A comment on my recent blog on comments on this blog was so good I had to a) let it through moderation and b) re-publish it here:

I think that this is eminently sensible and I wish such a policy was applied more widely. The 'comments' attached to so many blogs and even more so 'thought pieces' in newspaper sites become so overloaded that they can be of no use to anyone except a poor soul in solitary confinement with only an internet connection to console them. Who else is going to wade through tens or several hundred paragraphs where intelligent responses are separated by screeds of insults, ideological vomitings if I may term them so, remarks funny only to the writer and petty squabbles between obsessive posters. Like so many things on the internet, only intelligent and fair editing can let the medium achieve its potential.

Thanks Christopher Smith — someone who also had the decency to give what seems to be his name — for making such a sound observation.

Perhaps the Guardian should delete 90% of all comments on ‘Comment is free’ for this reason. The crude, thuggish and simply nasty attitude that comes, it can quite fairly be said, mainly from the Right (but not entirely so, I admit) is, I presume a deliberate attempt to stifle debate, much as the style used by many Right wing bloggers is also, I am sure, designed to intimidate by playing to this undesirable audience, to whom they openly pander.

It is only editing that can retrieve this situation.

It is happening here.