New Rule

Rightly or wrongly, I find anonymous comments annoying.

There's a difference between signing in anonymously, which is perfectly fine, and leaving comments with no moniker by which to identify yourself. It's courtesy, if nothing else. (Wow. Suddenly I can see the problem.) More than that, it allows the blogger to know to which person s/he's responding, assuming the comment is worthy of a response.

Given the inanity and predictability of the latest round of anonymous comments I'm getting, I can see why the writer or writers would prefer not to be known. All I can do is plead ignorance or excessive frugality: my stat counter neither allows me to attach a specific IP address to a specific comment, nor to block them if I were able. So your secrets are safe. I'm sure the current anonymous's teachers would be relieved to hear that.

It's not hard, even for those with teabagger mentality. (Note to those who point to polls that identify teabaggers as demographically similar to other groups, particularly old white reasonably educated [level of education, as opposed to being conversant with facts] conservatives: polls that have actually gotten at knowledge on issues have shown dramatic lack thereof, compared, say, to ..... yep ... liberals. You can search this here blog for previous links.) End your comment with an X. (Note to those with teabagger mentality: if you notice another anonymous has used an X, pick another letter. There'd be twenty-five left. If I ever get more than twenty-six anonymi, I'm sure that between us, maybe with the help of our regulars, we can come up with something else.)

So that's all there is to it. From now on, comments anonymously signed in and lacking an indentifier at sign off will not be published. Not particularly onerous, not a high bar. And, as we know, low bars are de rigueur for the opposition nowadays.

And, yes, I know this is an escalation from the last time I addressed this issue. I didn't follow that rule, either.