The fallacy only exists if one childishly believes that uncommented blogs, etc, are a violation of some existing quasi-legal right. On occasion, a webboard must ban an abusive member, and sometimes his/her allies scream bloody murder. This is, obviously, silly; the proprietor of the board can enforce the standard he/she designs. Likewise, I am not questioning blog owners' right to set their policy.

But it is not fallacious to discuss how blogs and other Internet materials should behave given the technological environment in which they have developed. To disconnect the fact that "the adoption of the technology en masse outstripped the development of any enforcing mechanism" from the moral and political opportunity this brings in providing "this purported 'freedom of speech'" is also to admit that we should not seize the liberating aspects of technology when they arise and grasp them as though they are our right, but instead let them slip between our fingers when cruel reality catches up. Then the Luddites and sundry are correct, and we should simply break the machines and return to our caves. This is the end result of Nicholas Tam's thinking. But I say: carpe diem!

In the most general sense, these have to do with what could be termed the maturity of a publication - particularly one comprised of multiple contributors, each fully capable of responding between and amongst themselves. A publication that adheres to the oft-abused conventions of the proper use of journalistic English should demand the same calibre of linguistic competence from its respondents. A publication that discusses topical matters with focus and depth should demand the same quality of thought from its readers. With an open commenting system, there is no method by which we can enforce either. Thus, we disallow open comments just as print magazines only publish and respond to a limited selection of letters to the editor. The seeming infinity of bits and bytes as opposed to expensive column inches is no excuse for relaxing this restriction where it need not be relaxed.

If I wanted this false "maturity," I would read a newspaper, where the hypocrisies of journalistic authority are reflected endlessly as in a hall of mirrors. Indeed, I do read newspapers regularly, and I can certainly be as snobbish about language and quality as the best of 'em. But to me the most important characteristic of the Internet that should be reflected and ingrained in the ethos of its participants is its fundamentally dialogic nature. That and the freedom we have seized on the Internet offers us an opportunity to put reporter and reader on a nearly equal footing. It allows us to take the reporter down from his pedestal of alleged authority and objectivity.

Commentless blogs reflect an apparent desire on the part of their promoters to return to the pedestal, or at least to play pretend. A million wannabe media monopolists. Indeed, the entirety of Nicholas Tam's post consists of a plea precisely for that in his appeal to "maturity" and his desire to control the content of replies as a newspaper controls the Letters to the Editor section. It is unmistakably about power and control. Marc Dumouchel is right to complain that "the way POI does it, it forces their agenda on other blogs, should those they choose to comment on want to reply." It tries to force everyone who wishes to participate onto pedestals, culminating in the spectacle of a circle of pedestals talking past one another.

Nevertheless, Tam continues:

Mandos refers to threaded conversations on bulletin boards as an ideal to which weblogs should aspire. This is a curious observation given that much of the success of weblogs has rested on it being a reactionary medium with tighter regulations. Even the publications in weblog format that features comment threads spanning several hundred posts claim the advantage of the discourse being restricted, in that only those who post on the website proper can begin topics and determine what is to be discussed. The result is more focus and less clutter. It is not too difficult to see that the next logical step in maintaining a controlled degree of professionalism, especially on a high-traffic site built around politics (a personally sensitive subject to surprisingly many), is to treat the privilege of being published as exactly that: a privilege.

Tam is right to suggest that the focused nature of blogs is part of what has allowed them to achieve as much media prominence as they have (which is to say, much less than what bloggers like to think they have). This is primarily accomplished by using cheap tools to emulate/supplant traditional media. Nevertheless, it is possible to go to far so that emulating traditional media becomes such an end in itself ("professionalism") that it starts to denigrate through conceit the liberating opportunities that the Internet ideally should provide. Rather, it should seek to lead us out of the media Egypt both materially and in our attitudes towards communication. To make political publication seen as a right rather than the dismal status of a privilege. To this end, I very much like the route that the Daily Kos and Free Thought have taken.

As Mustafa correctly points out, many, if not all of the contributors to this site will gladly post and/or reply to items that arrive in our inboxes if they have something substantial to say. This permits us to edit them in non-substantative ways for structural and grammatical correctness, as the last thing the Internet needs is the continued sodomy of language. It also opens the door to something that cannot be done with comments: directing the readership's attention towards the best and most insightful of the lot. It is for more than mere convenience that all of our e-mail addresses are listed by our names in the "Honourable Members" column to the right.

As far as pretension is concerned, there is nothing the Internet needs more.

And I say, let the reactions flow freely, with their irate !!!! and .................. and ?!?!. Let the bearpit brawls commence. Let people trust that their voices will always be heard and not policed, even to force them onto their own undesired pedestals. I didn't care for my email address to be listed on the right (a forwarding address is, since I choose to remain somewhat pseudonymous, partly as a matter of principle); people should be able to trust that their reaction, no matter how infantile we on our pedestals see it, would be recorded as part of the dialogue. The "sodomy of language" be damned; I am as anal-retentive as the rest of you, barring typos, but I do not really believe that the feelings of language can be hurt.

Pretension, phooey. Heaven forbid that we should be so base as to aspire to ape the New York Times.