Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

I’m not a fan of moderated comments, so I suppose I’ll be checking out.

It’s been fun!

SB Replies: Pity. Obviously, I can’t please everybody. In order to ensure civility and minimize liability exposure, however, this was a decision that’s been coming on for a while. In any case, however, I suspect you’d find that your comments got approved routinely.

Thanks, the other was a challenge to know where to go and there are just too many blogs in a day! 

"minimize liability exposure” ...

Yep, he’s still a lawyer at heart, even if he doesn’t practice anymore.  It’s sad that liability issues are infecting the blogosphere.  I can understand the reason (I can also understand the “ensure civility” and “so I don’t end up looking like Harriet Miers through my quickly written blog posts when compared to my actual scholarly papers” arguments), but I think it’s sad that the reason exists.

Yes, that is better. It was worth a try, though.

We blogworld denizens like it quick and simple, because we have low IQs and cannot handle complexity. Plus we all have ADD.

Well, I guess you won’t get fooled again by the allure of multiple journals.

Steve, have you considered (1) categorizing your posts, and then (2) doing a different feed for each major category?  That’s what Fred Wilson does at his wildly-popular A VC blog, via Feedburner (check out Fred’s left-hand column for examples).  http://avc.blogs.com/

DC: Interesting idea. Towards what end, however? What purpose would it serve, in your view? And, if I were to do so, what categories would you suggest?

An answer to your question to DC: For readers who use RSS, it would serve the same purpose as splitting your blog into three sections—that is, give readers the ability to pick and choose what content they see—while still giving those of your readers who do not use RSS one page where they can come to read everything. If you want to stay simple, your categories could be: wine, business association stuff, and everything else. Those three feeds would present us RSSers with the choice we were given when you split your blog in three. You could go further—wine, business association stuff, cars, catholicism, politics, recipes, dogs, etc. But I think having that many feeds would be silly. Either way, you should still have one RSS feed that contains everything, so that those RSS users who want to read everything only have to monitor one feed.

Personally, I’m in favor of the three-feed approach (four with the ‘everything’ feed). It has all of the advantages of your experiment and none of the complications.

I think that comment moderation is a very good idea. I belong to one unmoderated Web community that works—and its main thrust is the gentlemanly pursuit of pipe-smoking. You talk about religion and politics, and that tends to bring the trolls out of the woodwork, and sometimes brings out the vitriol in decent, intelligent, well-meaning people. Moderating comments isn’t just about liability. Maintaining interesting and viable spaces for communication on the Web requires structure and effort. I applaud the decision.

PB--
Where is my post, the one you responded to?  Why did you delete it?  This is exactly what I’m talking about.
Chedda

PB replies: Your comment is up. Under the U Chicago post. Where you made it.

Oh, my bad.

Professor Bainbridge,
I hope you give the format another try.  I like your musings on food and wine, and while not a lawyer (though currently applying to law school) I find the business association material very interesting if a bit over my head.  But ultimately, I come to your site for your general political commentary.  The magazine format let me pick and choose more efficiently.  I would visit stephenbainbridge.com daily and the other two blogs weekly to see if there was something accessible to me.  Anyhow, keep up the good work.