Monday, November 08, 2010

Commentators

I am becoming seriously interested in reading Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club, via Pajamas Media. Here he is in his own comment section:

One advantage the blogging format has over traditional news is the ability of the commenters to argue back. Paul Krugman closed comments because it was alleged he was being worsted by his commenters. To be worsted by your commenters is probably a good thing. Nobody’s blog is worth anything unless he can attract commenters who are at least occasionally smarter than himself.


I'm lucky often.

2 comments:

truepeers said...

Hah, Richard has you to blame for me going over to his blog and questioning one of his comments.

"Commentators"? I know that's the word the dictionary offers us. But isn't it to invoke old-school MSM punditry? I think a blog has "commenters"!

Dag said...

OK, so not all of us rise to the level of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, but here, anyone who leaves a comment, within my idea of reason, is elevated to the level of "commentator" by virtue of my innate democratic leanings. Not all comments are "commentary," and not all commentary is interesting or intelligent, but I like to think we can deal with that, if at all, after the fact, giving people the status in advance, and perhaps not noticing publicly that they didn't really make it. There is always next time. Not all of us are consistently brilliant; but sometimes some of us make it once in a while, which makes all the failures worth the time and effort.