Penultimate post: on blogging

Despite my evident pique in the last post about comments (a bit more on that later), I certainly enjoyed blogging for the last 16 months or so (about the same time as it took the FA to negotiate the last contract, as it happens). I'm obviously vain enough to enjoy having my moderate rants broadcast to some number of readers, who if not legion were at least rather more than the couple of people around the water cooler I would have vented to otherwise.

Blogging came rather easily to me. It's occurred to me that it is not entirely unlike the scholarly mode in which I wrote my dissertation: a commentary. A bit more on that, then on possible goals for a blog like this, and this blog's successes and failures in meeting such goals.

Comments closed

I've had enough comments: congratulations to some brave & articulate anonymouses, who have now succeeded in shutting them down, though they've only spared us from their drivel for a short while, as I'm shutting this whole thing down soon anyway. Anyone curious as to why I've closed comments should check out the thread under the previous post, where various nameless souls eloquently express their outrage at my removing some of their garbage from an earlier post, at my lack of manliness, at my sycophancy toward my beloved administrative superiors, or all of the above. I've been quite willing and have even often enjoyed responding to some pretty sharp criticism over the lifetime of this blog, from both sides of the union-administration divide, but, frankly, I've got better things to do, especially now that such attacks make up a large proportion of the comments, and most are illiterate, bilious exercises in name-calling, from individuals who can't be bothered to make an argument or present any evidence, but believe that we all somehow benefit from their pointing out that I'm vile, or some other commentator is vile.

As I've said before, the only rational motivation for such comments I can think of would be an cunning effort to shut the blog down, undertaken by individuals who know that they are spewing senseless nastiness. Go home, have a few too many drinks, pretend you can't write a correct English sentence, and call Dave a sycophant, or attack another commentator, or the administration, in a few anonymous sentences that you wouldn't have uttered in your own voice in public even if you were drunk. How clever of you! Perhaps you have a future in politics. Congratulations, if that's your game; if not, well, good luck to you. As I've tried to spell out in an earlier post, I'm shutting the blog down for reasons other than comments, though such comments have increasingly soured me on the enterprise, and obviously the recent happy trend toward the lowest common denominator has resulted in me closing comments earlier than I had planned.

Thanks, on the other hand, to the many who posted constructive comments, pro and con, over the life of this blog. During many periods the comments were far and away the best part of the blog, and I learned a great deal from reading and responding to them. I'll miss the good ones, the thoughtful ones that forced me to rethink things, that helped me see things from a different angle, or led me to do a better of job of expressing my own views.

A technical note: As I can't figure out how to get blogger to universally close comments, I have shut down comments only for the last few posts; for earlier posts, I've flipped a switch so that comments appear to be possible but moderated--but I won't be doing any moderating and won't post any comments.