I check Jonathan Turley’s blog “Res Ipsa Loquitur” a couple times a week. Why? First, he often covers a topic I am already focusing on; second, he writes well and scrupulously tries to give a balanced analysis. He also knows his lane, and generally stays in it. The professor has definitely been red-pilled in the Trump era; he is as disgusted with Democratic Party’s deceit and double standards as I am, and the Axis news media’s bias has become evident to him as well, as in this recent post.
Yes, it’s true, I also enjoy Turley’s column because I almost always agree with him (and he with me), as in his expressed disgust with Representative Roe Kahana.
But I come to admonish Turley, not to praise him. His reader comments are a disgrace. The comments on every post typically deteriorate into general Trump derangement screeds, non-substantive snarking, and rants about topics not even slightly related to Turley’s post, with an occasional substantive contribution buried in there somewhere if one is willing to scroll through meters of garbage.
In addition, most of the comments are anonymous, with three or four commenters named “Anonymous” sometimes arguing in the same thread. Turley, as a national figure with periodic columns in The Hill and New York Post as well frequent appearances on Fox News, has a lot of readers on his blog and consequently many comments, usually over a hundred per post. Today I spent over an hour on an extensive post of over a thousand words, and as of this minute, a grand total of 63 people have bothered to look at it. But quantity doesn’t mean quality on Turley’s blog because he doesn’t bother to moderate comments beyond removing spam. For the most part, the readers comments add nothing to his site. In fact, they diminish its value.
I am very proud of the tough, substantive, perceptive and thought provoking comments I see on the Ethics Alarms posts. I don’t pretend that my work here can match the professor’s for scholarship and erudition, but the commentariate laps any other blog I have encountered.
I’m in debt to you all. Thanks.
Ethics Alarms 
I agree with you about all the trolls in Turley’s comments threads, there are a LOT of them and they freely graze his comment threads leaving piles of steaming cow pies all over the place. I’ve stated dozens of times in his threads that I won’t engage with anyone that uses the “Anonymous” moniker because it’s impossible to discern which Anonymous you’re actually talking to, so I generally just blow past their comments. I’m not sure how many different “Anonymous” commenters there are, but I suspect it’s around five. The regular trolls do troll me often when I comment there, usually in pairs, although they haven’t in that Representative Roe Kahana thread, yet. Most of the trolls in Turley’s threads head for the hills with their tails between their legs when you directly challenge them to support their rediculous claims.
your posts are substantive.
sometimes, they are so substantive that I do not comment because the comments would be derivative.
-Jut
Which is exactly why I don’t comment on the Magna Carta.
I suspect Turley is close to a free speech absolutist. Would explain his comment section. However, I imagine (though it’s no excuse) he’s just too busy to do so.
That’s why I allowed Ablative Meatshield, a provocative and sharp, but vulgar, commenter to have free reign here for so long over objections of some excellent female commenters and readers who urged me to censor him. Ultimately, it’s bad trade-off, and of course the First Amendment doesn’t apply anyway. However, I’m pretty sure that Turley can’t be bothered.
But he’s no busier than I am, just much better paid and with more job security…If you have a blog, it’s your duty to curate it.
Amen! But Turley could afford to hire someone to clean up his readers comments. Or simply stop taking and posting comments. They add nothing.
I am just curious how much time it takes to moderate comments at a blog. Jonathan Turley writes about one post a day, and has on average 200 comments on each post.
As Jonathan Turley has a day job, plus some extracurricular activities and a private life, he may as well conclude that the time it takes moderating the comments is simply not worth the effort. An option may be to not allow comments at all. Given JT’s views on free speech I will speculate that he may have considered it better for people to engage in rage rhetoric in his comment section that to engage in rage action at the streets of our cities. In other words, each option is a tradeoff with ups and downs.
I read Jonathan Turley’s blog for JT’s posts and skip the comments. For EA I read all the comments, and EA is for now the only blog that I comment on.
You may recall that Althouse banned comments for a while, and then relented. With the number of comments Turley must get, I’m sure moderation would be time-consuming. But not moderating makes the comments useless and unreadable.
Do we know why Ann Althouse first disabled her comment section, and then came back from this decision? Her comment section is not bad. But in the past she had issues with disruptive and vexatious commenters whose behavior almost amounted to a Denial of Service attack. One of the challenges she faced was that her platform lacked precise banning tools such as banning by name or IP address. If the remedy is to disable all comments, then we mat respond with “That is why we cannot have nice things”.
I just looked at Turley’s comment section on a number of posts, and the quality is depressing precisely because of those anonymous commenters. As Turley’s blog is a legal blog I think he would be justified to have a comment section that is only open to lawyers.
My impression is that Turley senses a tension between his free speech absolutism and banning commenters, and that he prefers erring on the side of allowing all expression on his blog. The line between disallowing commenters based on conduct and view point may be thin, as it is often the hard left who perceived to engage in “bad faith” commenting.
I am curious about the ethical relationship between moderating a blog and moderating a platform such as X or Facebook. As somebody who trends conservative I am glad that Elon Musk saved X as a platform for robust exchange of political opinion from the heavy-handed policies of Jack Dorsey; the EU and the UK may ban X in the future for allowing speech considered bad.
If I remember correctly, she decided that the comments distracted from her posts, which I thought was a bit egotistical. Then she made a special process for posting a comment requiring special vetting, and then went back to the original process.
Your blog is more pointed than his, which for me, makes it more interesting. You also write about personal experiences, political issues, or movies/entertainment. Turley mostly sticks to broad political or legal topics. I read him for a balanced legal view, but yours is more fun.
I’ve read your blog for a few years now, and you have some consistent commentators that I like seeing. I never read the comments for him or Althouse.
I’d argue your heavy-handed moderation of your comment section and bickering with good faith commentators and calling them names is why your blog isn’t as successful or well read as other blogs.
The moderation here is hardly “heavy-handed,” especially since the standards are stated up front.
As for my occasional overly negative diagnosis of a particular commenter’s character based on the quality or tone of their discourse, I address that in the Comment policies too, and am known to apologize on occasion.
But if you can’t call a jerk a jerk on your own blog, when can you?
Eh I have to disagree, I feel they’re heavy handed and the standards aren’t, well…applied consistently either.
But if you can’t call a jerk a jerk on your own blog, when can you?
I think you’re proving my point with that comment.
Well yes: because you’re a jerk.
You see, I don’t care what you “feel.” Feelings aren’t arguments. Either back up your accusations with facts and evidence, or keep them to yourself. Your feelings are irrelevant. As for the inconsistent application accusation: again: prove it. My records indicate that any comment who consistent issues non-substantive, trolling comments like yours is treated here exactly the same, allowing for mitigating circumstances and contributions to the blog in the past.
See #s 4, 14-17. in the Comment Policies. They address all of your imagined flaws.
because you’re a jerk.
Ah there it is! What are you five years old?
I am a diagnostician, and I know my field.
That comment gets you suspended for a week, with your commenting privileges restored as of 2/23/ 26 at7:00 pm, EST. If you enter a comment before that time, you will be banned permanently. A second offense after the first suspension will also result in permanent banning.
“So let it be written; so let it be done”
.
I left that so you can ban me.
Hey, as you wish! This goes in the book as a self-ban, kind of like suicide by cop. But don’t feel bad, you won’t be missed.
ALERT! Marisa just deliberately got herself banned.Do not reply when and if she tries to sneak back, as most of The Banned here do.
To be fair, she will be fondly remembered for creating the Legend of the Five EA Commenters in one of her snarky entries.
Sigh. Not that I had high hopes for Marisa, but there seems to be a certain class of people who show up at the blog with the explicit goal of getting banned. They offer nothing substantive. Marissa’s best arguments were, “I disagree.” Starting her comments with “Meh,…” was especially irritating, suggesting that she knew far more about the subject and could thus be dismissive of the proffered analysis. And yet she would provide nothing at all of any deeper thought process. Is it too much to ask for that new dissident commenters actually have arguments behind their disagreements? (Jerry Mayer, of course, is the wonderful exception to that complaint.)
As often happens, Marisa got her first comment through moderation because it was substantive—Trump Deranged, but substantive. It was also about the last substantive comment she made, except for her complaints about EA’s “five commenters” and its “echo chamber.” Here was her first post—it was false on the facts and biased, but at least contained an argument:
You’re comparing apples to oranges. And comparing a lawful process to one entirely made up by Trump only for purposes of revenge. If Trump had a beef with lawyers or a law firm, he had every right to have his lawyers file a rule 11 motion in court, or to petition the state bar where the lawyers were licensed or take other appropriate legal action with the system.
The issue is Trump is not following a legal or lawful process, since the EOs violate the Constitution and appear to be similar to a Bill of Attainder. But Trump’s Impeachments, prosecutions, investigations, and the like went through grand juries, indictments, judges, juries, etc. That is, the legal process was followed, whether Trump liked it or not.
If Trump has a beef with a lawyer or a law firm, the appropriate forum is to raise that during the legal proceeding with the court, or to bring something to the attention of a state bar, if there is some sort of ethical violation.
But simply using the power of an office to take personal revenge is not what the office of the presidency is for.
Jack,
Okay, I guess that’s a fair enough initial comment. That makes it doubly disappointing that so often her responses were, “Meh, I disagree.” And I don’t recall her ever interacting with anyone else but you. At least, I don’t recall her ever responding to my (admittedly small handful of) replies.
Good faith commenters. That’s a good one. Hah! Your theory on Jack’s readership is hilarious.
A community requires moderation. If you don’t moderate your community, you don’t have a community.