments (like BWG or Roland Soong), then that’s a particular style of blog. One I heartily disagree with, but it’s an accepted blog-style.
   Simon ostensibly has comments but they’re censored to a ridiculous extent: only comments that Simon likes gets approved. Even perfectly civil comments (which both you and I have posted on his blog and on our own blogs) which are slightly critical of his postings or disagree with his posts are never posted.
   That’s a basic level of dishonesty which is completely at odds with his ‘free-market’ philosophy. If he had the courage of his convictions, he’d allow comments and feel confident that the negatives would be outweighed by the positives in the free market of opinion. He clearly does not have the courage of his convictions.
   ASIDE: I don’t know about BWG, but Soong proclaims that he won’t have comments because of spam issues. My non big-league blog gets hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of spam comments per day, all of which are caught by akismet. OK, one per month or so slips by, but since installing akismet, my spam policing has dropped to a 30-second check of my control page once every few days. I think Roland is basically a coward who doesn’t want to have comments critical of his translations appearing where it might make people doubt his work.
   Personally, I think that, unless you accept comments on your posts, you are not really doing the thing right. If you stand up on your soap box and proclaim your opinions to the world, you should be able to deal with hecklers and critics. If you’re not prepared to do that, there’s probably something wrong with your opinions in the first place.

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2. 

   Chris

   Dec 14, 2006

   I agree.
   I’ve never understood why anyone would bother to publish a blog without comments, particularly not one that it all about political opinions. Isn’t it all about debate?
   I really value the comments I get, and I didn’t get any, I think I’d give up. Spam is an annoyance, but one that can be handled, and Patkin is using Typepad and they filter 99% of it out. I do get the odd abusive comment (strangely I got two about Mr Patkin) but I can delete them quite quickly.
   To be fair to BWG, I think that both he and Hemlock would probably say that they aren’t publishing blogs – and at the time when they started the convention of having comments didn’t exist. BWG is basically a commercial and non-controversial site, with no links to blogs, but Hemlock does have a page of links.

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3. 

   gunlaw

   Dec 14, 2006

   I tried starting a blog once. But as I had had a 50 year-long unbroken track record of never being listened to or even noticed, the expenses outweighed the revenues. I have stayed since with burning ants with a magnifying glass, instead.

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4. 

   fumier

   Dec 14, 2006

   I am grateful for the periodic reports on Mr. Pitkin’s excellent blog as it confirms to me that my sidebar is not out of date. Of course, if like Mr. Potman you don’t link to anyone who ever disagrees with you, keeping the sidebar up to date is much easier.
   Keep up the good work, old chap.

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