A comment on comments

Longtime MOJ readers know that, for a long time, we did not open our posts to "comments" (though contributions from readers were often posted by bloggers).   In recent months, though, most of us have experimented with blogospherically-more-typical practice of welcoming comments.  In my view, the typical practice is a good one, for the most part.

That said, my impression is that the tone of too many (not most of course, but still too many) of the recent comments and intra-comments exchanges is unattractively snarky, sarcastic, aggressive, or just mean, and is unworthy of this blog's aims (to say nothing of its namesake). 

I know all too well that I've often fallen short when it comes to blog-charity, but I want to propose to all bloggers and readers that we not write and post a comment if its tone and content are such that we would not communicate the same thing, over a beer, to a friend with whom we (at the particular moment) disagree -- or, at the very least, if we would not communicate the same thing, face to face, in public.