I have an additional announcement, which is that, as of today, 3 January 2022, I am implementing an official policy on comments. For the first few years of this blog’s existence, my policy on comments was basically that I would approve any comments anyone made that were not obviously spam. By summer 2020, though, it had become apparent to me that this policy was a disaster. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that I had some comments sections that were real dumpster fires.
Over the course of the past year and a half or so, I have slowly developed an informal policy on comments. Now, it is a new year and I just announced in my previous post that I have started a Patreon. I therefore think that this is a good time for me to post my policy on comments publicly in a formalized manner. Because I know that old posts have a tendency to get buried, I have also posted the following policy as a separate page, which is accessible via a link underneath the “Pages” sign along the right side of the website.
Rules for leaving comments on this blog
The way comments on this blog currently work is that I have to manually approve comments from people who have never commented before, but comments from people who already have comments approved are approved automatically.
I will not manually approve any comments that violate the rules outlined below. If any comment that violates the rules below is approved automatically because it is from a commenter who has comments that have already been approved, I will delete the comment as soon as I see it. Here are the rules:
- Spam comments are not allowed. This includes all comments that are clearly intended to promote specific products or whose sole purpose is to increase traffic to other websites. I have a spam filter on this blog that is designed to catch obvious spam comments automatically. The spam filter is usually pretty good, but, if any spam comments make it through the filter, I will delete them without approving them.
- All comments should be civil and respectful. Comments that I consider uncivil or verbally abusive—whether toward me as the author of this blog or toward other commenters—are not allowed.
- Bigoted comments are not allowed. This prohibition applies to all forms of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, bigotry against religious people in general, bigotry against atheists, etc. Whether a comment is bigoted will be decided at my own discretion.
- Comments that aggressively promote conspiracy theories or historical fringe theories are not allowed. This policy especially applies for theories that are totally disconnected from any kind of historical reality. I welcome disagreement within reason, but, when things get really far out, I will draw a line.
- All comments should be a reasonable length. I understand that some people are verbose. After all, I am often verbose myself. I will not, however, allow comments that I consider to be excessively long, especially if such comments are only loosely connected to the subject of the article.
- Comments should be intelligible. I understand that English is not everyone’s first language, and I will allow comments that contain grammar and spelling errors as long as they are coherent. I will, however, draw a line if I cannot tell what a commenter is even trying to say.
I reserve the right to expand or amend this policy at any given time.
Excellent, Mr. McDaniel
I agree with you very much.
sincerely
your
GW Oberman
Spencer:
As the author of this blog, just like the authors of any other serious blogs, you are entitled to do whatever reasonable blog rules come to your mind with respect to comments. In fact, you just needed a brief paragraph appended to your profile stating the core of your rules (like bigotry, aggression, etc.). Spam and other undesirable messages should be removed automatically without warning because spammers do not care about any civilized rules clearly posted or otherwise.
Keep going, Spencer! This is one of the few blogs that I follow religiously.
Bressan
Fair enough, but what’s a fringe historical theory? Is the claim that Franklin Roosevelt lured the Japanese into attacking the U.S. and had advance warning of an attack a fringe idea? Is the Deluge Theory of Indo-european origins fringe? Is the idea that religion originated in magical practice by shamans fringe? Is the idea that nature has direction fringe? Will you exclude comments from thinkers who don’t assume materialism?
What about sources? Are the assumptions of degreed historians the standard? If so, then what will you do about the racist, sexist, and Eurocentric scholars of the past? Will there be a cut-off date or era? How will you handle the observation that history is much more ideologically driven and circumscribed than, say, medicine or geology?
I don’t bring these issues up to cause you trouble or mock your effort at controlling what appears on your Web site. It’s a problem every Web site owner and blogger faces. It might be a bit more straightforward to give the range of acceptable opinion and sources rather than the broad ‘no bigotry’ demand.
For example, suppose I claim that sexual freedom (toleration of promiscuity among women, pornography, abortion or infanticide, transvestism, and homosexuality) is a common feature of phases in civilizations which face dwindling resources and need lower birth rates, instead of a realization that such behaviors are right and proper. Will you meet that with a demand for evidence or refutation based on evidence or will you delete my comment on the grounds that it doesn’t recognize the absolute rightness of sexual freedom or may harm the interests of those engaged in the behaviors mentioned above?
The rule about historical fringe theories is primarily meant for two things. The first is to prevent people from essentially hijacking my platform and using my blog to promote their own fringe theories. The second is to prevent me from having to argue with people at length over claims that no credentialed historian would ever take seriously. Generally speaking, if an idea hasn’t been taken seriously by any credentialed historians within, say, the last seventy years or so, it’s probably fringe.
The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is definitely a fringe theory; it’s also notably a theory that the America First Committee (AFC), which had pro-fascist and anti-Semitic leanings, played a major role in popularizing. I’m not entirely sure what theory you’re referring to when you say the “Deluge Theory of Indo-european origins,” but, if it’s a theory involving the Flood of Noah, then it’s probably fringe. Regarding the origins of religion, there are many theories, some of them better supported by evidence than others.
If you were to claim that “toleration of promiscuity among women, pornography, abortion or infanticide, transvestism, and homosexuality” is “a common feature of phases in civilizations which face dwindling resources” you would, first of all, be factually wrong. The characteristics you have listed here are ones that have occurred individually in many very different cultures with varying degrees of prosperity throughout history, and they possess little-to-no correlation with “dwindling resources” or even necessarily with each other. For instance, normative Roman society at the very height of the Roman Empire, when it was at the apogee of its wealth and power, certainly had very little “tolerance” for promiscuity among women or people assigned male at birth dressing in traditionally feminine clothes, but, at the same time, it had absolutely no problem with pornography, infanticide, or pederasty.
The Suburban Baths in Pompeii, dating to the first century CE, when the Roman Empire was at its wealthiest, were famously decorated with a variety of pornographic frescos, including frescoes depicting both male-male and female-female intercourse. In the same period, it was also fairly common for wealthy people to display pornographic frescoes in their homes. The practice of abandoning unwanted infants to die of exposure was common and was generally seen as both morally and socially acceptable throughout basically all of pre-Christian Greek and Roman history, throughout all the highs and lows, as was the practice of pederasty.
Now, it is, of course, worth emphasizing that abortion is not the same thing as infanticide and homosexuality in general is not the same thing as pederasty. In any case, though, there’s no clear historical correlation between any of the practices you mention here and “dwindling resources.” I would also most likely regard the claim you have proposed here as bigoted, because it has no basis in history and, far from merely incidentally happening to “harm the interests” of some people, it seems to me that the primary purpose of such a claim is to serve as justification for denying people certain freedoms.
But, of course, we both know you were only proposing this claim as a hypothetical.
This sounds reasonable
Welcome to the murky world of censorship. I recommend giving Tom Scott’s talk “There is No Algorithm for Truth” a watch https://youtu.be/leX541Dr2rU?t=2729 Particularly at the timestamp I linked where he talks about “Echo Chambers and Nazi Bars” which discusses the fine line between an overly curated community and an excessively unrestrained “free speech” community.
I love the blog but I also like to challenge the off-topic identity politics in a non-hostile way. I think readers here label me a bigot because I disagree with them or with you. If you don’t want those topics discussed here then I don’t know why you make posts that address or involve them.
The biggest problem in our country at the moment is that people have joined insular communities and stopped talking with one another. Keep that in mind when you decide who to silence and I hope you continue to make a distinction between people who disagree with antagonistic hostility and those who just want to have a conversation.
Rick, this post is mainly intended as merely a public statement of the same rules that I’ve already been more-or-less enforcing for at least the past six months or so. If I haven’t been deleting your comments, they’re probably fine.
Of course, you should be aware that, even if you are being civil, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be bigoted. Indeed, sometimes the worst kind of bigot is a polite bigot. I had a literal Neo-Nazi—a self-described fan of Richard B. Spencer—who left comments on this blog for years in which he openly advocated, among other things, that all people whom he did not consider racially white should be exterminated or violently removed from North America to allow for the creation of a “white ethnostate.” He advocated these violent atrocities very politely and civilly, without insults, describing them as though he were describing any other policy proposal. It was really twisted.
I’ve deleted most of his comments of this nature, but there may be some that I’ve missed.
So the dude was sugarcoating his bigotry to make it less awful sounding?
Well, he wasn’t exactly “sugarcoating” it. He was very direct about saying what he wanted, but he generally didn’t use slurs, he was always careful to present himself as well-read, and he tried to support his position by claiming that the creation of a “white ethnostate” (along with all the horrifying mass genocide and ethnic cleansing that the creation of such a state would necessarily entail) was necessary in order to protect the interests of the white race.
I checked out his blog, some of it was surprisingly good (the ANE stuff not the race stuff lol) but I haven’t seen him post on here for a while. According to his blog he was hospitalized a year or so ago. I noticed he called you “Batman” a lot.
Spencer, is the nazi you refer to the fellow who made an incredibly transphobic comment in the same comment section where he advocated for lowering the age of consent to 13? I think he went by Harding on here.
Yep. You’re thinking of exactly the one. I’ve been going back and deleting his comments, but there are still some that I’ve missed.
I agree with your sentiments, but I don’t think the country is more polarized than during the 1960s – or the 1860s or 1770s, for that matter. So I don’t think talking to ones opponents will resolve anything. If anything, we’d be better off giving different factions their own spaces to lives as they prefer rather than insist on one set of customs and beliefs enforces on all.
Lord have mercy, the things that should be obvious. And aren’t people half demonstrating just exactly why you need to spell it out — and how kinda hopeless it is.
Good luck with Patreon. Great platform. Alas I’ve just slashed my follows, and need to continue cost-cutting. Gonna be an expensive year.
Rock on, Spencer! 👑😎👑
Thank you so much! If you’re not in a situation where you think you will be able to donate money, then, by all means, don’t feel bad about it. I appreciate your support and encouragement all the same. It means a lot to me when I see your supportive comments.
Hope it goes well for you.
Whoops sorry, thought this was the Patreon post and I thought the first comment I left didn’t stick for some reason.
Hi there, I’ve just visited to read the “No, the Antikythera Mechanism Was Not Unique” post and though comments are closed there, I wanted to share that I really loved it. I just finished watching a Nova special on the Antikythera Mechanism and it exhibited so many of the issues you outlined. It was quite frustrating.
Also I notice that on that that post seemed to have mostly, “Well, you know, *I* know better…” type comments and it was exhausting. So implement every and any sort of comment rules you need to do. Unlike what Rick above seems to think, censorship is not keeping jackasses out of your home (this blog is your online home), it is demanding that *everyone* close their doors to the jackass. So, y’know, slam that door and godspeed!
Your blog, your rules Spencer. Fortunately for us, they’re reasonable rules that will only improve the quality of the comment section. I’ve made a few smarmy comments to other readers on here; my apologies if those comments violated your rules regarding civility.