Legal Commentary

A Reminder About Comments

By Eugene Volokh

As we?ve mentioned before, we want comments on our site to be polite. First, polite commentary tends to encourage substantive and thoughtful responses. Rude commentary tends to drive away the substantive responders, and instead just yields more rudeness.

Second, I just don?t like rudeness, and I don?t want my site to be a vehicle for its further distribution. And, third, whatever substantive points a commenter wants to make can always be made without personal insults, vulgarity, or other nastiness ? and will be more effective that way. Yes, I know full well that the First Amendment protects even vulgarities; but it doesn?t require me to tolerate it on my property, whether it?s my dining room or my blog.

Because of this, we will sometimes delete comments that we see as rude, and will sometimes ban commenters that we see as rude. When we do that, we often hear complaints that we didn?t ban someone else who is even ruder. And of course that?s absolutely right. There are over 775,000 comments on this site, posted over the last 6 years, which amounts to over 350 comments a day. None of us reads each comment, much less reads it carefully. Inevitably there are many rude comments that we just won?t see.

On top of that, there are some that we?ll see but will perceive differently from the way you perceived them. There are some that we read when we?re in a more tolerant mood and some that we read when we?re in a less tolerant mood. And there are some that we?ll skim, without fully noticing or grasping a rude statement buried inside them. (I should note, by the way, that a rude comment slipped inside a substantive comment is less likely to be noticed than a comment that is nothing but rudeness ? not that I want to encourage the former, but I do want to especially discourage the latter.)

This is why claims that we?re somehow treating certain rude commenters unequally leave us entirely unmoved. Please just be polite to each other, rather than trying to use someone else?s rudeness as a justification for yours.