I don't even bother with his posts any longer. He's a PITA and I see no point.

I don't know if the way the blogs are time-stamped could be used to address this issue. But it would be good if the edit function had some sort of ten-minute rule built in. Once a blog is posted the first time, the author has ten minutes to make corrections and fix typos. Once that 10 minutes has expired, the post is there for good. And once the post has been edited one time, it is also there for good. People interested in commenting on a post would be fairly warned that if 10 minutes has not expired since the initial posting, they comment with a risk of the comment disappearing. I don't know if these changes are technologically feasible, but they would be useful.

Some of the front page regulars have been guilty of the same thing RR did. It is extremely rude and self-centered. To dispatch the work of commenters into the aether, work which they might have put quite a bit of thought and effort into producing, is unconscionable.

Of course, RR has a some serious problems unrelated to this recent behavior. He expresses himself like a precocious but deeply disturbed child, and appears entirely incapable of grown-up discussion and debate. It is best to treat his posts like invitations to tour a juvenile detention facility. One ventures in at one's own risk.

I have as a policy only deleted blogs that no one has commented on. It is simply not fair to consign words that someone may have labored over to oblivion simply because it points out errors or whatever. As oceankat said, too, often the comments make the blog itself valuable. In any case, it seems intellectually dishonest to delete someone else's work because it reflects poorly (supposedly) on oneself.
"Without contraries is no progression."- William Blake.

Thanks for posting this blog. There was something disconcerting about going in reading the blog and comments, and then to return later to see nothing but his own comments belong the blog. It is like staring at the two copies of the same photograph from a Soviet Union textbook with the first one published showing seven people and the other one published later with six, only a blank gray void where the seventh was.

I have mixed feelings on this subject.

For one thing, I really don't like seeing one person called out on a blog in a negative way. On a comment it doesn't bother me at all...but as the subject of a blog, it doesn't feel right. I have, in the past, encouraged others to remove posts when they did this.

But to remove a post because you don't like the comments, or remove it and get rid of some of the comments (how do you even DO that???) and repost it? That's just wrong. Many people here take a great deal of time in composing their comments, often times including research that is valuable. To have the OP arbitrarily delete it kinda sucks.

Then, on the other hand, another poster recently deleted a post when a commenter violated the privacy of another commenter by using their name, in an effort to protect the violated commenter's privacy as much as possible. So losing the ability to pull down posts has it's drawbacks.

Why does everything have to be so complicated???

Fred, deleting a blog to delete people's comments isn't a great thing. However. Neither is singling a blogger out by name for negative treatment in a post. Last I checked, that was considered really poor form. Worse yet is that you aim to name someone, in addition to their pseudonym. There is absolutely nothing gained by doing this, and it raises really unhappy issues. As you know, I've had my scraps with the Turnipman, but I'm not sure this blog doesn't just add a couple of new problems to the mix.

Fred, I found the original version of Rutabaga Ridgepole's "Afghanistan is the Taliban is Afghanistan is the Taliban" in google's cache as it appeared on Oct 13, 2009 00:10:51 GMT with his single comment, your comment, and my comment on it.

Since it will probably be replaced before long with new "snapshots" of the site, if that hasn't happened already, I reposted both of our comments on his new thread HERE.

Some discoveries doing that--

The timestamp of the first version of the post was October 12, 2009, 3:44PM, the second October 12, 2009, 9:13PM. He did not change the text or format of the post, but he added a comment of his own @ 9:16 PM, after which he copied his own comment from the original thread (originally 3:53 PM) at 9:18 PM, and then he added more comments @ 9:22 PM, 9:40 PM, 9:51 PM, 10:00 PM and 10:02 PM.

Since he had just given himself a chance to edit his post any way he liked with all this information, by virtue of reposting it (and deleting our comments in the process,) that strikes me as a ploy to make it look like the thread was getting a lot of comments when people first looked at it, and to conveniently dump our party pooper comments at the same time?

Certainly makes him look more like an egomaniac looking for an echo chamber fan club than already was previously evident. Personally, it doesn't bother me that much, in a way it pleases me to see him showing this face this way for more to see. Actually, I don't know why I bothered to post a comment, it was a lapse in judgment on my part.

As to management, good luck with that. It is true that M.J. Rosenberg has deleted threads several times here over the years with tens if not hundreds of comments on them. And management never did anything about it.

I recall that Rosenberg only addressed this behavior once, and it was back when contributors had Movable Type capability/functions, but users didn't (we used a different software system to blog than contributors before Feb. 2008), and he said something like he had the power to delete threads and no one ever told him he couldn't use it, and until they did so, he was going to use it whenever he felt appropriate. It was especially strange since when Steve Clemons once accidentally deleted a comment, I recall that Andrew Golis stepped right in and straightened the problem out and the comment was replaced, and Clemons wrote an apology, too. Perhaps it was that the commenter in the Clemons incident was someone important to TPM staff, or perhaps it is that they consider Rosenberg's threads bread and circuses to keep the IP troublemakers busy, or perhaps it is as ex-member Billy Glad once sarcastically proposed, that M.J. Rosenberg is Josh Marshall's brother-in-law, hah.

Whatever the case, I'd be real surprised if they cared a whit about what goes on with Rutabaga Ridgepole's posts, certainly they don't do anything about him blatantly breaking commenting behavior guidelines continuously and in mass quantities over a considerable length of time. If you believe readers haven't hit the "report abuse" button on his comments from time to time, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn....

Seems to me everybody is taking himself much too seriously. If you blog, be prepared to be attacked and ignore those who don't play ball.
http://rectonoverso.wordpress.com/

This reminds me of an argument over who owns what on my computer at work... me or my employer. It might be my work, but it's his computer and he's paying me for my time to produce work on his computer so technically anything I produce on the computer at work belongs to my employer even if the work in question wasn't tasked to me - such as personal subject interests and research.

On TPM, Josh is the employer, so to speak. He provides the access points to a virtual breakroom, substituting the tables, chairs, vendo-junk machines, free coffee and bottled water with software, highspeed internet access, and disk storage space - nothing more. The only requirement he places on people using the breakroom is to be civil, but that is normally loosely interpreted by those rotating in and out of the breakroom.

These personal blogs are a recent phenomena here at TPM. I suspect this particular discussion is one of those growing pains that crop up every so often when new opportunity presents itself. But there's a cost involved and since I don't remember ever receiving a bill for my usage at TPM, I just roll with the punches and keep my head above the fray. After all, I don't have a stake in this venture - I'm just here for the show!

Other than creating a thread for people who want to join in this game of "lets throw rotten tomatoes at a blogger I don't like", this is a pretty meaningless debate about 'intellectual property rights' over comments. The setup here is such that reader bloggers have a defacto ability to moderate comments (in this case post facto). Is moderating comments right or wrong in the eyes of the Platonic Heavens? I don't think there's a determinate answer to that. Them's the rules, just learn to live with it. If you want control over your content - it's easy to do: post it as a blog.

Now... as for things of interest - got another link you might like on the low-medicare-rates-are-increasing-private-HCI-costs question:
http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/upload/lewin_public_plan_national_all.pdf

Interesting estimate of the extent to which costs are passed on.

fred,

i've seen you take very unpopular positions here at TPM, and get gang-flogged for it. i've not noticed that this troubled you, and you've always been one who returns fire.

your concerns are warranted, up to a point. deleting others' work product is wrong and very childish. there will never be a perfect codebase for implementing an interactive website. the flaws will be exploited by trolls. if we want to play, we have to take the good bad and ugly.

also, Neil Young is instructive here to keep us all from becoming big head bobbing dolls:

you're all just pissing in the wind
you don't know it, but you are;
and there ain't nothing like a friend
who can tell you your just pissing in the wind.

Neil Young - "Ambulance Blues"

I have to agree with Quinn that I don't want to endorse blogs naming and ridiculing another blogger. On occassion I have appreciated root's posts on some subjects that were thought provoking.

I understand that it must be disturbing to have a blog and comments deleted as they are a community event once posted. However Miguelito pointed out and Artappraiser also seems to know that blogs can usually be found in google cache even after someone deletes them here. And then you can copy the entire blog if it is something you want to preserve. I have a copy of a couple of blogs that someone deleted.

I think you just have to keep in my mind with certain bloggers that they may delete and act accordingly. I actually don't think there need to be rules about this. Just consider your time and energy in relation to what you know about a blogger:)

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Before this post disappears from the sidebar, I want to thank all who have commented. When I proceeded after some trepidation to post this piece, I had no idea what to expect. I’ve been gratified by the volume and thoughtfulness of the commentary, and by the almost uniform consensus that it is inappropriate for anyone to censor comments on his or her own blog because they are critical of the blog’s content.

Quinn, Ripper, Synchronicity, and Chthonic took me to task for writing a post critical of another blogger. I see their point, and agree in part. I believe it would be regrettable if we were to experience an avalanche of accusatory blogs designed mainly to settle scores. On the other hand, I have enough confidence in TPMers to doubt that many would attempt this, and if any did, I think the effort would be widely condemned and thereby discouraged.

On the other hand, I saw the circumstance that occasioned this blog as exceptional, and therefore deserving of an exception to the "hands off" principle proscribing blogs critical of other bloggers. The circumstance was not offense taken at another’s style, but something more fundamental - the use of the delete mechanism to threaten the integrity of honest discourse on TPM by creating a false picture of that discourse, permitting favorable responses to stand and eliminating unfavorable ones as though they had never happened. The offense was compounded, as other have mentioned,, by the disregard shown for the efforts of commenters who spent time to research and compose the comments that were deleted.

Several commenters suggested that a change in rules was not warranted., or would be impractical. They may be right. I would leave for another occasion the question as to whether a blog and its comments, once posted, should ever be deleted. We here are often critical of politicians and pundits who say and do things we don’t like. At the same time, a defense of the right to delete blogs was advanced by suggesting that sometimes things we say here after too many beers should legitimately be subject to deletion because they don’t reflect our true capabilities or intentions. I would simply suggest that in the outside world, what people do when not at their best has consequences they can’t delete, and if we want to be taken seriously, we should demonstrate that we accept an equal level of responsibility. I respect the opinions of others who differ, but I think the topic deserves some discussion - in a different post.

A few criticized my use of the word "pathology" in the title of this piece. I thought it was apt, but if I had known that others would disapprove of it, I would have chosen something less provocative.