To Moderate or Not to Moderate, that is the question.

I have been frequenting other people’s blogs and have come across an interesting phenomenon.  Comment moderation (or censoring or refusal).  When I started this blog, the one thing that I absolutely insisted upon (for myself) is that I not moderate or edit or refuse comments of any kind – with some obvious exceptions such as spam or off-topic non-sequiturs if they go on for too long.  If I make a post about the bizarre tendency of people who claim to be atheists who take the religious apologists approach and you feel the need to start talking about your cars new paint job for several consecutive posts with no end in sight, I might tell you to buzz off and/or delete your comments.  But I have yet to encounter such a thing and I honestly don’t expect to.

So that brings me to the point of this post.  My reasoning for allowing any and all comments from anyone who pleases to leave them.  It gives me reason to question my own views and often end up doing research on topics that I might not have otherwise done and being slightly more knowledgeable for it.  It would never occur to me to post something and then consider my position so weak, that I would stoop to such tactics (deleting the post) rather than defend it.  To do anything less would be simply dishonest and disingenuous in my humble opinion.  To assert something as true and not allow scrutiny or questioning of it would seem to be completely pointless and would defeat the whole purpose of publishing anything in the first place.  As anyone who has been following my blog and has seen some of my posts on other blogs can guess, I much more prefer the type of comment that requires a response from me, rather than pat on the back, complimentary “good job” type comment.  Not that those aren’t welcome by any means, but I tend to find myself much more engaged and purposeful when I am responding to comments (or accusations).  I actually genuinely look forward to that kind of thing and I honestly feel that it gives my life a sense of purpose and meaning.  If I could get paid to do this kind of thing, I would quit my current job in a heart beat.  But since I can’t, y’all just have to deal with these quickly thrown together off-the-top-of-my-head posts, while I continue to grow and get better at it.

Thank you for your patience.