This blog’s commentariat

WordPress tells me that exactly 15,000 comments have now been posted on this site in response to the blog posts themselves. That means, dear readers, that you have written some 750,000 words on these pages, amounting to nearly 10 decent-sized books.

Thank you, and congratulations, and happy Christmas!

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Commenting freely

In the age of the internet, the aristocracy of commentary has been deposed. You can, if you are so minded, turn to the leader writers of the old newspapers to get a perspective on what is happening at home and abroad, but you could just as easily turn to an interactive website, or the space at the bottom of opinion pieces on newspaper sites where you and I can enter comments. And boy, do we enter comments! By the truckload, actually. Some of them are totally bizarre and crazy, and a good few of them are either obscene or libellous. Well, depending on where you are browsing. But others are real contributions to the national and global conversation.

However, right now some websites are beginning to wonder whether this facility is a good idea, and whether the risks from open comments are greater than the benefits. Given the sheer volume, moderation is not usually a realistic option. So it may turn out to be the case that the anarchic but often lively forum for loud debate provided by large circulation websites will decline. Perhaps.

But actually, are not universities meant to be spaces for open discussion? So where are the websites hosted by higher education institutions that provide an opportunity for intellectual debate? As higher education itself, but also the world in which it is set, loses so many of its traditional assumptions, should there not be a space where this can be assessed and critiqued by the community? It is time for the academy to be a virtual debating chamber to which all have access.