Writing a comment, even a repetitive or worthless one, takes at least a little time and effort. So getting it trashed must be a somewhat painful or irritating experience. Once that happens enough times, I suspect that the commenters in question would either begin to mend their ways or else permanently depart for greener pastures. ….Once misbehaving individuals have seen their creative labors repeatedly vanish into the void, they may decide either to improve their behavior or abandon the website.

Thanks for the warning, which is most courteous of you. Why would I keep trying now you have told me? If you don’t tell people what you are up to it will be more effective at torturing them, but getting them hanging on and staining to write better and better comments, while suffering more and more getting trashed until finally they are broken and self doubting by the time nothing gets through. Gregory Cochran did that with me and it was exquisitely painful (although I now wonder if it was Jared Diamond’s original idea).

The elevating comments open thread is the one of the most fascinating discussions on UR to date.
The elevated commentators give credence and substance thus elevating everyone around them. I guess the rising tide raises all boats.
My constant problem being on the opposite end of many commentators with my Zionist pro Jewish perspective I receive very personal often vile comments which are completely off topic.

I do not understand why personal attacks cannot be trashed if they contain nothing about the topic and are meant strictly to be personal venom?

I’m a confused.

While I certainly haven’t read the entire thing—who has time to read 130,000 words of comments that jump from topic to topic and are heavily laced with insults and bitter accusations!

then

I think I’ll arrange for badly-behaving or particularly worthless commenters to have an increasing fraction of ALL their comments trashed,

So if Ron doesn’t read all the comments how can he decide which ones to trash? Oh, I get it

I’ll arrange

and

we

in

we might begin implementing harsher additional ways

are the operative words. Let’s see how this works out. Probably by trashing this useless comment.

And it looks like there’ll be a “black list” of commenters, unknown to the readership, who will start getting slashed. Wow!

This experiment of trashing comments and assuming that the trashees understand (1) that they have been trashed (as opposed to there being a technical glitch) and (2) exactly why they have been trashed could go awry.

Pedagogically it seems weak. Like throwing a D paper in the trash and assuming the student, not knowing what happened to his/her paper, will put in more effort and write a better paper the next time.

Unz as jew mommie? At least have the decency to start a “Moderated Comments” thread where all banned comments are accumulated for the enjoyment of the rest of us malcontent 10-15%ers. Prediction: the “Moderated Comments” thread will prove to be your most popular by a wide margin…..as unusual ideas are likely to be the most informative and entertaining.

Skeptikal,
Given to popularity of the site, I would assume it’s a lot of work for moderators to explain why, in each case, a comment was deleted. Where we put some effort in putting together an argument, the sting of having a comment ignored lets us make negative inferences quite well.

I have noticed that extremely strict moderation can tend to reward, how do you say, the correct opinions.
The crowd sourcing of information is one of the most remarkable powers of the internet. Overly harsh moderation gives no advantage over a print edition – other than low cost of distribution.

I appreciate the wide latitude given on this site, and admire it for being a high quality site with minimal moderation.
Thanks.

Thanks for the pdf archive. It is a massively valuable cultural and political resource.

Suggestion:

Publish all comments. The ones selected to be trashed would bear a mark saying ‘TRASH BIN’ and a timer. After time-out they would disappear. That would prevent clogging of the comment area and at the same time satisfy the curious and the insecure. Comments on the Trash Bin would not allow replies or reactions.

”Writing a comment, even a repetitive or worthless one”

A lot of comments here are repetitive, even among your elevated commenters.
I know I am tired of repeating myself on Israel and some other issues. Perhaps all that can be said has been said by many of us.

I don’t know if unz is suffering commenter fatigue or what …I certainly get fatigued trying to cull thru to something worthwhile to me.

Maybe some commenters need to set up a web press site of former unz’ers where they can discuss or rant on articles appearing at unz instead of doing it on unz.

We did that on friendfeed for Mondo commenters after Jeff Blankfort was banned from Mondo which many of us objected to as unfair censorship. All but two of the American gentile commenters left because of the double standard being imposed and their exodus had a disastrous effect on the quality and robustness of the discussions. After friend feed was closed it broke up into two former mondo’ers blogs on word press still operating.

So that might be a solution for unz addicts who don’t want constraints and also a solution for Ron and the bulk of useless comments on unz.

My constant problem being on the opposite end of many commentators with my Zionist pro Jewish perspective I receive very personal often vile comments which are completely off topic.

I’d guess it’s a combination of a few legit haters, and quite a few more of certain special people that think they have an interest in a certain special people being perpetual victims.

…You know, sort of how false flags work, but on a micro level.

wwebd said ——

Ron – don’t blame the Disney corporation for being selfish. Read the Supreme Court copyright extension decision , and then blame Scalia for not understanding why the Disney arguments were wrong – if Scalia had understood the specious nature of the Disney arguments, he could have swung the decision on near-eternal copyright protection the other way. He didn’t. Sad!

He (Scalia) was almost always right on pro-life issues, but, as we know, even Homer nodded, and Scalia, God bless him, was no Homer.

Ron, your efforts here are laudable.

Might you be open to the idea of some experimental comment threads in which ALL comments are anonymous, and identifiable only through a time stamp? Each comment would stand or fall on its own merit or lack thereof, and no pseudo-cults of personality could take root. You could also publish a Flesch-Kincaid scale reading corresponding to each comment.

Why not use a “karma” system like http://slashdot.org? I also like how that site doesn’t delete user-moderated comments, but just collapses them, making them less prominent.

Another strategy is to hide the comments of low quality commenters, while continuing to display their own comments to them but to nobody else.

What a disrespectful and arrogant idea.

Anyway, as comments are numbered and displayed in a sequential order, people will notice that comments are missing and anybody with any self-respect will stop commenting. The “nutjobs” are not as stupid as you think.

The site has the right to apply absolutely whatever moderation policy they see fit; treating people like idiots in another matter altogether.

One thing I do notice and am interested in feedback. PG has banned most if not all Zios from his page, just cause. The comments were not offensive or trash worthy. It seems he does not want dissenters.

It appears that his site has descended into a deep dive of invective Jew hatred deeper and deeper with no pushback to where to me it looks like a peeing contest who can go lower. To me it is cringe worthy maybe because I am a Zionist but I am curious if others (anti Zionist) would agree.

Recently when I publish a comment they have not been showing up with that 5 minute edit window. I submit a comment and it’s gone, later to appear.

If that is not the case then I will edit this comment and state otherwise.

Hopefully if anyone else has this issue they will “Agree” with this post, or reply. It could also be my browser, perhaps. So this is a test post

‘…I do not understand why personal attacks cannot be trashed if they contain nothing about the topic and are meant strictly to be personal venom?’

Because, Fran, you are evil incarnate, and in fighting you, we are fighting the good fight.

Plus, you keep offering such excellent opportunities to make points for the side of goodness and truth.

You’re really priceless, Fran. If you didn’t already exist, Nasrallah or somebody would have to create you. Speaking for myself, if I’d dreamed you up, I’d give myself a pat on the back.

Another strategy is to hide the comments of low quality commenters, while continuing to display their own comments to them but to nobody else.

The Facebook shadow-ban, as it were.

By “Mondo” do you mean Mondoweiss?

I agree. This comment is pretty arrogant.
Some people (nut jobs?) might even think that Anatoly Karlin in a nut job. Of course his a priori assumption is that *he* would not fall within the nut job category. He is one of the predestined blessed. Commenters, that is.

But, You never know, AK!

You should understand that Zios dominate all blogs on the net and the anti-Zios are banned, so the Zios have pretty much free rein (except for a very few sites that are far right and are dominated by Trump types.) More importantly the Zios dominate wiki, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, reddit, Twitter, etc. an anti-Zios are banned. So, this is one of the few redoubts for anything approaching free speech on the web. And now Unz no longer favors free speech !

One major source of confusion is that I have NEVER claimed anywhere that this is some sort of “free speech” website, only that we regularly focus on controversial topics and that our standards of moderation are far lighter than most other publications.

This is a freaking comedy !

What goes around comes around? In case you didn’t notice all anti-zio’s just lost their “comment rights” on every university campus in the USA.

Personally I don’t want that to happen to the Zios here. Anti-zionists need some way to sharpen their axes after all.

You’re not the only one. J. Gutierrez is anti-Zionist and he claims that Philip Giraldi has banned him from his threads for criticising and exposing current CIA operations.

I actually like that Ron allows the authors to moderate their own threads and PCR not even allowing comments; it allows for individuality and adds to the variety. I just wish there was more transparency in what is going on, and it took a while to get Ron to reveal the moderating system even though some commenters have been asking for ages for an answer to their query about this.

But I’m against banning anyone across all threads for ideological reasons or personal views. You want to ban Nazis and anti-Semites, Ben wants to ban racists, many want to ban hasbaras, Shabaz goys and Zionists like you, others want the more extreme conspiracy theorists gone. If all these were indulged, Unz Review would stop being what it is and may as well just close down.

I do not want to ban anyone for their “point of view”. I only want to ban trash talk. Personally attacks and stupid talk like Truth 3. I had some crazy radical Catholics posting non stop memes not related to the thread.
I think it should be mandatory that your comment relate to the thread topic. We can discuss anything as long as we are kind and civil to one another. Some of the talk is just dangerous and vile.
Have you seen a change on PG’s pages? Have you noticed the regression? The comments are very cruel
I got booted for telling him that the US Liberty was a tired weapon to the Jews. Bam I was gone.
I think that Ron (from what I can tell) wants intellectual comments and discussions as opposed to your a liar and you smell and your mother is a whore…. where the conversation becomes a peeing contest. Like PGs site.
Ron wants it all to be high brow like he is. Keep your Jew hatred wrapped tight in prose.

Slippery slope there Ron. First you attract people who want to see and share alternative views, then you hack and delete those whose comments you don’t like. Then they decide to leave and your lead in visits swoons and you start crying, ‘Come back, come back my little ducklings!’
But alas, it is too late. Poof!

Ron,

Maybe I have a rose-colored view — I comment mainly on Sailer’s blog — but I would say that unz.com commenters are relatively benign compared to much of the Web. For example, I finally stopped commenting on PZ Myers blog, even though PZ often has interesting things to say, because true nastiness was the norm there.

When I think of the most unpleasant commenters I’ve seen, there are TinyDuch and Corvinus — except TinyDuck is clearly in it for the laughs and Corvinus has moved in a more substantive direction (I think largely because he has come to realize there really is a diversity of views here).

And then there are the guys who are sure that they will have the power to deport certain ethnic groups from the USA and so I tell them they can be the first on the deportation boat. And a month or two later, we agree on some other issue.

So, I would not ban any of these folks.

Again, maybe Sailer does a better job than other authors here of overseeing his commenters, but at least in Sailer’s case, it works as is. I’d leave it alone.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

First they came for those who were true dissenters but I did not speak out because I was not a dissenter.

Then they came for those who who challenged the orthodoxy of the orthodox and I did not speak out because I was not unorthodox.

Then they came for those who criticized their writers and I did not speak out because I did not criticize them.

Then they came for those who criticized the Magic People______ (put in anyone you want, Jews, Muslims, Women, Transgender, killer Dwarfs etc.) and I did not speak out because everyone is a genius and all people are wonderful and would never do anything to anyone.

Then they came for us the Gold Stars and there was no one left to say anything for us!

Anyone can lose it in an argument and start firing away but this site is far better as far as ad hominem attacks and insults go when compared to some others. My impression was that you were guilty of this too. I’m not going to start analysing past comments looking for examples but let’s say that you probably use terms such as “Nazi”, “racist” and “anti-semite” as insults rather than descriptors just as Wally uses “commie” and “Zionist” likewise.

I got booted for telling him that the US Liberty was a tired weapon to the Jews.

If PG banned you he’s probably spared you from the ire (righteous I’d say) from enraged patriots as there’s also 911 who most blame on the same source. Anyway Zionists are easy targets for any humanist considering the IDF is using unarmed Palestinian children for target practice, but that’s beyond the theme of this thread.

Good comment, Dave.

Mr. Unz doesn’t seem to care much for what we have been doing over in the iSteve corner. I am surprised, not that what I think about it matters.

This following little slap at us is, for example, what he has to say about iSteve and its comment section. It is from one of Ron’s comments in his thread about Excellent Commenters. Regarding iSteve:

But the very few times I gone there, I’ve really been rather disappointed. The discussions seemed rather superficial, basically a gaggle of rightwingers mildly smirking at some of the total lunacies of our current society. I got the sense that it was filled with what the younger Alt-Righters ridicule as “Boomer Cons,” generating an edgier version of the 1995 National Review, which I never regarded as a worthwhile magazine. There’s nothing wrong with such threads, but I personally don’t find them very interesting or useful.

That’s fine. We are free to roll around and laugh like groundlings at an old Shakespeare show, but we don’t really have the respect of the Proprietor.

Admittedly, my own comments have deteriorated into mostly jokes, images and short items that are perhaps, as our host would say, “vacuous.” Mea culpa. My heart is just not in it right now the way it was for a while.

I am grateful for UR, and I think it is very cool that Ron Unz bothers to run it. We are getting an awful lot here, more than we objectively deserve, and we can thank him for it.

Your contributions are very good, BTW. Thanks for them.

I strongly recommend that Dr. Robert Morgan recieves the coveted gold star at the very least.

https://www.unz.com/comments/all/page/1/?commenterfilter=dr.%20robert%20morgan

Admittedly, my own comments have deteriorated into mostly jokes, images and short items that are perhaps, as our host would say, “vacuous.” Mea culpa. My heart is just not in it right now the way it was for a while.

Ditto..

This problem is discussed in the “suggestions/report bugs” thread. Apparenly you need to delete certain items from your local cashe (or some such technical fiddling) to resolve the problem.

Maybe one important point wasn’t discussed enough (I don’t know for sure, as the mass of comments is overwhelming and my interest level is not high enough to read): as the site offers free expression to a wide variety of unpopular opinion, the comment policy cannot be one size for all.

The range is so wide that it’s hard to imagine even a unified scale for defining good, bad or trash comments. For a majority of avid readers of the anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist section, not only the best comments but most articles, too, in the biologic diversity sphere may well look like trash and the commentariat culture itself looks entirely different. Repetitiveness in political threads is a given and for some sections one-trick donkeys are a positive element. Discussion in scientific or quasi-scientific sections and those of a fiercely political nature cannot have the same rules for minimal civility, reasonableness, or even editing proficiency. The attribution of a gold star of excellence to some commenters is likely to elicit widely divergent reactions among the different readerships.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a core of the “initiated”, who seem comfortable across the sections and even do comment in all — but they don’t really impress in the same way the garden-or-common readers across the board. Let’s not confuse these initiated with the mass of the readers, or the article authors.

So why not delegate all the moderation to the respective authors (or their deputies), after some very general rules by Ron Unz have been laid down, just enough to ensure, for example, relatively very wide freedom of speech while eliminating real pests and legal liabilities,, or something like that?

Frankly, I don’t believe that even the universal mind of Ron Unz can entirely get the culture of each of the rooms in his house.

Ron Unz … You never cease to amaze!

I really dislike the gold stars.

It’s clutter. It’s infantile. It’s arbitrary. It creates a bogus elite, like blue checkmarks on Twitter. It’s very unclear what a star means. When a commenter with a gold star makes a dumb or trivial comment, the star makes it seem even dumber. The stars are ugly and too big. They remind me of honors awarded in totalitarian societies. Or in the Boy Scouts. Cheesy and embarrassing…

It’s enough for each to judge each comment by its content, and by the name of the commenter (if not anonymous), and by the commenter’s comment history.

Open threads are useful.

Video Link

Video Link

5ds

Sometimes humans can’t leave well enough alone.

We get rules out the rear, GMOs,

unnecessary “improvements” to … name it.

5ds

This website isn’t about freedom of speech and it isn’t about allowing dissenting comments, then it must only be about the strange attraction of anonymously trashing one’s fellow human beings because they are Jewish, Christian, intelligent, reasonable or of a race that doesn’t include the writer.

I’ll be leaving for greener pastures, Ron.

A lot of comments here are repetitive, even among your elevated commenters.
I know I am tired of repeating myself on Israel and some other issues. Perhaps all that can be said has been said by many of us.

The paid posters for Iran are quite repetitive. As they keep repeating the same lies, those of us interested in the truth have to keep posting the same rebuttals. I know that I cannot change the mind of paid Iranian operatives. However, I can point out the obvious holes in their logic thus protecting other Unz readers from being led astray.

I can tell that I am effective when the Iranian clique runs out of deceptions and resorts to personal insults.
_______

One thing that might be useful is trying to coordinate authors so that there is one primary article on a topic. Sailer and The Saker have Soleimani threads going right now. It would not surprise me if several more authors place top level articles on the death of this terrorist before today ends.

When multiple authors open the same door, they are likely to generate the same responses.

PEACE 😇

I’ll be leaving for greener pastures, Ron.

Video Link

Recently when I publish a comment they have not been showing up with that 5 minute edit window. I submit a comment and it’s gone, later to appear.

Two possibilities.

There is an intentional site feature that treats comments differently for a short period (15-30 min) after a new article appears in the site. If you comment during this time your response will be processed without the 5 minute edit window.

The site can have an issue with stored, conflicting cookies. As editing is only offered to the poster, if the site is having difficulty identifying you it will not present the edit window. You can try clearing cache to see if that resolves the problem.

PEACE 😇

Keep your Jew hatred wrapped tight in prose.

Sure thing, Frannie. Goyim calling out the hateful hating depravities of your hateful tribe chaps your ass, Fran, we get it. In your world, Hitler is coming out of every lamp fixture and electrical outlet and wherever you go, there’s Hitler. You remind me of your fellow-oppressed, African Americans and feminists, constantly looking for offense to take. Hell, yall invented it. You and your type give everyone Jew-Exhaustion and the endless dog-whistling about race and anti-Semitism has become something to mock and ridicule. And where would the WWW be without you? You give perspective.

Tell you what, Fran, when you and your tribe get serious about who are the actual, violent and deadly anti-Semites (Blacks and Muslims, but you know this already) in THIS day and age, I’ll actually stop my eye-rolling at your phony proclamations directed at White Goyim. Not that you care. But you’re stuck at Credibility Gap. Your tribe is most-coddled anywhere, ever, again, at this point in history. We even ran a steam-roller over the 1st amendment on the Jewish behalf. Stop whining and get your Blacks in order. And remember who actually protected you. Once we’re gone, you’ll be set upon, they’ll be coming around with pitchforks, wolves and lighted tapers.

If not for the machinations of the Disney Corporation and “The Bitter Legacy of Mickey Mouse,” twenty additional years of important historical and intellectual material would have also been made available by now.

Apropos of this, I have never understood why Russia or China don’t liberalize their copyright laws and set *much* shorter terms – say 20 years or even 10 years. Imagine if Star Wars (1977) was in the public domain in Russia and filmmakers could freely make their own derivative works of the Star Wars characters. Might be illegal to distribute in the West but it would open up a huge creative sphere in the east.

My point is by eliminating those oppostion voices causes the thread to decend into chaos. Like Lord of the Flies. I am asking you your opinion.
His pages have become peeing contest where all rational thoughts are extingished into a hate speech boring on propagating violence. I am asking your opinion.

Stay and fight. Those who are allowed to post annoynomous hate speech should at least have to confront the people they are irrational hating on and accusing of crimes warranting such talk.
When racist under pseudo names post I want to be there to poke my finger in their eyes.
Rational talk is the biggest defense against racist and file hatred from many who are off balance.
Balance being the operative word.
If they do not want to put a name up, then take the heat.
Stay and fight.

Those who are allowed to post annoynomous hate speech should at least have to confront the people

Something crashed on to the bed behind Winston’s back. The head of a ladder had been thrust through the window and had burst in the frame. Someone was climbing through the window. There was a stampede of boots up the stairs. The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with ironshod boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands.

I’m familiar with a number of sites and I’d say that for ad hominem BS this site is by far the best, i.e. has the least, and in fact there is no problem whatsoever.

I really dislike the gold stars.

You can just ignore them. What’s the big deal?

When I read a thread I don’t know who has been purposely excluded, unless I’m later told by you and JG about getting kicked off by PG, or by Ben Sampson telling me Paul Kersey won’t publish his comments, and so on, so it’s hard for me to tell what it would look like without the author’s moderation. I’d say that the threads under articles about racial IQ and black crime are probably worse in terms of what you complain about (ad hominem attacks, insults, slurs, etc.) than Philip Giraldi’s threads. But this is all unavoidable when certain topics come up and I still contend that UR if far more civil than other sites where vulgar insults can be exchanged between commenters sometimes for pages on end. But I suppose it must be frustrating for those who are not allowed to counter arguments they feel strongly about. Ben Sampson feels worse about Paul Kersey than you do about Phil. Still those so banned can get to complain or respond on some other thread, although it can sometimes be off topic, while on other sites banned commenters have no recourse to let others know their feelings or what is going on.

UR is superior. Or was, as now Ron is threatening to clear out some commenters altogether, in stages at least.

Sailer and The Saker have Soleimani threads going right now. It would not surprise me if several more authors place top level articles on the death of this terrorist before today ends.

Update: Giraldi just started his Soleimani thread, so we now have three conversations that are likely to be very similar.

PEACE 😇

Why no climate change articles?

I have commented before in e-mail to this site with wonder and recommendation about climate change articles. This is a profoundly controversial issue today and yet it is virtually absent from articles on this site.

To ignore such an issue that dominates media and politics is truly perplexing, I can’t help but wonder if there is some ulterior motive.

You can try clearing cache to see if that resolves the problem.

You are exactly right. Ron gave me that tip awhile back. I cleared the cookies for Unz, last done in 2014, at least that was the oldest of 6 from here. Fixed me right up. I use Firefox. Easy with that.

This is called shadow-banning and it stinks. If you don’t want somebody to comment at least have the guts to tell them to get off the site or that you are banning them. Allowing them to comment until they realize they are banned by never getting a response is the worst thing you can do.

The infantile gold star initiative—which was implemented to reduce comment clutter—resulted in one of the longest threads ever.

Every site I have been on starts out relatively middle of the road. As the site starts to become more and more hard-up for money, they must be turning to neocon sources of income as they seem to become increasing more neocon (and thus Zionist) and ban anybody even remotely critical of Israel and far left Jews in the US (why neocons defend everything Jewish reflexively is beyond me). Eventually, it becomes all neocon, all the time and I stop visiting. So I am surprised Ron’s site has kept it’s anything goes nature as long as it has. I wouldn’t want anybody banned. I can understan Ron’s concern about clutter but it isn’t like these are printed pages.

What could you teach people about run-on sentences?

Now if the whole world could just come to a consensus as to what qualifies as a “low-quality nut-job” comment, the problem of cluttered comments threads would be solved.

Make sure you have a paycheck ready for Facebook if you want to start shadow banning. They have a patent on the technique: (1)

Despite its frequent denials that it practices “shadowbanning” — the covert censorship of content without notifying the censored — Facebook applied for and received a U.S. patent for shadowbanning technology last month, according to a report in the New American.

According to the report, Facebook received a patent for technology that would limit the reach of blocked content while continuing to “display the blocked content to the commenting user such that the commenting user is not made aware that his or her comment was blocked.”

PEACE 😇
_______

(1) https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/08/06/facebook-receives-patent-for-shadowbanning-tech/

Please note I said “virtually absent” not literally.

More specifically 18 articles over a 13 year period (between 2007 and 2020) for a total of 45100 words is what I meant by “virtually”. Surely then it is accurate to say: on TUR climate change is “virtually absent” and it does not warrant significant emphasis.

Respectfully, given this 13 year coverage, one can hardly places climate change in a significance category consistent with the coverage it gets in all other media and politics.

Having said that, I have repeatedly written “God Bless Ron Unz” for this webzine and I mean no criticism only suggestion. There are absolutely brilliant climate deniers on the Web, for example:

Judith Curry “Climate Etc. https://judithcurry.com
Steve Mcintyre “Climate Audit https://climateaudit.org
Alan Watts “Watts Up with That ?” https://wattsupwiththat.com
“JoNova” http://joannenova.com.au
Tony Heller’s absolutely brilliant Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/TonyHeller1) would be a great addition to TUR “Featured Video Channel.
Etc.
Etc.

“At least have the decency to start a “Moderated Comments” thread where all banned comments are accumulated for the enjoyment of the rest of us malcontent 10-15%ers.”

A veritable “Basket of Deplorable Comments.” Now I’ll be disappointed if we don’t get one.

How could they get a patent? I was shadow banned at the Washington Post well over 5 years ago. I realized that no matter how inflamatory the comment was, nobody ever responded to me – even when I responded to somebodies comment with a completely contrary opinion. You would think you would get at least some response.

There’s an idea! I’d like the option to not see any of the “social credit” cruft that Ron adds to the site.

This way, people who like that kind of thing, or can easily ignore it, keep the stars, brownie points, orders of merit, etc. option on.

Those like me who find them silly and unsightly, enjoy the heretofore distraction-free reading experience on Unz, and don’t need some hidden god-like administrator to give them hints on what to think, will be happy too, with that option turned off.

It’s not a huge deal, but it’s a design issue. Like all design issues it’s both trivial and pretty important.

There’s a bug that, if there are currently no comments at all on the thread, your comment gets registered but you can’t see it or edit it. You only see it once it has been accepted by the moderator.

Ron said it’s a bug related to how WordPress works and it probably won’t be fixed.

I really dislike the gold stars.

Getting a gold star here is a bit like winning a medal in the Special Olympics.

Buzz, your comments, PhysicistDave’s, and many others’ comments clicked for me often here. I think some of the reason is that the more persuasive commenters here offered an explicit foundation in personal experience or education before making their point. I’d like to believe I’ve tried to do something of the same with my comments. A few persuasive commenters can sometimes rely on the density of their writing alone to carry their point.

I had a problem with my Chrome default browser not giving me the 5 minute edit time and, on inquiry, was told to get rid of cookies (I think). Whatever I did deliberately didn’t help but now the problem seems to have solved itself).

Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you should be posting in the Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Fox News, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS — a whole slew of sites where you will be in good company and where present day Zionist practices that have become increasingly indistinguishable from the classic Afrikaans apartheid are welcomed, accepted — even venerated. Best to leave us goyim to revel in our impotence, while there’s still an outlet for us to vent our frustrations. Not before long, many comments here may be criminalized. TBH, I don’t read all responses to your posts, but I’ve read numerous legitimate criticisms of Zionist practices without vilifying the entire Jewish race. If that were the case, it would be odd in a website run by a Jewish person with numerous Jewish contributors.

“I think some of the reason is that the more persuasive commenters here offered an explicit foundation in personal experience or education before making their point.”

Just make a point. Personal experience is at best anecdotal and always to large extent confabulated and not only in the virtual space of anonymous commentariat. Commenters who try to ‘personalize’ their comments with unverifiable stories from their lives to give themselves some legitimacy are to be avoided because they are likely to be trolls who use this technique of legitimization. Believing the stories is for the naive. And naivety is not a virtue.

I think Ron should leave well enough alone but it’s his site he can do as he pleases . This Gold Star thing seems like a bad idea to me . People ask how can he moderate all the thousands of comments . He won’t have to , the new “hall monitors” can do it for him “respect my authority” . And what will that do to the back and forth here ? People might think twice before getting into a dispute with someone designated as special . If the “Good thinker” gets bested he can’t out right ban the person but it’s going to go in the permanent record and that suspicion real or not will put a pall on the back and forth here. I mostly comment on Steve’s posts . I’ve called him all kinds of bad things and he’ll let them pass but I’ve thanked him at times for the drunken rants he has had the good sense not to pass .
As to the idea of shadow banning commenters that is just a dirty low thing to do .
He should just drop the whole thing . unz.com is a place where there are a lot of smart people and crackpots are all jumbled together and interacting now Ron wants to what be respectable ? Be taken seriously ? If that’s what he wants maybe he should get the ADL and the SLPC to vet his commenters for him .

The sanctimonious (((hypocrisy))) of Fran’s self-proclaimed aversion to vile personal attacks is evident in even a small, but representative sample of her very own venom. All misspelling, grammar errors, and logical fallacies are original.

I do not understand why personal attacks cannot be trashed

Neither do I.
IMO. ad hominem attacks should flow directly to the bit bucket.

I think the existing moderation system works well.

Even when reading an entire thread, it is not difficult to spot unhelpful comments and scroll past them.

is it just sailer’s blog that is “play for pay” comments or are there others? On sailer’s blogs, the donors get their comments approved early, and everyone else’s comments are not approved till later….isn’t it time that we acknowledge that this is not an activist site, but instead a money site?

(anatoly k banished me, may God bless him.)

mr Unz, could you please ban profane comments containing dirty insults? what is the point of moderating if such stinky stuff is allowed?
i got banned from jihadwatch for commenting about some articles supporting degeneracy. that is ironic, since mr. Spencer is a great fellow and always decrying how msm are stifling free speech. on recent visit to jw i saw your name mentioned and wanted to defend you but since they would not post my comments …
i hope you really are a billionaire as their writer claimed. you were accused of denying the you know what. they don’t care if you denied the Almighty, all the Saints, and the afterlife. they might even praise you for being open minded, free thinker, enlightened or such sort of thing. but woe to you if you deny the …
in Germany they will even send you to jail. it must be the new state religion so it maybe safer to be an agnostic than a denier, if one can’t be a believer.

(attributed to Fran) ‘… #919 “Don’t like Jesus lying in boiling feces, stop bothering me. I am almost sure he is…’

That’s interesting. I’d assumed the sentiment was, if not quite mythical, at least obsolete.

Maybe not.

I will mention one thing that’s irritating.

The link to my webpage keeps disappearing. My comments fill in with it automatically for a while, then it goes away. Checking ‘update my information’ doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Utu, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but it’s a commonplace in publishing for writers and their editors to care enough about what they’re saying to present their material as well as possible for the reader’s consideration and acceptance. Thus, the whole apparatus of prefaces, introductions, forewords, abstracts, executive summaries, titling—you get the picture.

We’re constrained in the blogosphere, but the better comments to me are those where the commenter somehow conveys to me why I should care about his comment. Opinions may differ, of course.

One major source of confusion is that I have NEVER claimed anywhere that this is some sort of “free speech” website, only that we regularly focus on controversial topics and that our standards of moderation are far lighter than most other publications.

Then what does this, found in the upper right of your site. mean?

Support Free Thought & Free Speech

That’s not true. I’ve donated, and my comments still have to wait for Mr. Sailer’s awakening during late-morning California-time. I don’t expect anything different, but it can be a hindrance. There’s no quid, pro quo, Clarice, errr, PH. It’s just a guess, but I think Steve Sailer’s straight-t0-press (anytime of day) commenters are just grandfathered in from a time when he didn’t get so many comments.

Steve Sailer will never delve into this subject, though. Whatever, he’s got the best commenters, meaning most educated and/or experienced, the least foul-mouthed, and the fewest of the out-and-out Socialists and Commies of any of the posters, syndicated or otherwise, that I’ve read here. (Granted, I know which idiots to avoid – been around this axis once or twice.)

Does it go away only after you’ve closed the browser program and then re-opened it. On some computers that I don’t have control over, all 3, the name, email address, and website link, all go away upon browser closure (auto erasure of cookies or some other script that is gone, I dunno?)

I have seen exactly what you described, but I don’t consider it a bug, if it is one, worth mentioning. I am so glad I learned to touch-type!

True in the ideal world where people do not embellish their bios, do not confabulate and do not lie. Internet is not that world because statements about personal experiences by anonymous commenters cannot be verified so sky is the limit for all kinds of confabulators.

The corollary from it is that the commenters who in good faith share their true but unverifiable personal experiences are foolish and naive just like the ones who believe them. You belong to that category if your comments are made in good faith.

And look who agreed with you, the snarkiest laconic commenter iffen who never volunteered a single bit of information about himself. There is a whole zoo of trolls here that would require a special taxonomy and iffen belongs to the small though irritating class of insects.

And look who agreed with you, the snarkiest laconic commenter iffen who never volunteered a single bit of information about himself.

Not true! He once revealed that he is a Philosophical Evangelical Atheist… that’s why I dubbed him the PEAbrain! lol

Steve Sailer will never delve into this subject, though. Whatever, he’s got the best commenters, meaning most educated and/or experienced, the least foul-mouthed, and the fewest of the out-and-out Socialists and Commies of any of the posters, syndicated or otherwise, that I’ve read here.

He also seems to manage to weed out the more ludicrous members of the Tin Foil Hat Brigade that infest so many other commentariats.

True. I’m not sure how. Maybe it’s the other commenters that have actually accomplished this.

“AP” has to rank with the worst, if not the worst of the gold stars.

Underhanded and contradictory to the image of a quality site.

Sorry but who is AP?

Thanks for revealing yourself for what you are.

I agree. My response to it has been to put everyone with a gold star on my ignore list.

Still not as bad when gold stars were applied in another era.

S0meone who has been debunked by some others (including yours truly), who haven’t been selected for gold star status.

I’d like to also highlight how easy the URL is to remember — Remembering only those two words, “Unz” and “Print;” from anywhere with Internet access you have a free-to-use, searchable archive of much of the best, or representative, published material from past eras; in original, unedited form. Thanks to Ron Unz’s efforts.

The URL is:

https://www.unz.com/print/

Thanks for revealing yourself for what you are.

He did that a long time ago with his cocky, arrogant, self important rules for commenting on his blog.

a bogus elite, like blue checkmarks on Twitter

I exclusively hear the phrase “blue checkmark” used as an insult. It would be interesting to read an investigation into the origins of that phrase used as insult. I feel it is a phenomenon that emerged during the Trump campaign.

Something online from late 2017 gets it about right:

some inside Twitter viewed verification as both an endorsement and a badge of validity–especially among journalists and celebrities.

(from “Most Twitter execs didn’t know what the blue verification checkmark was for,” by M.Grothaus, Fast Company, Dec. 21, 2017)

Officially, of course, Twitter “blue checkmarking” is not supposed to be that, and is conceptually pretty different than the system Ron has been experimenting with. Twitter’s is ostensibly solely to verify your identity and differentiate celebrity accounts from parody accounts, hence the late-2000s- and early-2010s-era custom of people naming accounts things like “realDonaldTrump” instead of “DonaldTrump.”

The (one) problem is political favoritism. To take two non-random examples, Steve Sailer has never been verified, nor has the Unz Review. It could be easily verified that those Twitter accounts are controlled the real journalist named Steve Sailer and the webzine on which I am writing these words, respectively. It would be a simple thing to do, but they don’t. Why?

There have also been cases of certain political dissidents being “de-verified,” a bizarre and rather Orwellian thing to do which essentially proves there is a political motivation to blue-checkmarking. Blue-checkmarking is a mix of actual identity-verification and the politicized creation of a caste of approved figures, Twitter Teacher’s Pets and/or a high school clique writ very large.

If you mean as an award to parents whose sons died in a war, I agree.

Yes, he banned me after my first comment there, which was a mild needling of him. He’s a self impressed guy, for sure.

Maybe some commenters need to set up a web press site of former unz’ers where they can discuss or rant on articles appearing at unz instead of doing it on unz.

Much like Unz itself, one might note.

The link to my webpage keeps disappearing. My comments fill in with it automatically for a while, then it goes away.

I’ve read (but not verified) that some popular browsers now limit cookie lifetimes to something like 30 days to avoid various abuses. Perhaps that’s what you’re seeing? Depends on what you mean by ‘for a while’, of course.

Ron –

A few people who participate on Unz Forum also were stalwart participants on a blog that Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett ran, Race for Iran, that morphed into Going to Tehran shortly after the Leveretts published a book by that name — Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran.
(They shut down the blog and scrubbed it about 2 years ago, a pity because they made powerful arguments ~8 yrs ago that China was eating US lunch while US entangled in ME. They taught at a Univ. in Beijing.)

Flynt and Hillary had been on George Bush’s national security team; they left in protest over the Iraq war.
But before that, Hillary worked at the United Nations, where she negotiated with diplomats from Iran and thru these negotiations gained Iranian assistance in war in Afghanistan.
That ended abruptly when Bush recited David Frum’s lines, placing Iran in the Axis of Evil.

I don’t watch TV therefore no mainstream news, so I don’t know if the Leveretts make the circuit.

But I’d sure like to know what the Leveretts think of the ongoing situation.

Last I knew, Flynt was head of graduate-level International Relations program at Penn State in State College, and Hillary was running a consultancy.

They might make an interesting cameo on your blog.

I’ve tried contacting Flynt thru Penn State but I can’t get past the petit bureaucrats at the intermediate level.
Maybe you know someone who might know someone — ?

I think the addition of a “Hasbara” button would be a great addition. “Troll” doesn’t quite do it.

Should be a racist button also.

Should be a racist button also.

Would not be very useful, as there are incomparably more Hasbara than racist comments on the UR.

I would propose a “Queen of Hasbarat” button, so people can give you credit and pay their respects to your unique skills.

Gleimhart, I am fluent in Latin and most professors of Greek in the various places in this world where it is considered good to be know about ancient Greek writings would be overjoyed to spend a few minutes with me, discussing those subjects, because there are very very few people who know even a millionth of what I know about classical Greek.

My friend, this is not a place where intelligence and a deep Christian understanding of the world is rated as highly as it should be.

I think the addition of a “Hasbara” button would be a great addition. “Troll” doesn’t quite do it.

We still haven’t got a “Fed” button, which is desperately needed. We also need a “Raving Loony” button and maybe a “Loser Hitler Fanboy” button. Perhaps also a “Tin Foil Hat” button for the more spectacular conspiracy theorists.

I’d like a “You’re Totally Wrong” button to use against anyone who disagrees with me.

Boswell remarks that Johnson read from his Greek New Testament almost daily.

There have been few keener intellects on human nature and the world than “the great man.”

Not to mention on Christ our Savior.

I’m sure I’ve said this before but can’t you arrange to avoid the Disney extension by using some other country’s Copyright Law – even if you have to leave the operation to be set up by a foreign collaborator while you merely give him technical guidance. I know that you might have to be very cautious in the country that is trying to have Julian Arrange extradited for helping Chelsea Manning crack passwords. Still, worth getting really good lawyers to help perhaps.

Australia had 20 years of the Disney extension forced on it as the price of a so-called Free Trade Agreementvbut that means Copyright lasts no longer than 70 years after the author’s death or corporate creation. I’m sure there are others still at 50.