After at least a year of reading every day, I completely stopped hitting this blog a few (several?) months ago primarily because of this issue. I will be very interested to see if this policy is instituted fairly, or if more latitude is given to commenters who push the boundaries in a direction which supports the biases (subconscious or otherwise) of the contributors. Those biases, or my perception of them, were the other reason I stopped coming here, since the purpose of my reading is purely self edification and an untrusted source is not of value.

Please note that I do not mean biases in a particularly perjorative sense. We all have beliefs and biases, myself no less than any other, and are entitled to express them, especially in our own forums. For example I absolutely share and support the stated CV bias against amateur Grand Theorems. At the time I tuned this blog out, passions were particularly inflamed, and perhaps this (very wise) new policy will keep things from reaching that point again.

and to our local anonymous, #29, who is better spoken than most members of that clan but obviously motivated by the usual anon search for lulz, in a rather highbrow way – I enjoy polite, clever zingers & snarkiness and share much of your amusement. However, the comment threads here had become tedious and overstuffed with redundant nonsense, as well as final proof for all time that even very smart scientists are not necessarily more evolved or mature than anyone else.

An improvement in the signal:noise ratio is welcome and so I will provisionally add this site back to my browsing list. Biased content censoring is anathema, and I do trust the Contributors here to refrain from it. But I won’t miss it if it does happen. There’s always Backreaction, after all ;o)

Deletion means that no trace of the offence is left. If I may go overboard here a bit, deletion reminds me of a weapon in a sci-fi plot where a spaceship pilot stranded on an alien forest planet: because it was completely silent, the local wildlife never learned to fear his weapon and thus never learned to avoid him. So it is with comment moderation: if it is done by deletion, many visitors will miss the incident completely, whereas if it is done visibly, they will witness what is tolerated or is not, and as social beings will quite likely almost involuntarily adjust their behaviour to the norms they see expected. Moderating visibly also reduces aggravation on the part of those at the receiving end of a moderator action, because their words are not outright disappeared, merely “painted,” reducing the sense of persecution. And lastly, it serves as a check for the moderators themselves, as their actions are openly visible to everyone.