I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together

When I posted last week about comments, I had only one real concern. Those of us who post on the front page have obviously allowed wildly unfettered free speech here. We regularly get insulted and even threatened. As a consequence we’ve developed fairly thick skins.

Granted, we’ve done our share of insulting as well. I personally try to limit my out-and-out rudeness to those who, in the paraphrased words of one commenter, come into our house and defecate on the carpet, but I probably haven’t always been successful.

When I posted, I was concerned about the casual commenters who use this blog as we intended – as a progressive forum for panhandle progressives. I worried that some of them might not have skins that were quite so thick. While we haven’t discouraged conservative commenters and trolls, and approach absolutism regarding free speech issues, this blog would be pointless if its core audience were driven away. In that event, I at least would turn my attention elsewhere.
Those worries seem to have been unfounded. Apparently, a thick skin is a prerequisite for liberalism in West Texas.

However, another issue has arisen. A fraudulent post was called to my attention. It appeared to be from one of our posters but was actually posted by a conservative troll. Since it accurately reflected neither fact nor opinion, I deleted it and have set comments to require approval for the remainder of the day. Consequently, comments may take awhile to be posted. Sorry about that.

I will delete only comments are inaccurately signed. And I really don’t even want this much responsibility. I also don’t want to require people to sign in to post comments in perpetuam. Consider this a warning. If you don’t want to post under your own name, post under anonymous or “Porky the Pig”. Just don’t post under someone else’s name. Assuming we don’t have any more problems, I’ll turn realtime commenting back on later this evening or tomorrow morning.

Goo goo goo joob.

spacedark