Why no opportunity for comments on this blog: an explanation

Readers have asked—and expressed considerable frustration—that this blog does not accept comments.  An explanation seems in order.

When I started doing this blog in 2007, I took comments and enjoyed the back-and-forth with readers.

But: sometime in 2012, a troll appeared.  It (or they) posted exceptionally personal and exceptionally nasty comments several times throughout the day.  These disparaged my gender, age, and ethnicity.  They attempted to organize a campaign to get me fired from NYU (my dean at the time thought this was quite funny).

Their tone reminded me of the industry-funded and secretive Center for Consumer Freedom (I’ve written about this group previously) but I had no proof CCF was responsible, although I certainly had my suspicions.

Readers complained that the comments made civil conversation impossible, and asked me to delete them.

I consulted a cyber security expert, who noticed that all the messages, which appeared to come from a great many different people, all had almost identical IP addresses from a spam site in Putnam, Kansas.

If I wanted more information about who was responsible for them, I would need to pay the costs of investigation.

At that point, it was a easier to stop the comments than to have to monitor the site and delete the trolled ones.

So that’s why no comments.

I still get comments sent directly to my email address.  I can’t respond to all of them, but I do appreciate the ones that correct errors and raise interesting issues.

Thanks for reading.