We used to keep this linked on the sidebar. I added it back.
Comments about Comments
by William Dembski on April 16th, 2005
I want to encourage productive comments on this blog. To that end, let me indicate some initial policies that I plan to enforce:
(1) Thou shalt not be boring, and the person you least want to bore is me. In particular, I’ve been at this game for about fifteen years now, so I’ve seen most of the objections. Don’t repeat what I likely have already seen (for an overview of the sorts of objections I’ve seen and handled, consult my book The Design Revolution).
(2) I don’t plan on policing or editing comments. If you post a comment that I don’t think is productive, I’ll probably not just eliminate your comment but you from this blog (which, given the way WordPress handles comments, means all your comments will be removed). So if you have any doubts about whether I’m going to react negatively to your comments, back them up  I won’t. Note also that I’ve had it happen where someone ingratiates himself with me and then turns. Bait and switch is a sure way to be banned from commenting here.
(3) This blog is for me mainly to get out news items about the ID movement and my work in particular. For more sustained writing and development of my ideas, I refer you to my website: www.designinference.com. I am not a journalist nor do I intend to become one. Thus this is not “The ID Answer Man†or “Ask Your Questions about ID Forum.†If I don’t respond to your comments and questions, even if they are good comments and questions, understand that I have way more commitments than I can fulfill, and that I will only occasionally contribute to a comment thread here.
Finally, there is one cardinal rule at this blog, namely, I make up the rules as I go along. In other words, these policies can change at any time. Moreover, if they change, it will most likely be in the direction of curtailing the time I need to spend with comments.
I have tried to continue this basic policy with the exception that I spend the time to police the comments. For instance, I just deleted a comment by TimS saying that ID needs to get in the peer reviewed literature before it can be taken seriously. We’ve all heard that red herring before and it’s a clear violation of Dembski Rule #1 about comments. I didn’t ban Tim but his comment didn’t appear. Eventually, if he continues posting rebuttals based on trite arguments, he will get the boot because my time and patience is limited.
Uncommon Descent is not a soapbox for everyone with a chip on their shoulder against ID to repeat their trite, stale, and uninformed opinions. If you think that it should be a public dumping ground for anyone who has anything to say then go whine about it somewhere but whine about it somewhere else.