How do you allow comments on your blog? I've wanted to have them on mine since I started it but don't know how. Do you have to pay for a premium service or something?

I'd rather have comments on mine since it makes things more interesting and it keeps me on my toes. So if you can point me in the right direction, I'd be appreciative.

Well Brian, your main problem is that you're on BlogSpot.

No offense, but we need to get you the hell off of that miserably awful service.

Can you afford $5/month? If you can, I can set you up with a much better and more reliable weblog. One that includes comments. Just let me know.

This is silly. I don't have comments on my blog, and I'm not a coward. I'll happily post any worthwhile points or arguments anyone emails me, and I display my email address at the bottom of every post.

The true cowards are people who can't be critics of themselves, and who can't produce the arguments against their position as well as the ones for it. Whether you choose to have a comment system or not is merely cosmetic.

Brian,

go to haloscan.com and you can get a free comments account from them. Still, if you can afford 5 bucks a month, I'd do what Dean suggests.

As far as the cowards quote goes, I agree 100%. Sorry, ctl. I think people don't have comments because they are afraid. They either don't want to have their view debunked publicly, or they are afraid someone will post something derogatory and they won't have time to delete it before it is seen.

I also agree that this applies to the belligerent bloggers. Some people don't want strife on their blogs, and they don't POST it either. But if you post controversy belligerently, then don't allow rebuttle, you're just plain chicken.

Open the gate. Allow people to rip up your view. Then we'll whether you REALLY stand, or just lean on what you read at moveon.org.

I don't think not having comments necessarily makes anyone a coward. I'm sure there are cowards with comments, and non-cowards without. I personally like having comments on my group blog, but not on my solo blog. I don't think I'm a particularly belligerent blogger, however, so perhaps the claim is not directed at me.

We are a country of free speech. So if a blogger chooses to exercise that option it does not mean the blogger is obliged to offer a place for a free comment to that speech. That does not make the blogger a coward. So I find this comment rather silly:

"The true cowards are people who can't be critics of themselves, and who can't produce the arguments against their position as well as the ones for it. Whether you choose to have a comment system or not is merely cosmetic." (ctl)

I think I should clarify:

What I meant is that there are bloggers who purposely set out to ridicule, demean, anger and insult people, but who refuse to let those people have a chance to defend themselves or talk back. I don't think any of you fall into that category.

Oh, that I definitely could agree with. I'd rather people didn't set out with such goals in the first place, but if they're going to do so I'd prefer there be a place for others to defend themselves, without necessarily having to start their own blog.

This is my presentation for Best Quote Lesson # 2 of blogging:

"The internet is a very poor form of intelligent communication, and the half-life of commentary is limited to single digit hours if in fact not interrupted by the blogsite owner who has first "dibs" on more food in the fish bowl."

I have to disagree with that last quote. This blog is an extremely good form of intelligent communication, both from the blogsite owner, Dean himself, and from many of us.

I don't agree that a blog owner has any obligation to allow comments. I love to read comments, and I love to write comments on things that so move me. I love it too much, and I really need to get back to my own blogging. I love Dean's style, even where I disagree with him, and Rosemary, too, but, even so, this blog would be lonely and less fun without this little society or spectrum of us commenters. It's kind of like a party here, sort of brings out the extroverted side of me, and I hope it never ends.

But, as I said, I don't think a blog owner has an obligation to allow comments. Commenting is a privilege, not a right. A blog is private property, and we're guests, and we therefore should behave that way. I despise trolls, commenters who deliberately insult the blog owner and the other commenters, almost always leaving no valid name, e-mail address, or URL. They are the cowards.

Arthur Silber (Light of Reason) allowed comments for a long time, but too many of the commenters were rude, too many trolls and people he didn't like, and so he finally had to shut down comments. Rachel Lucas had wonderful comment threads, but she, too, eventually had to shut down comments. Bill Whittle (Eject! Eject! Eject!) had to shut down comments for a while. Now, he has a wonderful "family" of commenters on his patriotic essays.

Eric Scheie (Classical Values) has comments. John Kusch has comments. He sometimes has to tell people off. Many other blogs, too many to name, some have comments, some don't. Billy Beck (Two-Four) does not allow comments. Charles Johnson (Little Green Footballs) has lots of comments. Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Eugene Volokh and his compatriots atthe Volokh Conspiracy, and Timothy Sandefur (Freespace) do not have comments. It's up to the blog owner. I notice that Andrew Sullivan, Kim du Toit, and Eve Tushnet (MarriageDebate, formerly run by Maggie Gallagher) use letters to the editor rather than comments.

I don't have comments yet on my own blog (Up With Beauty!), but that's a secondary or tertiary issue to the primary one of I need to do more blogging. Two things about that, though:
1) I'm technologically incompetent. It's my twin brother David Matthew Anderson who is the technological genius, so he gets the credit for all the technological set-up of my blog. He's John Galt and I'm not even Wesley Mouch. The software we use is Blosxom, which is still in a more or less experimental stage, so we haven't yet got to the point of setting up a comment system for me.
2) I'm still debating with myself as to whether I want one or not. If I do get one, it will have to have a capacity for IP banning of trolls and such. I'm pretty damned conservative about what I want to allow on my blog. As I said, a blog is private property, and I will not tolerate the equivalent of somebody coming into my home and scrawling expletives on my living room wall.

Any more comments on comments? I can't think of anything more to say on that, so for now I guess just: no comment

"It's my twin brother David Matthew Anderson who is the technological genius, so he gets the credit for all the technological set-up of my blog. He's John Galt and I'm not even Wesley Mouch."

I guess I'd better add that, ironically, he's never read Ayn Rand.

Comments by Catch 22:

Observers will note that no-where in the above is there a slam at Dean's World per se. It is simply that I think the internet isn't the best form of human interchange. Too often comments are
short, misunderstood and I find this probably truer with some email exchanges. The comment I made, I received from a friend many years ago who was a computer programmer, and it is an observation with which I do not disagree. So apologizes for any mis-understanding to Dean's World and commenters.

The writer Philip Roth once said,

"Conversation isn't just cross-fire where you shoot and get shot at. Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill."

I agree with that statement as well. So I appreciate being able to comment on Dean's World.

Thank You..Dean's World