So you are saying there is a great difference? Very well I accept that tho the reason for the difference illudes me. This makes me more interested in the outcome of email only than before.

I recall a site linked to recently that has many paywalled papers liberated, does anyone recall what it was called?

Updating on that example.

When he does I'll edit the linkand content of above post to reflect that. I hope he does post them since I still miss some of the writting he deleted when he abandoned Writings.

James has changed his mind about participating, he said he will take a break from this time consuming hobby and start a new blog of his own in a month or two. I enjoyed his previous two ones a lot and am looking forward to his next one. He also asked if it was ok to move his posts there and I said it was.

I was making the point that no moderation us terrible. With the implicit point that there isn't muv difference between moderated comments and emailed in comments. See Larry Austers blog for an example (warning I don't agree with his positions).

Please reread the comment you replied to.

Good point, this is something to investigate.

I am just asking people to use their email client rather than their browser to write comments. And in a regular open thread they can write comments in the way they are used to when they primarily seek interaction with other readers or off topic discussion.

You underestimate how much nonrightwing people would be scared off by an actual right wing comment section. We are not therefore discussing expectations of quality or moderation here but only the trivial inconvenience of emailing them in.

I suspect your and gwerns comments are getting a lot of upvotes because of Far mode considerations and vague feelings of goodness around open discussion. Let me push that into Near mode and explain why unmoderated comments where never an option on the table. I very much expect that sooner or later we would end up at best with Unqualified Reservation's comment section or at worst with that of Alternative Right's. First I encourage the reader who is unfamiliar with them to google up both. Now tell me how many non right wing rationalists would comment there no matter how reasonable or interesting a hypotheticl article by an author?

The filter of moderation may keep interesting some comments at bay but eliminates far more of mindless politicking than pf the former. Ultimately that ratio is what I think matters.

Trivial inconvenience is a feature not a bug. I mentioned it explicitly when arguing for this system to be adopted for the early days of the blog. I may be wrong, but I think it acts as a filter for those who can't be bothered to expend the small amount of effort in reply. This correlates with a less useful reply.

This is not an encyclopedia gwern.