DISSENT DELETION DELUXE

RWDB commenters are upsetting Australia's lefty academic bloggers. As noted below, Tim Lambert deleted one of my comments – without warning or notice – and now bounces my links. Soon thereafter Christopher Sheil deleted one of my comments after warning me – and most other commenters – but failed to note that a comment had been deleted. Sheil also didn't inform Larvatus Prodeo blog-daddy Mark Bahnisch that he'd deleted my comment. (Say what you like about Tim Blair's blog-mistress, Andrea Harris, if you make what's deemed an inappropriate comment, she'll let you and everyone else know all about it.)

Now John Quiggin has a bit of a deletion festival going, replacing one of Dave Ricardo's comments with:

Deleted as not conducive to civilised discussion

The comment was apparently too sarcastic. Too his credit, Quiggin doesn't try to hide his disdain for dissent:

There’s been an upsurge in hostile comments, flaming and so on lately, and I’m responding by being more active in deleting comments, some of which I would have let slide in the past. Please stick to civilised discussion of the issues: there are plenty of blogs that welcome flamewars, but this isn’t one.

It seems that some readers can view comments that are “awaiting moderation” (maybe just their own, I’m not sure about this). I’ve now deleted everything in the moderation queue. I’m sorry if people think I’m being overaggressive, but I’m going to run things the way I think best. Anyone with different ideas on how to run a blog is free to implement them.

Let's all have a group hug and a civilized lefty discussion, or else.